For fourteen years the Dodd family counted an Old English Sheepdog, named Bob, as part of the ménage. But Bob had more to do than loaf about looking hairily amiable by day and standing sentry-go at night, he was also on the payroll as an idea begetter for his alter-ego, Boot.

Not that he begat all that often. Many a time in desperate moments of nil-creativity I would turn to him, saying "come on - say something funny, give me and idea" the response to which was invariably heavy huffing and a display of a yard of sloppy wet tongue hanging out of a silly grin.

There was a time though, when he earned every biscuit that henceforth came his way by begetting an idea which grew to be a major feature of the Perishers, an annual 'must'.

It happened on a family holiday in West Dorset, at a place called Eype's (pronounced eep's) Mouth, where a small river runs into the sea between eroding cliffs. There's a long stretch of stony beach at the end of which there used to be a surrealist jumble of ammonite-studded rocks, some as big as country cottages, forming a lido of rock-pools set in patches of sand. It was a place for a family to spend a day far from the dreaded transistor radios, and shielded from the heavy fall of ice-cream cartons and crisp bags, which occur on most coastal strips, since there wasn't a snack-shack in sight.

The regiment, consisting of self, wife, four children and a dog, would form up with full pack in the early hours and march up the beach. A long haul but worthwhile because, once there, we couldn't face the long limp back until late afternoon. Apart from any other consideration the saving in expenditure on ice-cream was considerable.

Once at the rock-pools the main occupation was 'crabbing'. This consisted of lowering lines baited with scraps of food into the pools, thus enticing small crabs to scuttle from concealment and grasp the offerings in eager claws, whereupon they were hauled up and deposited in a bucket of water, to be tipped back, no doubt thinking that there must be more to life than this, at the end of the day.

On this particular occasion I was cunningly avoiding parental responsibility under a makeshift bivouac of tatty car-rugs when I notice our dog, his eyes and muzzle submerged, peering into one of the pools. What then crossed my mind was the remembered observations of a philosopher, regarding a fish's view of an elephant crossing a stream. To the fishy eye the elephant would consist of four umbrella stands, four separate entities perambulating with no apparent connection, giving no clue as to the bulking reality of the rest of the pachyderm above the waterline. "What" thought I "do the crabs in the pool make of the only part of my dog visible to them, peering down from their sky?"

Thus was born the saga of the 'Pooliverse' and the 'Eyeballs-In-The-Sky'. Based on the crabs reaction to visitations by mysterious orbs breaking though the ceiling of their Pooliverse, the 'Eyeballs' constitute a reign of anarchy which takes over the strip each year. But at the time I little realised what my dog had started. The 'Eyeballs' began with a few isolated gags but are now expected to appear for several weeks at a stretch, by popular demand.

As their time draws near I keep putting off the event but once having a reluctant start I find the feature generates it's own mad momentum, which drags me along in a scribbling fury. Packed with innuendo and double entendres, more of which end up in my bin than in the pages of the Mirror, it's frenetic brain-boggling work, at the end of which I invariably feel the need of a short sharp holiday - preferably in West Dorset.