North London, I can report, having moved there recently, is fantastic. Whereas my journey home to Brixton used to involve dodging police cordons and crack-addicted prostitutes offering fellatio, the only obstacles in NW3 are deli workers dishing out free focaccia. There's only one problem: Jessie.

Jessie is a Border collie. My housemate's dog. And the problem with dogs is that they bark, dribble, insist on being walked, smell, eat the Rufus Wainwright albums you order through the post and try to copulate with everything, even if it's 100 times or a tenth of their own size. Not even Calum Best does that.

And after two months, Jessie and I remain distant. He still barks whenever I enter the house and in return, except for the times I'm tripping over him, I ignore him. However, this arrangement was disrupted the other week when a production company suggested that I present a short documentary for Channel 4 on the question: Why do Asians Hate Dogs?

The cultural angle hadn't really struck me before. I'd put my aversion to canines down to having been bitten by a doberman as a child. But it's true. I don't know a single Asian family with a pet pooch and while Americans spent $15.2 billion (£8.2 billion) feeding their pets in 2007, the equivalent figure for India is, apparently, just $29 million. What's going on?

To find out I spent a morning with Stan Rawlinson, a self-proclaimed “dog behaviourist”, and a whole day entertaining Jessie. The experience was illuminating, but before I proffer a hypothesis for why Asians are incapable of extending their enthusiasm for private number plates to dogs, let us eliminate some theories, the first of which is: religion.

It is, of course, true that Islam has traditionally renounced dogs as impure. But - and here's a concept people seem to increasingly struggle with - not all Asians are Muslim. Animals are actually revered by Hindus and Sikhs.

It has also been suggested that the Asian aversion to dogs is down to the 25 million stray dogs marauding the sub-continent. We are, it is argued, hardwired not to get close, to avoid becoming one of 35,000 people who die of rabies in India every year.

Again, there is probably an element of truth to this, but I recently visited Ecuador, which has a similar problem with strays, but the people there are almost as keen on dogs as pets as they are on military coups. If the theory had (four) legs, then surely this wouldn't be the case.

We can also, I think, safely reject the explanation put forward by Stan Rawlinson, the dog expert, who argues that Asians may hate dogs because dogs may not like ethnic minorities. He put it to me that, because dogs don't see colour in the way human beings do, they cannot understand expressions on darker faces. Leaving aside the science of what dogs do and don't see, and the odd implication that not being able to register a facial expression leads to hatred, in my experience it's not the hostility of dogs that's off-putting, but their overbearing affection.

Indeed, unlike most Border collies, the issue is not black and white, and one of the first things I would stress is that Asians do not, necessarily, “hate” dogs. Admittedly, when I took Jessie for a walk through Southall, the Asian area of West London, and asked passers-by if they wanted to play with him, the reactions, with the exception of one woman who announced she had a pooch of her own called “Tony Singh”, were extreme. If I'd suggested eating a live pigeon, I doubt the yelps would have been more piercing.

But fear of the unknown is not the same thing as loathing - and I would suggest that it is not that Asians hate dogs, but that they are rational about them, whereas the British are demented about their dogs.

And while this irrationality comes in various forms, the most common is the absurd notion that dogs are clean animals.

When I set off with Jessie in a taxi to Southall, my English housemate, who is sane in all other respects, warned: “He gets travel sick - but don't worry, it's not as bad as human sick.” Well, having cleared up after him, I can report that dog vomit is actually worse. To argue otherwise is lunacy, and the Asian aversion to it entirely sane.

It is also entirely sane not to enjoy being slobbered over by a mutt. Many a Brit dog owner will let their pet lick their face in the sentimental belief that Fido is expressing affection. But as Rawlinson pointed out, dogs actually do this in the hope that the recipient will regurgitate their breakfast. It is behaviour they exhibit as puppies with their parents, when they are incapable of digesting raw meat, and, once again, I would argue it is rational that my people aren't enthusiastic about it.

But, having spent some serious time with Jessie, and developed something resembling a bond with him, there is, I think, something else that drives a wedge between canines and Asians. It seems to me that the essential appeal of dogs is that they are relentlessly loyal and proffer extremes of emotion: they are either extremely pleased that you are taking them for a walk, or hugely disappointed that you are not. And frankly, given the neediness and emotional hysteria of the average Asian extended family, that's the last thing we need.

Bright Young Wonders, 7.55pm tonight, Channel 4

sathnam@thetimes.co.uk

To buy Sathnam Sanghera's book, 'If You Don't Know Me by Know,' click here.

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