This blog contains images of a masked nature - consider you warned

Call me old fashioned. Call me quaint in my views. Call me coy.
But I thought the activity of dogging was couples driving to quiet car parks at night, getting into their back seats and pleasuring each other in various sexually deviant means whilst other couples wandered round trying to glimpse a little flesh through cracked open otherwise steamed up windows. A bit like a weekend car show in some stately ground, only with less interest in the polished carburettors. So to speak.

Turns out my Edwardian views are laughably way off.

Watching Dogging Tales (C4) the other night pulled my eyes into the 21st century meaning of the term with hooks attached to my pupils. I learnt a number of details about this adult pastime from the protagonists.

The documentary followed a selective number of folk who all partook in this nocturnal activity. The voice over warned of scenes of an adult nature beforehand. But did not warn of scenes of a masked nature. I mean, jeezus! Surely this scene needs a warning?!

Worst Doctor Who baddie yet

It turns out dogging involves rather broken people in pretty unsettling woodland animal masks wandering off into the nearest forest and having a grim evening of loveless touching with anonymous strangers who happen to pass through the clearing and spot them.

One countryside vermin masked man summed up dogging: "I used to be a DJ, and this is the same thing - we are providing entertainment for others. I am an entertainer" then he asked his wife, dressed in a super-hero cape, sat on a tree stump, to lift her dress for a photo. It didn't seem much like entertainment. And I wasn't the only one - 2 men doggers stood at a distance, arms folded in indifference.

A cat faced lady on screen posed the question: "How many viewers watching will want to try dogging after seeing this?" I guess she was going for "loads" I willing to bet it was less.

The documentary was shot with very little of the actual dogging being filmed. What was, was filmed hand-held and illuminated by virtue of mobile phone flashlights and torch apps or break lights bouncing of nearby branches and legs. Most of the documentary - on location - concentrated on the trees, the moon, the wildlife, an open car door swinging rhythmically.

All the women involved promoted dogging as a way to crawl back some confidence from a life of disappointment and rejection through multiple nameless physical brief moments of being wanted beside some trees. All the men enjoyed dogging because it made them feel as if their wives and partner's were coveted by other men and also a proof of their own masculinity.

I learnt dogging is not glamorous.

Listening to a fox faced truck driver I learnt, by his calculation, 70% of truck drivers he knows do dogging. Considering he is basing this percentage on truck drivers' he knows, probably through dogging - it doesn't seem like a lot. The fox faced truck driver talked in rather troubling terms - referring consistently to the women involved as "Females" and saying love costs where dogging is free so why would he want to ever stop?

When he asks you, "What is love?" you better come up with the correct f***ing answer

A benevolent wolf faced man talks of his sad beaten rabbit faced wife: "There are regulations in dogging. You can't just do anything. It's my wife after all."

It's my wife.

When asked who makes the dogging rules, the wolf faced man points his snout to us: "I do. I like a small crowd of men around to take turns with my wife."

Again and again snippets of phrases and words come out of these real-life action Creature Comfort characters which betray both the motives of those taking part and social (if one can describe it so) circle built up around it as something far removed from the glamorous and exciting lifestyle all those involved were keen to convey.

One women at one stage talks of the enjoyment of being free and loss of control and the next admits she has had abusive relationships in the past where she was used. Another talks about the empowerment of being attractive to an intimidating degree to those men in the woods with her before quickly revealing she has had body image issues in the past and fears being seen as unattractive.

The men, too, reveal much. The bird masked man talks of fathering 17 children because there is no condom big enough to fit him. That would be condoms, the regular make-shift water balloons and facilitator of popular school boy jinx of pulling them over their heads same condoms I am aware of? He then talks about his shock of how quickly his brother died of cancer and vowed to make sure he died with a smile on his face. The Sinister Mr. Fox talks also of being hurt emotionally in the past after claiming he does not recognise love.

Perhaps the most affecting of those shown in the documentary were a young couple. The.. er... mouse? ... raccoon? ... roadkill badger? faced boyfriend says he works 12 hours, 7 days a week. The... animal... faced girlfriend explained she was bored and they have begun dogging to prevent her from cheating.

It is quickly apparent the boyfriend is uncomfortable and "cold" when they drive out to an overgrown layby with another girl. He then calls it off altogether when a 2nd man approaches them.

By the end of the documentary, we see the relationship has survived the short foray into this dogging world and the girlfriend has come to realise her boyfriend had only agreed to support her in the venture.

It was, though, the only person who wasn't dogging who provided me with the most insight.

He was complaining. The places where he once walked with his young daughter, telling her delightful stories of woodland nymphs and fairies living between the plants and trees now was a popular place for dogging - naked men, soiled mattresses and soiled memories.

As he explains his belief these doggers "whittle low branches into penises and then put their arses on them" he says he is pleased a concerted police and local pressure have moved them on because there is "no place for them in this nature reserve".

The thing is, as I recalled the bird faced masked man with the genitals larger than a school boy reminiscing: "These days we spend more time on the interent trying to arrange meets when we should just be in the woods shagging", our non-dogger has it wrong.

Dogging - with the country habitat, animal masks, utter lack of love and base motive to have hollow meaningless sex instead of the internet - is perfect for a nature reserve.

I have long questioned what makes humanity different from other animals? Is it religious: we recognise some further place after death, that we hold souls in our bodies? But not all of us believe. Is it more complex: We create art, obey laws and invent processes to ease the lives of others? But then not all of us do. Is it more basic? We are able to supersede instinct and biological drives and and go against them using free will? Watching this documentary I am not so sure.

I think I now have the answer: it is theatre.

Even when humanity is being at it's most animal, it requires an audience. Even if that audience is subjected to a play of Wind in the Willows directed by someone who has taken a lot of brown heroin.