Andy Kershaw's dog sparks council tax enquiry

It's not often you see the phrase "Radio 3 DJ" written down but it turns up in a Telegraph headline reporting that a new Liberal Democrat/Conservative MP is being investigated by her local council after Andy Kershaw turned out to be registered to vote at her address:

Tessa Munt, the MP for Wells claimed a single resident’s discount on her council tax, telling her local council she lived alone in her constituency home.

However, the electoral register shows that Mrs Munt is one of three people registered to vote at the Somerset address.

Ms Munt's explanation is that she looked after Andy Kershaw's dog, and he used her house to register to vote as he had no permanent UK home - that's within the rules, of course. There's also a doctor who used her address in the same way:

The MP said she was co-operating with the council on the issue: “I fully support Sedgemoor doing this check and it’s right that they follow up any cases where the two don’t match up.”

The council declined to comment on Mrs Munt’s case, saying only that it was reviewing more than 700 “irregularities” in its council tax register that were revealed by its cross-check of the electoral roll.

An MP under suspicion of financial misdeeds and a BBC connection - if they could have found a way to work in a photo of blonde twins collection A-Level results, it would have been the perfect Telegraph story.