Liz Hurley will have to think twice before sneaking into my garden

I'm feeling really guilty. He's sitting outside on a chain staring up at me with his big dumb trusting eyes. I'm up in the sniper tower with a great view over the whole property. How can I tell him that just a hundred metres away over the mouldy green Cotswold stone wall that surrounds the rose garden, Stacey is busy laying lines of electric cable with the sole intention of electrocuting him?

I'm feeling really guilty. He's sitting outside on a chain staring up at me with his big dumb trusting eyes. I'm up in the sniper tower with a great view over the whole property. How can I tell him that just a hundred metres away over the mouldy green Cotswold stone wall that surrounds the rose garden, Stacey is busy laying lines of electric cable with the sole intention of electrocuting him?

Things are getting really serious with Huxley the Houdini dog. He has now escaped from the property five times in the last three days. He can seemingly unlock doors, climb seven-foot walls, he's probably got a rope ladder stashed under the boards in his kennel.

According to neighbours our lovely, quiet, kind dog becomes a monster the moment he gets out, terrorising children, tossing cats about and even blocking traffic in nearby Fairford. Every time the phone rings we wince as one of us has to brave the braying wrath of a tweedy lady hurling abuse at us and threatening to call the police.

So a couple of days ago as Huxley lay peacefully in front of the fire snoozing away, dreaming no doubt, of all the lady dogs he would impress the next time he went over the wall (actually I say lady dogs, but I believe he lost his innocence to a large Boxer called Zulu a year ago, but Stacey won't hear of it.) we went to work. Stacey found some frightening-looking dog security website and within a couple of minutes we had ordered the full Electro Dog Container Kit (not the actual name but something like that). It arrived this morning. A thousand feet of electric cable, a control panel and a couple of scary-looking collars with electrodes pointed inwards to rest on his poor neck. The idea is that you surround your yard with the wire, Ted Nugent style, and then when the poor hound approaches it he is given a small shock from his collar. It sounds totally barbaric but it does, apparently, work and this seems to be the only way to stop the baying mob from lighting their crosses and marching down the road towards our fortifications.

Supposedly you can cross the wire without getting grilled if you're not wearing a collar which is a relief as we don't have a big larder and might start going hungry after a couple of weeks.

But that's not all. I'm off on a little secret trip tonight. Regular readers of this column might know that I have a particularly unpleasant problem with someone coming into my garden and defecating behind a particular bush. I won't go into the hows and whys but this all started soon after Liz Hurley moved into the area and I'm fairly sure that she's involved. My current thinking with the arrival of this electrical system is to somehow get Hurley to wear one of the electrode collars so that the next time she decides to pop in and leave us a little present she gets a little shock. I have spent all day in the tower covering the collar in black velvet and gluing on a couple of Diamonique sparkly bits as I know she loves bit of glamour.

So here's my plan. Posing as a courier I'm going to deliver it to her place and make out that it's from her close pal Sir Elton John who has written her a card to tell her that this is a unique piece of jewellery made by his close friend Sir David Furnish who has given up the film business because Sir Elton doesn't want to make any more documentaries about himself and has decided to start making jewellery. "Sir Elton" goes on to say that if she could wear it all the time it would give Sir David Furnish the confidence to carry on with his new enterprise. "Sir Elton" would rather that she never mentions this to them but just wears it all the time and Sir David will be thrilled. I don't need to point out the genius of my plan: If Liz decides to do some more fly-tipping, so to speak, she'll soon think again. If the system works on both Huxley and Hurley then it truly will be money well spent. I'll keep you informed.