1. DOG ENDS

Terry Jackson-Brown.

Terry Jackson-Brown was content with life until it suddenly veered up and bit him on the arse. Then the Calne 38 year-old painter and decorator sole raison d’etre became his self-preservation.

‘That moment the ground opened and swallowed me,’ he explained referring to the earth-shattering moment when his name was selected in the latest broadcast draw to be hunted. ‘I had missed the beam to stand on in the attic I was renovating and my foot went through the ceiling. I felt like I had caught myself in a mantrap and made it an easy job for the gits who would now be after my blood.’

He was stuck for a while with a leg dangling through his client’s ceiling and his phone was red hot with friends telling him what he already knew.

‘They thought my days were numbered, then when I told ’em my leg was in plaster they apologised and thought my hours were numbered instead.’

After extracting his leg, Jackson-Brown commenced the sobering task of putting his affairs in order before he was turned into mincemeat.

‘I asked the mother of my kids if she would marry me as didn’t want them classed as bastards forevermore and get mixed up with those chasing me. But she just laughed and said that if I used the same slippery skills I had used to avoid paying child maintenance for years the hounds would never catch up with me.’

Terry stoically restarted work hoping by getting his mind off it it wouldn’t happen. But it soon became apparent he was being watched.

‘I was eating a pub lunch in Leicester when I became aware of dogs gathering in the doorway. The entrance contained frosted glass so I could see ’em outside. Licking their lips and making no attempt to conceal that I was the most appetising thing on the menu. They had an imposing presence. Occasionally, they pawed impatiently on the door. They could’ve used their strength to push it open, but it was like they were toying with me until the rest of the pack arrived along with their gaily coloured horse riding assassins. They were outside but had broken into my mind with menaces.’

Jackson-Brown sweated profusely and urinated through fear.

‘I was saturated, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up like meerkats. But in the pits of despair I had an idea. I ditched all me saturated clothing and left it in a pile where I had been sat, hoping the odour would fool the hounds into thinking I was still sat there. My fellow bar dwellers didn’t have time to react. Even had they done so, to my way of thinking they didn’t have powerful jaws to rip me apart.’

Within seconds Jackson-Brown was naked and without feeling it incumbent to preserve his modesty was out through the side door while the Hell Hounds remained blissfully unaware of the deception being played upon them at the front of the pub.