Graham Norton has defended Alison Hammond, insisting he “deliberately” tried to create an awkward moment when she interviewed him on This Morning last week.

The pair made headlines on Friday when Graham appeared on the ITV daytime show and Alison asked him whether he still had the dog he was with last time they were together.

“No,” a grinning Graham responded. “Dead.”

Despite Graham clearly finding the whole thing hilarious, he revealed during his first Sunday show on Virgin Radio that Alison had “got so much flak” for the interview, and has now stuck up for the presenter.

“I meant to say this yesterday, big up Alison Hammond,” Graham told his listeners. “She got so much flak for apparently, you know, being insensitive or upsetting me.

“Because I did This Morning and she said, ‘Oh, how’s your dog?’ and I said, ‘Oh it’s dead’. And I did it in a deliberate way to be awkward. And it was going to be funny. It was funny.”

He went on to say that some people had “deliberately misrepresented” the funny moment just “to be horrible”, adding: “I love Alison Hammond and if there was any awkwardness, it was my fault. I made it a bad thing.

“That’s the other thing, I feel like people then think I’m kind of heartless. I was bereft when the dog went, but now I can use it for comedy.”

This isn’t the first dog-related awkward moment that’s transpired on This Morning in the last week, though.

On Thursday, Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby interviewed Sheridan Smith about her new show Pooch Perfect – and viewers couldn’t help but get a little distracted by her own amorous canines who could be seen in the background.

Alison recently took over presenting duties on Friday editions of This Morning, alongside co-host Dermot O’Leary.

Graham Norton’s Virgin Radio show airs every Saturday and Sunday from 9.30am.