IT started as knockabout fun, then moved through a "six of one, half-a-dozen of the other" stage.

But now former Worcester MP Mike Foster's latest collision with the Worcestershire Hunt has turned sour - and not just for him, or those who oppose his anti-hunt views.

When he agreed to take part in Evening News reporter Alison Fraser's charity Auction of Men, he did so knowing it would be a sensitive time in his election campaign, and with the good grace to stand alongside Tory rival Richard Adams.

While Alison's delighted that the Hunt has added £110 to the £90 it paid for his gardening services, as a newspaper, we can't help being disappointed that its officials decided to use the event as a stunt of their own, maybe even to edge Mr Foster towards embarrassment or humiliation.

Many people will have smiled at their cheek in thinking of the ruse. We certainly didn't see it coming.

Some will have found it fun when it became apparent who had bought two hours of Mr Foster's time.

But, as soon as the bidders revealed their hand, that should have been it. Point made. Joke over.

That's why Mr Foster's reticence to visit the kennels and do the Hunt's bidding is understandable.

Let's face it, we've gone beyond the stage where good humour is likely to accompany either party to the event.

If the Hunt's anxious to show that it has taken all the headlines it sought from the auction, and that it really does have the charity at heart - including those sufferers who live outside the Worcester constituency boundaries - it will accept Mr Foster's offer to help out a pensioner or tend St Richard's Hospice's gardens.

That will put the whole matter back where it belongs - away from politics and at the heart of Alison's cause, where she meant it to be, and where all the auction volunteers were happy to help it.

It would be the decent thing to do.