Emily McGonagle was watching cartoons with her sons when she decided to embark on a career change. A decade on, she is a star of a globally popular children’s series

Emily McGonagle was on maternity leave from her job as a lawyer, juggling the care of her new baby and her toddler son, when the daily diet of TV cartoons made her think about an unlikely career change.

Watching Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol, her older son’s favourites, “it occurred to me: who does this job?”, says the 42-year-old from Essex. “How do you get into it? Even when I was watching TV commercials, I’d think: well, how do you do that?”

The 29th season has begun to slightly spin its wheels, but this poo-splattered episode suggests an imminent story arc: the release of Grand Theft Auto VI

Are record beef shortages simply not that rich a topic for South Park to riff off? The show’s 29th season had its first outright middling episode this week with a zigzaggy outing that gestured vaguely toward the performative eating of particular foods, nodded slightly at a father-son story development, and wound it all up by repeating and amplifying a funny season-long running gag that increasingly seems like it will actually serve as a makeshift story arc.

But let’s jump back to the beginning, perhaps the most laugh-out-loud moment of the episode: Cartman in a fugue of delight over the impending meal of sloppy joes at the school cafeteria, to which he forms a tribute in the form of a sloppy-joe-themed version of Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll Part Two – a music clearance reaffirming that Trey Parker and Matt Stone don’t care if a song choice might make people tut-tut (because the singer is a serial sex offender) or just annoyed (because that song sucks). Cartman’s infectious glee is short-lived, however, when he’s informed that the lunch special for the day isn’t a sloppy joe after all, or anything beef-related, but cuy – Guinea Pig on a stick.