I just think it’s a masterpiece, and I’m over the moon that I get to be in it,” says Armstrong, before adding with customary flourish: “Well done, squirrels! I like it too - they are quite short so we're not stuck watching a long show when the kids want to watch TV. Its songs have been played on Newsnight, fans include Orbital – and the show’s storylines ask the big questions about art and life. Duggee endeavours to award them a badge at the end of each show, once they’ve been shown the ropes of a particular subject: “Well done, squirrels!

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. Sometimes, those characters carry a message: Rochelle in The Making Friends Badge uses a wheelchair, and Mr and Mr Crab are married, although there are no gay rights badges or disability badges. 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.

My 2 year old runs around the house screaming Duggie hug at everyone then starts giving a great big hug! While the members of The Squirrel Club have lots of fun, Duggee teaches them about responsibility, working as a team, taking acceptable risks and – most importantly – thinking for themselves! 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.

What makes it significantly better than it sounds on paper is the amount of love poured into it – from the acid-house-inspired music and smart visual gags to the hilarious regional accents of characters such as Chew Chew the Panda (whose sarf-east tones have been compared to those of Adele). 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! 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. They want to hear Hey Duggee played on a Dean Dimebag spiky guitar with double kick-drum and somebody screaming into a microphone.Each episode features a different badge that the kids get to earn and teaches a different lesson (or at least tells a nice story) and it's all good fun. 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. I really liked the idea of this patrician, faintly military-sounding character having that huge capacity for warmth and affection.

Armstrong fell in love with the voice he’d landed on, so much so that when there was a bit of pushback regarding whether or not it was the right fit for CBeebies, he said: fine, but they would have to recast it. Duggee is making a smoothie and the Squirrels can’t agree on whether it’s delicious or horrible, so they make their own adventurous smoothies showcasing their favourite flavours to discover what taste is.

And he was thrilled when his mum – a voracious reader – mentioned that a fictional character in one of her books had shoved her kids in front of Hey Duggee. 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. The premise of this show is that Duggee is somewhat of a scout leader who leads his scouts (the animal children) through different activities to earn badges. There’s a seesaw for members of Duggee’s Squirrel Club to enjoy, and a swing that clips onto the side. Studio AKA’s Grant Orchard is the creator of Hey Duggee, and says his two energetic boys were key to the show’s framework: “I was always looking for things to do with them, and so I thought it would be great to have a show that would inform people about how to entertain rambunctious kids.

Halfway through the first series, we realised that we had access to the entire BBC back catalogue, so we really went for it,” Orchard says. Such is the crossover love for Hey Duggee that the BBC used a Hey Duggee Stay at Home Badge video as part of its lockdown awareness campaign; a Handwashing Badge video swiftly followed, and garnered 97,000 views in the first 24 hours.

Duggee and the Squirrels hop inside the Biology Bus and miniaturise themselves to go on a voyage of discovery inside Enid. The Squirrels learn what a favourite is, but have trouble deciding what their own favourite things are, so they make a film asking some of their friends what is special to them to help narrow it down. Duggee is a lovable brown dog who runs The Squirrel Club; a place where children take part in all sorts of exciting activities, have adventures and earn badges for their accomplishments.