Rory Cellan-Jones: "My frightened little dog has become a celebrity"

Rory Cellan-Jones may be known to us all as the BBC's recently retired technology correspondent, but now he is enjoying new fame as the owner of social media sensation Sophie, the Romanian rescue dog.

His anxious four-legged friend is #SophieFromRomania who has hundreds of thousands of social media followers and is the subject of his book out later this month - Sophie From Romania: A Year of Love and Hope With a Rescue Dog.

Cellan-Jones spoke to Saga Magazine about what its been like caring for Sophie while facing his own declining health due to Parkinson’s.

"The whole experience of adopting a slightly wild little dog who's terrified of people while I've been dealing with some pretty serious health issues has been a real challenge for my mental health," he said.

"I don't sleep well anyway and I've had a lot of sleepless nights - some of them worrying about just when Sophie is going to be a normal dog. But she's also great fun, and days like the first time we managed to get her out for a walk were just great."

The book chronicles Sophie's first year in Britain and Cellan-Jones reveals that how preventing her from giving him the slip is now his chief preoccupation.

"These rescue dogs are real escape artists," he says. "There was something in the book contract about Sophie needing to be alive and well on publication day. So no pressure, then, if she manages to leg it."

And twice this past summer, Sophie has done just that. The first time, she slipped past Rory as he opened the door to get the newspapers and the second was on a walk, when his wife finally retrieved her from a patch of nettles.

Rory’s wife is the Cambridge University economist Professor Dame Diane Coyle.

"As far as her fame is concerned, it’s all become rather extraordinary," she says.

"Even in Cambridge people stop me in the street – I bumped into one distinguished academic who said, 'Oh, you are Sophie’s mum. We love her'."

Sophie arrived in England in the small hours just before Christmas 2022.

"She looked incredibly vulnerable, on a drip and with a huge head on a tiny body," recalls Cellan-Jones. "She looked quite strange, actually."

The couple adopted her from Friends InDeed, a charity run by a Romanian couple who have been in the UK for 20 years.

"She came from a remote, rural area in the far east of the country, so wasn’t the cliché of a street dog roaming the city," he explains.

But although Sophie had been treated well, she hadn't been socialised and hid behind the couple's sofa for weeks after she arrived.

Cellan-Jones started posting about Sophie progress on Twitter (now called X) and her fame spread, but it wasn't until July that she finally ventured beyond the front door.

On the advice of a vet, Sophie is now on the antidepressant and anti-anxiety drug Prozac, and she spent a month with a ‘dog whisperer’ from Scotland.

Cellan-Jones’ sight is limited by the long-term treatment he has for ocular melanoma, which first appeared 20 years ago. He was also diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2019.  

However, since his retirement after 40 years at the BBC he seems to be busier than ever.

The Parkinson’s podcast Movers & Shakers, which he started with former Saga Magazine columnist Jeremy Paxman and other fellow sufferers, has a big audience and has won a major award.

He also has an ecstatically reviewed autobiographical book out, Ruskin Park.

"‘For me, Parkinson’s was not the big shock it is for many people because the cancer was far more frightening as it can lead to liver cancer," he explained.

"I googled it [the cancer] back then, as one does, and the very first example I came across was a man presented with this who six months later was dead. I shut the computer and didn’t google it for many years afterwards.

"The thing about Parkinson’s is that it’s something you live with for a long time. The first three or four years, I sort of secretly wondered, aren’t we making a bit of a fuss about this?

"But it has begun to get worse for me. This last year, I’m physically less mobile."

He has the most extraordinary energy and optimism for a 66-year-old with two pretty serious illnesses.

Yet despite the tremendous work he is doing – unpaid – to help people with Parkinson’s, it may well be the Sophie story and the new book which touch the most hearts.

"I was standing on the Elizabeth [train] line and somebody came up to me and just said, 'I so admire what you’ve done'. I’ve really never known anything like this. I think I owe that little dog a lot."