IT'S a far cry from the warmth of a TV studio and you might say it's no job for a lady.

Presenter Michaela Strachan got down on her hands and knees as the freezing wind howled across the South Downs and performed the worst chore of all for the camera.

The former children's TV favourite spent half a day scooping up dogs' mess for a documentary to be shown at the weekend.

She was at Cissbury Ring, north of Worthing, to promote a National Trust campaign for animal owners to take more care clearing up the vast amounts of waste their pets leave behind.

And, with her customary grin in the face of adversity developed working with the hammer-wielding madcap entertainer Timmy Mallett in the Eighties, Michaela declared: "It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it."

A shivering three-man crew watched as the star, wrapped in gloves, woolly hat and thick jacket, tested a range of goods with names like Poop Scoop, Clean and Easy and Putz.

Michaela, whose successful career usually defies the advice never to work with children or animals, struggled with a fake plastic dog dropping which kept doing what came naturally and falling onto the ground.

Eventually she decided the best way ahead was to get the various scoops dirty with the real thing, which she found in abundance on the well-trodden footpath.

Michaela said: "I used to work in a kennel in the holidays when I was younger and it was much messier than this. I wish I'd had one of these scoops then."

Then, in true television tradition, a frisky black labrador ran past Michaela mid-take as the owner followed, staring at the crew with a bemused look on her face.

Half an hour and several takes later, the director was happy and it was on to a walkabout with four rescue dogs brought in specially from Brighton.

Michaela held tight to the leashes as Ben, Sheba, Gem Gem and Muffin

all pulled in different

directions.

Glynn Jones, National Trust property manager for the West Sussex Downs, said: "She seemed very good at keeping calm with all the filming. She was

a very bubbly, friendly

person."

The item, to be shown on Countryfile, presented by John Craven, will explain the hidden danger uncontrolled dogs pose to the balance of the natural environment.

Mr Jones said: "The natural environment is not designed to take all the carnivores we unleash when we take dogs for walks. Their waste releases lots of nutrients so the rare plants which rely on very few lose out to others."

Michaela, who fronts The Really Wild Show on Children's BBC, said: "It's an important message to put across. It was absolutely freezing up there in the morning, but by the afternoon the temperature was bearable.

"The dogs were lovely, but the amount of mess we found just by looking for a short time shows the scope of the problem."

Rita West, from Patcham, accompanied her three-year-old bearded collie Ben, third-placed in this year's Scruffs, the untidy alternative to Crufts, to the filming.

She said: "Michaela

seemed very good with the dogs. I don't think Ben had a clue what was going on, though."

Countryfile will be shown this Sunday on BBC1 at 11.30am.

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