Japanese shoodle hoax

In the past few days I saw or heard this story, about Japanese women mistakenly buying shaven sheep thinking they are poodles, on Jonathan Ross on BBC1 and on the News Quiz on Radio 4 and also (apparently, not that I read it, but it does have the essential semi-nude photo, of course) The Sun.  It's a hoax.  Even I was prepared to believe there might be a grain of truth in it, after years of having to answer questions along the lines, of "yeah but basically the Japanese are weird, aren't they?"