Surprise! How I got turned into Bluey’s Bandit, the world’s greatest dad

Three years ago, on a tough day out with my kids, I barricaded myself in a toilet and wrote to Bluey’s creator with an idea. Now, it has become a reality. I couldn’t be more weirded out

For most people, the latest episode of Bluey – entitled Surprise – came as exactly that. Deliberately unannounced, it dropped like a Beyoncé album, ambushing viewers who were still coming to terms with the recent gut-wrenching, 28-minute masterpiece The Sign.

However, I have spent the past three years waiting for Surprise. This is because my name appears in the credits. “Created and written by Joe Brumm, from an idea by Stuart Heritage,” it says. I am as weirded out about this as anyone else – but let me explain how I came to play the smallest possible role in my favourite television programme.