When she was talking affectionately to her grandchildren, she had a way of making her voice purr slightly; it was so warm and loving you could wrap it around you like a blanket. It would be disingenuous to say that we didn’t think about inclusivity, but we didn’t want to be preachy with it,” says Orchard.

My 2 year old runs around the house screaming Duggie hug at everyone then starts giving a great big hug! There’s a seesaw for members of Duggee’s Squirrel Club to enjoy, and a swing that clips onto the side. Most people get that he’s adopted, but I’m pleased we are posing that question, even if we don’t explicitly answer it on the show,” he says. Indeed, affection for the song was such that a bunch of metallers even formed a band around it – recording a blistering cover version and naming themselves Slay Duggee as a result. When the squirrels step out of the clubhouse, anything might happen – they might go on some psychedelic trip up the river to the heart of darkness or they might skip dreamily through waving corn.Evan Davis even used it to play out Newsnight, declaring: “Even if you weren’t in a gravel pit with a big speaker in 1989, we think you’ll like this.

They want to hear Hey Duggee played on a Dean Dimebag spiky guitar with double kick-drum and somebody screaming into a microphone. Duggee and the Squirrels hop inside the Biology Bus and miniaturise themselves to go on a voyage of discovery inside Enid. I think in the middle of all this fear, obfuscation, lack of trust and mixed to poor messaging, Hey Duggee is uncomplicated and feelgood,” says Landreth. I also love that when the animals arrive/depart each animal child has a very similar looking animal parent, but the child alligator's parent is an elephant. One of the questions he is most commonly asked is: why, when all the mums and dads arrive with their children at the start of each episode, the crocodile Happy has an elephant for a parent.

Armstrong was brought in at an early stage to narrate, with the idea that his rich tones could create something similar to Lionel Jeffries’ character in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I just wish there were more episodes available - there are over 50 episodes in the first season alone but there are only a fraction of that currently available on Google Play. Happy sets his sights on a very questionable looking puddle that he is determined to splash in, much to the horror of Duggee and the other Squirrels - and the tiny citizens of Midgetropolis who live inside it!

It is littered with pop-cultural references: Apocalypse Now, Donkey Kong and the Cure to name just three.Orchard says that some voice actors emerge sweating from the booth after putting their all into voicing the astonishing array of secondary characters in the show.