The first I heard of dogging was in a Hitching Tale told by a fellow traveller in Charnock Richard service station (I think) back around 1985. The tale went that he was picked up by a lady of a certain age who suggested a bit of carnal fun up a nearby country lane. Only too happy to oblige, it was only halfway (?) through the procedure than he became aware that they had an audience. On pointing this out to his brief-encounter, she merely laughed it off and urged him to continue with his erotic inventiveness - for their entertainment as much as hers. Naturally our hero lost it, and in her despair she drove him back to Charnock Richard (or wherever it was) to look for another unsuspecting victim.

True? Well so many hitching tales exist as FOAFlore, but this was in the first person and told with such a self-depracting honesty that I was convinced... But then again, as a lover of folklore & storytelling, I tend to 'believe' pretty much everything I hear, in the same sense as 'believing' an episode of Star Trek. I'm sure there's a song in there somewhere, though I don't think at any point the term 'dogging' was mentioned, which I first heard in an episode of a TV cop show (55 Degrees North) whereas now these days the folklore is very well established, if not the events themselves which are a regular feature of the seamier sort of TV show such as Shameless. Who knows? Maybe there'll be an article in a future Fortean Times.