Under The Counter is, by his own admission, “not a dog man”. Unless, of course, said dog sports a numbered jacket and chases a mechanical hare.
However, the Auld Boy knows a good thing when he sees it and his myopic peepers fair lit up when he read about Scruff the Border Collie.
Thirteen-year-old Scruff (who, at 91 in dog years, gives UTC an arthritic run for his money) has become a social media sensation for his dogged determination in clearing Nuneaton of discarded plastic bottles, retrieving well over 1,000 last year.
Now, with the Deposit Return Scheme finally set to cough and splutter into life in August, UTC has spied an opportunity to make himself a tidy sum (pun very much intended) by deploying a dog to hoover up every plastic bottle it comes across.
The Auld Boy reckons that – if his canine chum can match Scruff – he’s onto an easy 200 quid in thrown-away deposits a year.
Nobody in SLR Towers has the heart to tell him that a collie dug will easily scoff at least £200-worth of Pedigree Chum annually. And there’s also the issue of the other deposits – the hot and steaming ones UTC would have to pick up in a wee plastic bag.
