Teddy had no interest in Scott’s recall exercise
Scott’s puppy training had moved into recall.
The plan seemed simple.
Show Teddy a treat.
Walk roughly ten metres away.
Crouch down.
Call his name.
Reward him when he comes.
Scott tried it.
Teddy looked at the treat and then simply did not move.
Chris interpreted this rather cruelly as evidence that Teddy did not particularly want to be near Scott.
Scott insisted the dog was learning.
It was just early in the process.
Scott wanted proper pupdate branding
The dog was appearing often enough that Scott wanted the programme to treat Teddy as a real character.
He started pitching a pupdate jingle and even considered putting on a little dog voice.
Chris was not convinced the show needed Scott pretending to be his own puppy.
Scott remained interested.
Charlie became Scott Mills
The voice-double experiment moved from audition to action.
Listener Charlie had been chosen to impersonate Scott.
The test call came from the television programme *Pointless*.
Scott had appeared before.
This time, Charlie would speak on his behalf.
The challenge was to sound enough like Scott — and act enough like Scott — that the conversation could continue without immediately collapsing.
The stand-in got through it
Charlie committed to the role.
He answered as though he were genuinely Scott and managed the call far better than the presenters expected.
Scott and Chris were delighted by the possibility that they could now outsource more of their routine phone conversations to listeners.
That was obviously not a sustainable professional policy.
It was, however, an excellent radio feature.
Blow Your Own Trumpet returned
Listeners again rang with achievements they were pleased with.
The show gave the usual fanfare regardless of scale.
After months in which ordinary life had become repetitive and difficult, Scott and Chris continued treating tiny pieces of progress as worth celebrating.
The title came from one spectacular self-description
During the day’s conversations, one caller identified himself in a way which instantly sounded like a podcast title:
“I’m vegan and gay.”
Scott and Chris loved the efficiency.
Two pieces of information.
Four words.
No unnecessary explanation.
It became the phrase that summed up the episode.
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