Former Blue Peter presenter Matt Baker has opened up about the behind-the-scenes struggles of working with his beloved working collie Meg on the iconic BBC children’s show
Award-winning televison presenter Matt Baker has spoken emotionally about a former member of the Blue Peter team as he looked back at a part of his illustrious career.
Matt, 48, reminisced about his days on Blue Peter where he formed part of the hosting team from 1999 until 2006. While the star has gone on to host Countryfile, The One Show, and Matt Baker: Our Farm in the Dales, to many he is best known for that seven year stint on the BBC favourite.
Matt appeared alongside the likes of Konnie Huq and Simon Thomas on the iconic show, but also starred with a dog called Meg.
Meg, a border collie who sadly passed away in 2011, was brought onto the show when Matt was asked during the audition stage what Blue Peter segment he would most likely to have been a part of.
He recalled this moment to Harry Hill on The Harry Hill Show on YouTube when it was revealed that he took Meg with him when he left Blue Peter. As Harry quickly quipped that he left “with the dog” Matt said the dog never belonged to show and explained her origins.
He recalled: “”The dog was never actually owned by Blue Peter because she came from a neighbour’s farm in Durham. She was a working collie.
“It’s interesting because when I went down for the Blue Peter auditions, they said to me, ‘Of all the things that you’ve seen on Blue Peter recently, what would you have liked to have done?’ expecting me to say ‘Jump out of an aeroplane’.
“I said ‘Train the dogs…I’d like to train the dogs. I want a proper dog that can, you know, jump through fire hoops and do all of that and have an action dog, and this dog will come everywhere with me, and that’s what I’d love’. So I got Meg from a neighbour’s farm, she was a working sheep dog and she came down.”
Matt, who won the BAFTA for Best Children’s Presenter two years in a row, explained that Meg’s appearance on the show was not without its difficulties, in part because she was trained to be a working dog.
He said: “I mean it was a nightmare having a working border collie in a Blue Peter studio. You can imagine, you’ve got the Harlem Globe Trotters warming up in the corner, you’ve got a BMX group and the doors are opening up because a double decker bus is about to come in and this dog is just desperate to round everything up.”
Although Meg had moments where she wanted to do her due and round everyone up as Matt put it, he described her as a “beautiful” dog. What’s more he added that she she eventually cottoned on to the fact that the Blue Peter theme tune signalled her chance to roam freely.
He said: “She learned that the Blue Peter theme tune was her indication that my attention wasn’t going to be on and she could run off and do whatever she wanted.”
Matt is returning to the UK’s screens tonight (Sunday, October 4th) on Countryfile at 5.40pm on BBC One.
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