Dubbin was discovered by William Shakespeare in 1288, whilst holidaying near a chimney in Slough.

He and his brother Pippa were chasing a Flemish otter-bird around a cloth booth when the bird unexpectedly laid an egg. Thinking it to be a holy relic, the Shakespeare brothers accidentally boiled the egg in tepid vinegar and mashed it with a pewter dolphin ornament, the exact combination of treatments required to produce tiny amounts of proto-dubbin, which is a fungus.

When the fungus was subsequently blessed by a nude dwarf, it was transformed into what we now know to be dubbin, the beautiful amber slop (right). Nowadays, of course, the blessing is carried out on an industrial scale by specially anointed robots, in a process pioneered by the great physicist Harpo Marx.

The name dubbin comes from the Latin Dominum Utque Bene Basilica Ileus Nostrum, meaning the inhabitable gut of our merry Lord.

If the blessing of proto-dubbin is carried out in the presence of a well-oiled beagle, the resulting dubbin emerges not golden but a deep, mysterious black. Black dubbin (right) is very popular with younger fans of dubbin and is often traded at raves, especially in the countries of the former USSR.