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Coming out of the time travelling closet
MOTHS Ate My Doctor Who Scarf could have been the story of my own life.
A feverish child, teen and adult obsession with build your own Dalek blueprints, collectable Radio Times front covers, Target novels and Sonic Screwdrivers.
Fanatical hoarding and fascinations which will never die in us Time Lord worshipping nerds, who know a strange man travelling through time and space in a little blue box is much more important than just a mere TV programme.
It has made me who I am - if it wasn't for Tom Baker's magnetic eccentricity I would never have picked up a pen - as well as a sold out audience at the Dixon Studio, in Westcliffs Palace Theatre.
And, most importantly, Toby Hadoke, whose self mocking, one man show, trans dimensionally engineered a smile of both pride and laughter on my face for 90 minutes (that's two whole episodes of Doctor Who's current format).
Fittingly, Toby materialised from behind a sofa to the groaning of the Tardis engines, sitting among a nest of Doctor Who books and a Gallifreyan 500 year diary, charting his formative years of social misery and failure through the Eighties.
Ridiculed at school for being a poof' because of the show's huge gay following (his closest was bigger on the inside, than on the outside apparently), he was consistently picked on by bully Dale Pike. As Toby's head was repeatedly flushed down the toilet, he realised his own arch nemesis' name was an anagram of Dalek Pie.
But Doctor Who was always an inspiration and a great teacher, who never used violence to solve any intergalactic dispute.
These adventures made a curious Toby learn more about history, improve his vocabulary and draw similarities between deadly Daleks draining a planet of its energy resources and the foreign policies of major invading powers in the real universe.
Life took an even bigger turn for the worst in 1989 when the programme was cancelled for 16 years (Alright, alright, not including the Paul McGann TV movie) and Toby moved on to other things, like getting married and having kids.
But when it was announced Doctor Who was returning to our screens three years ago, like all Whovians, Toby was jumping for joy and transported back down the time vortex to his happy escapist childhood.
And this time he really was on a different planet. With the revamped show hitting the top of the TV ratings it was suddenly cool to be a Doctor Who fan. Toby had come Full Cirle (sorry, that's a Tom Baker story), but it was his son who was benefiting from all his dad's years of hurt, becoming the most popular kid on the playground for a superior knowledge of Autons and Sea Devils gleaned from his proud father.
What a perfect way to celebrate 45 years of the nation's favourite enduring hero beginning his latest set of BBC adventures with David Tennant on Saturday nights.
11:12am Wednesday 9th April 2008
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