Dolly, the world-famous cloned sheep, has been shorn. I know this because the Press last week was full of it.

A knitted sweater-type garment is the result. It is shown in pictures, modelled by a 13-year-old girl called Holly (coincidentally rhyming with Dolly), and the design, also by Holly won a competition run by the Science Museum in association with (I am not quite sure why) Portman Building Society and the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

I cannot, much as I might wish to do so, find fault with Holly's design for this sweater made of Dolly's fleece. It shows two sheep, one behind the other, against a background of blue presumably representing sky. These sheep are on the chest, so to speak, and there are two more, smaller and facing each other, around the neck, and two more, chasing each other, one assumes, around the waist, against flowers and hills, in green, presumably representing grass.

I think I've got this right, though it wasn't a colour photograph, and you can't trust the national Press much, very different from us trade and provincial blokes.

Splendid stuff, with charities and science coming in for a mention. But it is my duty to carp and quibble, if at all possible, and what I want to know is, why wasn't publicity given to the processing and manufacture of this unique fleece?

The wool involved must have been processed, though quite how, without unbelievable expense, you can do this and keep Dolly's fleece separate from all the rest I don't quite know.

But I should have liked to see those woolmen, even the higher echelons of the executive classes, gathering round watching the processing in progress, valiantly attempting to look cheerful despite recent sad declines in the price of British wool.

As for looking charitable, there are limits. Too much strain has already been placed on this quality in recent difficult trading times.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.