Mayor Rob Ford rectified one blunder and repeated another on his Sunday radio show.

On his show three weeks ago, Ford committed an apparent violation of the council code of conduct when he urged residents who support his transit vision to call the taxpayer-funded phone number of the mayor’s office to find out how to run in the next election. He also irked Deputy Speaker John Parker, a conservative ally who opposed him on transit, by singing the praises of a businessman Parker narrowly defeated in 2010.

In what appeared to be an attempt to make amends, Ford had Parker on the two-hour NewsTalk 1010 show for nearly 50 minutes Sunday. Ford and his co-host, Councillor Doug Ford (Ward 2), called him an important administration figure and a friend of taxpayers.

“The mayor and I have a relationship that goes too far back to allow any one particular hiccup to interfere,” Parker, who served with the Fords’ late father as a Progressive Conservative MPP in the 1990s, said in a post-show interview.

“It’s one of those things where we both just move on . . . which I think is what grownups do,” said Parker (Ward 26).

Ford also gave airtime to a left-leaning council opponent, Sarah Doucette (Ward 13), for the first time since he launched the show in February.

Ford acknowledged in a statement, and then again on the air in early April, that he had made a mistake on March 25 by telling potential candidates to call the mayor’s number. He said he had intended to give out his personal number.

On Sunday, however, he told young people to call the mayor’s number to find out how to sign up for his summer football program. The code of conduct says members of council cannot use city resources “for activities other than the business of the corporation.”

Doug Ford began the show with an impassioned defence of his brother’s unorthodox schedule, which includes frequent one-on-one meetings with constituents. He seemed to be responding to a weekend Toronto Sun column by Rob Ford’s former press secretary, Adrienne Batra, in which she said the mayor is “often disengaged” from the day-to-day business of running the city. The column was headlined, “Mr. Mayor, where are you?”

The mayor, Doug Ford said, improves people’s lives by attending personally to their small-scale concerns, as he does when he knocks on the doors of social housing tenants.

“You’re unique. You aren’t like the David Miller, Mel Lastman, or any other mayor that sits behind the desk,” Doug Ford said.

“Are you a unique mayor? Yes. But people say, ‘Where’s the mayor?’ The mayor’s out there workin’ his ass off, talkin’ to residents, and fixin’ the problems.”