Hotline

Appears in 11 episodes, first in episode 128.

Every appearance

• Episode 296 - Hot and Gold

  The hotline rings mid-show for the first time in a long while, Oliver Spake answers and takes anonymous feedback correcting last week's claim that there were no other military parkruns: Akrotiri parkrun on the RAF base in Cyprus, and Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands. The hosts invite more calls now that it's plugged back in, and later point listeners to it for pronunciation corrections.

• Episode 284 - The Very Very Best Day

  Not performed this week, but explicitly discussed as dormant and worth reviving. Melissa "Maybe we need to bring back the hotline, Ollie"; Ollie "An old favourite. Yeah, well, there are some old favourites from podcast weeks gone by we could borrow from there, Mel. So, yeah, I think the hotline's a good option." Melissa then invites listeners to record a question on their phone and send in the audio.

• Episode 250 - The Story So Far

  Revived for the milestone: Oliver Spake rings the parkrun adventurers Hotline and Scott Trickett answers it, taking a booking for the still-mythical Contiki tour. They talk about the Poem Zone (Ollie claims to be among the 11% who voted to keep it), Scott's lockdown fitness and stopwatch bingo, the segments he would bring back, the bracket-breakdown idea Mel never let him run, and his 99 global events with no plan yet for the 100th beyond making it fun.

• Episode 136 - Kelly Hodges

  Listener phone-in question, played after a "Hotline" sound drop: "Hey, Scott and Mel. Jackie from the ACT here... if you could do any three parkruns in the next 12 months that you haven't done yet, what would they be?" Mel picks Chesham, Cannibal's Cave (or Piggly Wiggly) and Bear Island; Scott picks Ocean View, Largs Bay and Broken Hill. The hosts explicitly flag this as likely the segment's last outing.

• Episode 135 - Intern Pete

  Mel: "should we go to the hotline?", followed by a jingle and a listener question credited to "Dorothy Dix": "if you were a snack, what kind of snack would you be?" Mel answers something sweet, probably chocolate; Tim answers nuts ("people that know me well would agree I am a bit nuts"), which spins into a long tangent about the Coles self-serve nut dispenser and Tim confessing to topping up the cheap mix with extra macadamias, Mel dubs it "Tim Oberg's nut ha[ck]s" and suggests it as a poll question.

• Episode 134 - Tim Oberg

  Listener phone-in question segment with its own theme music. This week's question, credited to "Dorothy Dix": when attempting a new freedom run, do you prefer a local guide or to tough it out yourself? Scott goes it alone and enjoys misreading the map; Mel prefers a spoken run brief from a local because verbal instructions stick better than a map.

• Episode 132 - Digger Hargreaves

  Listener question segment. TOC phones in a second insert asking "What's the craziest thing you've fallen over when you've been out for a run?" Scott answers that he only ever falls over his own feet (plus a footnote about breaking ribs after ducking a swooping magpie); Mel says she has never fallen on a run but tripped over her dog aged nine and needed three stitches. Scott notes that hotline questions "have dried up again" now Streaky September's Bingoe card has finished.

• Episode 131 - Abdul-Raouf Mohamed-Isa

  Listener question segment with its own jingle, Scott jokes about adding a trumpet to the Hotline song, and Mel says it was too subtle to hear. The question, from pseudonymous caller "Dorothy Dix", asks whether the hosts have any other sporting prowess. Scott: school captain, swimming captain and volleyball captain in primary school, later a swim-team member and dabbled in triathlon until a Victorian tri-squad coach found him out on the bike. Mel: third in the 25m breaststroke in Grade 4, and a competitive Irish dancer who placed at eisteddfods.

• Episode 130 - Julian Spence

  Two listener questions, now folded into the Streaky September Bingoe card as a challenge. Question one, from Simon: favourite and least favourite training session, Scott picks short sharp sprint sessions and names the long run as his least favourite (skipped for three or four months); Mel picks intervals as both favourite and least favourite. Question two comes in as an audio clip from Gary Murphy at Sunbury parkrun on behalf of his mate Flynn: the strangest place you've ever run, Mel describes the fancy-dress [Marathon du Medoc] in France, Scott describes finding an abandoned altar with concrete pews in Warrandyte State Forest and a near-miss getting benighted at the local dam.

• Episode 129 - Beau Miles

  Listener voice messages played and answered on air. Barney asks which is harder to give up during Streaky September, lollies or caffeine (Mel says lollies, Scott says caffeine; they agree to settle it with a Facebook poll). Brendo from Shellharbour asks Scott "hashtag, what the font?", answered as "BC Falster Grotesque Bold", which spins off into Mel's decade-in-progress novel and her habit of naming characters before plotting.

• Episode 128 - Streaky September

  A listener call is played: Jackie Exilin of Gungahlin parkrun asks how two hosts living in completely different states met and ended up making a podcast together. The answer: they were both in the original intake of about a dozen parkrun Australia Territory Directors (since morphed into the event ambassador program), got to know each other in the private Facebook group for that role, probably first met in person at the Ron Clarke memorial service in Victoria, and Scott reached out to ask her to co-host when he wanted to bring the podcast back, "Mel was always my first choice".