Matt Baker concedes ‘I felt lost’ as he opens up about struggle moving to London from countryside
Matt Baker has opened up about the emotional difficulty he experienced when he first relocated to the capital, admitting that being separated from a canine companion left him struggling to adjust.
Speaking to Radio Times about his new podcast, Petcast, the television presenter revealed just how much the transition from rural life affected him.
“When I moved down to London it was the first time in my life that I’d been without a dog and I felt quite lost,” Mr Baker said.
The former Blue Peter and Countryfile host is arguably one of the most fitting figures in British television to front a programme dedicated to pets, having grown up surrounded by animals on his family’s farm long before finding fame on screen.
Matt Baker has always been surrounded by dogs
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BBCMr Baker’s roots lie firmly in the Durham countryside, where he was raised on his family’s farm and developed a deep bond with working animals from a young age.
By the time he was just 13, he had already trained his first sheepdog, setting the foundation for a lifelong connection with dogs.
His path to television stardom began when he joined Blue Peter as a presenter in 1999, a role that would eventually make him a household name.
He went on to become one of the most recognisable faces on British television through his subsequent work on Countryfile and The One Show.
Matt Baker initially found the move to London difficult
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Yet despite his professional success in the city, it was the absence of a four-legged companion that weighed most heavily during those early days in London.
That sense of loss, however, proved to be the catalyst for one of television’s most beloved presenter-pet partnerships.
Once Mr Baker started working on Blue Peter, he recognised it as the perfect opportunity to bring a dog back into his life.
“So when I began Blue Peter I realised it would be ideal to get one and have some amazing adventures,” he told the publicaiton.
Matt Baker talked about his podcast, Petcast
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The programme backed his plan, and Meg, a border collie sourced from a neighbouring farm in Durham, soon joined him on set.
Mr Baker’s natural affinity with dogs and his appetite for physical challenges drew comparisons with the legendary John Noakes and his famous companion Shep.
Crucially, Meg’s presence on the programme was entirely genuine rather than a production team’s invention. The pair spent more than seven years together on the show.
Mr Baker was emphatic that Meg belonged to him personally, not to the BBC programme.
“She was my dog, not the show’s, so she came with me and spent the rest of her days on the farm,” he explained.
When Mr Baker departed Blue Peter, the border collie left alongside him. “My time on Blue Peter was a partnership with Meg. We had over seven glorious years on the show and we left together,” he said.
Meg’s retirement was spent back in the Durham countryside where she had originally come from, living out her remaining years on Mr Baker’s farm.
It is that deep, personal bond between owner and animal — one that shaped both his private life and his television career — that Baker now hopes to explore through his new Petcast podcast.
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