"The best of luck!"

 

I've been having a look back at my New Year's Eve post from twelve months ago, as is only natural as this year draws to a close, now into its final few hours here in the UK.

I mentioned in that post that in 2022 I'd written a draft of a new non-fiction book, and that "...it looks as if it may appear sometime in 2023." In fact, I was underselling things a bit there. At that point I was probably about 90% sure it would be published this year, and I was also pretty confident that it was quite good.

Pull to Open did indeed come out, somewhat delayed by various factors but it finally got there in August, and the response has been amazing. I'm very proud of the book, and incredibly pleased with how it has been received. There may, perhaps, even be something new coming on that score in 2024 - but once again I have to be slightly cagey about that, as nothing is anywhere near being definite yet.

In fact, there is more than one iron in the fire for exciting new writing possibilities in the New Year. Obviously I am well-aware that these things might not actually end up happening. They are only possibilities at the moment. But it is nice to at least have something to look forward to, in that respect; to be able to greet the passing of the year with the possibility of some fresh exciting prospects, rather than thinking all of the interesting things are now behind me.

Mind you, on that score, this time last year I was also talking about the radio documentaries I'd made. This year, there have been no radio documentaries, and sadly I don't think there ever will be again. That chapter of my career seems to be over and done with now. Treasure Quest also came to an end - a huge wrench for me, and for many others. Not just the closing of a chapter, but the closing of an entire book.

I spent most of the year at risk of redundancy, but I was luckier than many - after six job interviews, or 'boards' as the BBC calls them, I managed to hang onto a role. A very different one to what I was doing before, but I do appreciate that I am one of the fortunate ones. I do still have a job.

And it enables me to still do interesting things. Last year I was writing about the George Russell documentary I made - and this year I got to have even more of a play at covering Formula One. I even produced an F1-based radio show for a few months. I had a piece about the 60th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination go out on The World Tonight on Radio 4, and a Doctor Who 60th anniversary piece on the World Service - an anniversary which saw me appear on around thirty different BBC stations in total in one form or another.

I also wrote for the Radio Times, and for the BBC History website this year... Yes, it sounds as if I tot these things up as if they add some sense of value to my life. And hey, why not? It's as good a measure for me as anyone else's measures are for them.

Anybody who has enthusiastically followed Paul Kerensa's British Broadcasting Century podcast may well have been struck, as I was, by the words of Arthur Burrows on the BBC's 2LO station in London just after midnight on New Year's Day 1923 - the first ever New Year of the brand new BBC as a whole. Fitting that Burrows should be there to see the New Year in, as he'd been the first ever voice on the BBC the previous month.

I'd never heard this before Paul included it in his episode looking at that first BBC change of years - which by coincidence also happened to be an episode on which I made a guest appearance, talking about my book The Long Game. Anyway, Burrows' actual words from the night were never recorded, going out live into the ether and that was that. But we do know what he said, and Paul recreated the moment for the podcast.

"2LO wishes you a happy and prosperous New Year. May you have the best of luck - goodbye everybody, goodbye. And the best of luck!"

I was particularly taken with it was because of the way it captures two of those feelings of New Year's Eve and the passing of midnight. It feels, as the New Year often does, like one of those fleeting moments of camaraderie when we are all in this together. A sense of optimism and a willingness for everyone's hopes and dreams and ambitions for the next 12 months to be fulfilled, whatever they may be.

Before cold, hard reality sets in through the still, quiet dawn of January the 1st.

But still, I do like the sentiment. So, whoever you are, wherever you are and whatever you're doing - the best of luck!

A New World Somewhere

It's been many years, until now, since I last wrote for a fanzine. At least fifteen, I would say, and probably inching closer to twenty. There's no particular reason for this - I'm not anti-fanzine at all, and in my teens and early twenties wrote for them quite regularly, particularly for the Doctor Who Appreciation Society's Celestial Toyroom. It was certainly a boost to my confidence as a young and aspiring writer that other people thought my work worth publishing, even on an amateur basis. And it's always much better and more fun to write something which you know is actually going to be read by somebody!

It think it just happened that it became far easier to write for online - when I moved on from writing for CT I ended up writing quite a bit for the old Outpost Gallifrey Doctor Who fan site. It was a lot quicker and easier to get things put up, of course, and you got more of an instant reaction, so I sort of naturally fell into doing that. And then gradually did less and less fan writing at all as I became more involved with the BBC and my career there.

But anyway, all this serves as mere background to the fact that for the first time in many years, I have now written for a fanzine - although it seems almost disrespectful to call it that. Vworp Vworp! is an impressively put-together magazine, which comes out at irregular intervals and was originally based around Doctor Who Magazine and its comic strip. However, for the latest issue in this Doctor Who sixtieth anniversary year the sixth issue - more of a bookazine than a magazine, so laden with pieces is it - is all based around the show's very beginnings. If you're interested in that era, I highly recommend it - there are many fascinating articles on aspects you might not even have considered before, from a 'who's who' of writers whose names you'll know well if you have even a casual research interest in this era of British television history.

I was actually approached and asked if I would be interested in contributing a piece, given how I'd been researching the era for my own book Pull to Open. This, of course, I was very happy to do - as it gave me the opportunity to expand on a story I'd only had time to touch on briefly in Pull to Open itself. This was the story of director Rex Tucker, a name anyone interested in the creation of Doctor Who will recognise, and his efforts to get his own science-fiction serial The Seekers off the ground. What is that story? Well, I'm afraid you'll have to get hold of your own copy of Vworp Vworp! issue six to learn that!

Or Pull to Open, of course! Which continues to attract very kind comments from its readers. And perhaps even create exciting new opportunities for me - of which more, possibly, in the New Year, if anything comes of it.

But I think it's fair to say that the book has gone down better than I could ever have hoped. Since I last wrote on here I've been fortunate enough to appear on two further podcasts discussing it, The Doctor Who Literature Podcast and the Power of 3. And AJ Black very kindly included me on his list of his top-ten favourite books of 2023, alongside some very big hitters!

Pull to Open is, I hardly need say, still very much available from Ten Acre Films if you're interested in having a read!

Mopping Up... Or Moping Up...?

Am I just a worthless parasite, leeching off other people’s creativity?

 
It’s a paranoia which does seize me, sometimes. Not often; not all the time. But last night, watching last night’s very enjoyable return of Doctor Who, I was at one point towards the end overcome with that melancholy feeling of knowing I could never, ever do this. I could never do what Russell T Davies does.
 
Now, he’s a genius of course, so it’s true that most people can’t do what he does. So there shouldn’t be any need to feel bad because I don’t have his talent and ability. His insight. And I long ago realised that I would never be involved in actual Doctor Who itself. That it wasn’t something to which I was naturally suited; wasn’t an industry which I had any clue as to how to find any sort of place for myself in.
 
And that’s fine. That’s okay. Doctor Who is my favourite thing in all the world, but just because you love something doesn’t mean you have to be a part of it. Football fans know they will never be a member of the team, no matter how much it means to them, and how deeply embedded it is in their lives.
 
Doctor Who is designed to be watched, and enjoyed. Indeed, that’s its sole reason for existing. The purpose of putting on a show is to get an audience, to paraphrase Eric Maschwitz. And there is something about Doctor Who, as with so many shows whose audiences are so passionate, which fires people up to be creatively engaged. So many of us do so according to our own talents. Whether that be making music inspired by it, or creating art, or writing stories, or making reaction videos, or yes, studying the history and wanting to find out more about how it was made, and sharing that history with others. Sharing that love and enthusiasm.
 
Which you’d think would only be a good thing… But that worry does take hold of me, every now and then. I’m so proud of writing books and articles about this show, making radio pieces about it. Proud that I can be a tiny little part of it in my professional life, be engaged with it and share that engagement. But is it all just worthless? Would I not be better off trying to create and do something of my own? Am I just a laughable figure, building so much of my life around something to which I have made absolutely no contribution whatsoever, and have never had anything to do with?
 
I think part of this latest mood of introspection was brought on by my final radio piece about Doctor Who of the anniversary week. I’d had the idea to do a piece about overseas fans of the show; getting an outside perspective on this thing which is such a part of British popular culture. I pitched the piece to PM on BBC Radio 4, and to my surprise and excitement they liked it and went for it. I worked hard on it, I think I did a pretty good job with it, but eventually it ended up just falling off the bottom of the show at the end of the week.
 
Now, I should make it very clear this is not supposed to be a moan about PM, or anything remotely like that. I am well aware that when you make a light piece for a serious news programme like that, you are always at the mercy of events. That’s the very nature of the beast. I absolutely understand the precarious nature of that, and that there were and are far more important things going on in the world. I’m not for a moment saying they were in any way wrong to drop it. Had I been in the producer’s chair, I’d have done exactly the same.
 
Yes, dropped by Today and by PM in the same week. At least I’m being dropped by the classy programmes!
 
But it made me introspective because it would have meant so much to me, to have had a piece about Doctor Who, that show I have loved so much and for so long, going out on a network programme. To be a little part of the anniversary on one of the national stations. Even after, across the anniversary period, ending up in either live or recorded form, as an interviewee or a package maker, across about 30 other BBC stations.

And it made me wonder… is that really healthy? To be so invested in something so completely outside of my control. To be a middle-aged man so desperate to pick up a few crumbs and scraps from the network table. If you were good enough for this sort of thing, Paul, you’d have been doing it regularly by now. Not just occasionally getting almost-somewhere-close when there happened to be one of the very few subjects you can make something to network standard about.
 
And even stepping back from that moping, I had a hell of a week – the Kennedy piece went out on The World Tonight on Radio 4, and a version of my CNS Doctor Who piece went out on the World Service. That’s not bad going at all.
 
Here is that PM piece by the way, if you fancy a listen. I rather like it, and I was at least able to get it out on several of the BBC Local Radio stations on Saturday, via my colleagues at CNS. So my interviewees did get to go out on the BBC's airwaves, which I was pleased with:

 

But it’s all so dependant on other things. Other people’s decisions. On events, dear boy, events. And all of this – studying Doctor Who’s history, writing about it, making radio pieces about it – can make you feel like a hanger-on. Or a vampire. Feasting on the lifeblood of something created and maintained by others.
 
I once watched an interview with the great Mark Lewisohn, one of the most esteemed and respected chroniclers of British popular culture in the second half of the 20^th century, especially regarding The Beatles. He’s even worked for The Beatles on all sorts of projects, helping to chronicle their history as accurately as possible and preserve for ages the facts rather than the anecdotes. And even he, possibly the most highly-regarded person working in that field, related how he was once told by one member of the band, dismissively: “you weren’t there.”
 
As if that makes any study conducted by him somehow invalid.
 
No, he wasn’t there, and would never claim to have been. If you’re writing history you can’t pretend to know precisely how the particular people involved thought and felt. But you can try your best to relate what happened, often with a far wider overview of the situation and with far more information available to you than anybody involved would have had at the time.
 
Russel T Davies once wrote in Doctor Who Magazine that the problem with telling stories of working on Doctor Who, and this probably holds true for people’s involvement with any kind of popular endeavour, is that as time goes past you start to remember and tell the tale of the anecdote rather than what happened. To go back to The Beatles example, we saw the reassessment of their late era which took place when a much wider selection of the footage shot for Let It Be was made available in Peter Jackson’s Get Back. Ringo Starr himself was surprised, remarking that for years he’d been remembering the film of Let It Be rather than what actually happened.
 
The same is true in Doctor Who. Sydney Newman, when he started giving interviews about the creation of the show in the 1980s, would tell the story of how he was asked to come up with something more appealing that fusty old Dickens adaptations, the ‘classic serial’, for Saturday teatimes.
 
Except that isn’t true.

There’d been no classic serials on Saturdays for years by the point that Newman arrived. They were already well-established on Sundays, where they remained for many years afterwards. It was true that he didn’t like them, but they proved too popular for him to kill off and obviously 20 years later he confused his memory of disliking the classic serials with the start of Doctor Who, and had the one related to the other in his memory.

 
Does pointing this out mean I like or respect the work of Newman any the less? Of course not. Does it diminish him in anybody’s eyes? Not a jot. I think it’s far more interesting, though, and revealing, to know what actually happened. For the record, we don’t actually know why Stuart Hood and Donald Baverstock decided they wanted a new type of children’s serial for the Saturday teatime slot, but looking at what was actually there shows us it was often a rag-tag assortment – film import westerns like The Lone Ranger and The Range Rider; US cartoons such as Top Cat and Deputy Dawg; home-made comedies like Just William and Mr Pastry; and short-run BBC-made serials, most popularly the returning adventure of Garry Halliday.
 
I can’t tell you what Newman, Hood or Baverstock thought of these. But I can tell you what happened – they were abandoned and replaced with Doctor Who.
 
And there are people out there who enjoy reading this kind of history. I know, I have been one of them for decades. I know because I’ve had lots of lovely reviews and kind comments for my work. So it’s not as if there isn’t an audience for this. That there aren’t people who enjoy it…
 
But I still have that doubt. That nag. That paranoia. That those who can do, and those who can’t write about it. About whether it’s a worthwhile pastime. Or whether I am, as I say, just a parasite, feeding off the success and the creativity of others.
 
Do people who write about other areas of non-fiction worry about this, I wonder? Do people who write military history find themselves seized with guilt at building their work on the misery, the suffering, the death of so many people? Do sports writers worry they can never truly know how it feels to be on the pitch, and that they are laughed at by those who do? Do authors of true crime histories feel they take advantage of the fate of their subjects?
 
I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. But is it worse when you’re writing about something creative? Often, writing about writers?
 
I enjoy doing it, don’t get me wrong. I do it because I enjoy it. This isn’t a feeling which occupies me constantly. But it does nag at me, every now and then. Especially when watching something like last night’s Doctor Who, knowing that’s something I could never, ever do. That I could never be involved with.
 
Oh, there was one more online piece, by the way, from my local BBC News Online colleagues, based on my Radio Norfolk Doctor Who piece from Thursday. They put it up yesterday with a co-byline for me, although that’s just a courtesy thing out of kindness – you couldn’t really say I wrote much of this. But it is funny that it has Martin’s name on it too, as that’s what ended up happening with a Doctor Who piece he made from my radio material ten year ago as well.
 
The more things change…

Merry Who-mas!

Earlier this year, I was asked by BBC History if I would write their official Doctor Who 60^th anniversary article. This was, of course, extremely flattering, and one of the things I am most proud of in my BBC career and in my writing career, given how much Doctor Who means to me, and how much it means to the BBC.

 
But, obviously, it was also quite a task. Sixty years of history. How to try and sum up what that means, and why it is such a special thing to so many people?
 
You can’t cover everything, of course. Or even a lot of things. So, guided by some of what BBC History wanted to include, I tried to write something simple and clean and clear which, hopefully, attempts to show some of the power of the series.
 
Here’s what I came up with:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/doctor-who-60/feature/
 
Today is the 23^rd of November – the anniversary of Doctor Who. Sixty years old this year. I suspect it’s probably not uncommon for Doctor Who fans to take stock on this date; to reflect on the passing of the years and where they’ve been in their lives when this anniversary has rolled around at different stages, in the same way that you might do for birthdays or Christmases. So, where have anniversaries past found me…?
 
1993
The first Doctor Who anniversary of which I was aware, at the age of nine. I was already a dedicated and enthusiastic fan of the series by this stage, so very interested in everything that was going on. I remember being very excited by the “Look Who’s Back – in 3D!” Radio Times cover, promoting what turned out to be a bit of a disappointing mini-return in aid of Children in Need with Dimensions in Time. The Radio Times issue itself was great, though, and I kept it and pored over the articles inside – I think my copy is probably still up in the box of my things in my parents’ attic.

The actual anniversary itself was on a Tuesday, and I watched a VHS of The Five Doctors borrowed from my friend Alex, who was the only person I knew at the time who was also interested in the show. He grew out of it, I never did! It was only ten years old then, but felt very old, very archive. Probably not surprising when that was longer than I'd been alive for. I'd love to know if something from ten years ago feels like archive material to a child of nine now.

I had seen it before, round Alex’s house, which was probably fortunate as I clearly recall my viewing being interrupted by my sister throwing a deflated whoopee cushion at me – don’t ask! – and knocking over a cup of tea I had next to me onto the sofa. This caused my dad to angrily take said whoopee cushion out to his shed and cut it up with a Stanley knife. The things which stick in the memory!

 
What I do remember particularly strongly are the documentaries – 30 Years in the TARDIS shown on BBC1 on the Monday after the anniversary, the 29^th, but especially the Radio 2 documentary Doctor Who – 30 Years, which had gone out the Saturday before the anniversary, the 20^th. Which I was surprised at when I looked it up – it was so clearly lodged in my mind as a Sunday when we sat in the living room and listened to it. The memory does indeed cheat.
 
Anyway, I recorded it onto cassette tape – having to turn it over partway through! – and listened to it repeatedly over the following years. So much of that documentary is deeply etched onto my brain, and I can see echoes of it, and deliberate references to it, in so much of my own radio work, both in my documentaries and in some of my shorter features. It opened with that dramatic clip of Jimmy Kingsbury announcing that President Kennedy had been shot, with which I opened by own piece about the BBC’s coverage of that event which I mentioned in yesterday’s entry – it’s the obvious piece of archive to use, but of course that connection was on my mind when I did it.
 
Speaking of which, do you remember how I said I was sad that my Kennedy piece was dropped by Today? Well, I discovered today that a slightly cut-down version of it did actually get a network airing on BBC Radio 4, last night. It went out as the final item on yesterday’s The World Tonight – so, for a few minutes, I was indeed at the helm of HMS BBC for a bit after all!
 
2003
Ten years on, and as a 19-year-old student I was in my second year studying English Literature at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, and of course still very much a Doctor Who fan, even with everything else which might have changed about me over the intervening decade.

This was the first time I had the opportunity and the inclination to try and do something for the anniversary myself, in terms of a creative endeavour. One of the things I’d become involved with as a teenager was the Brighton Area Doctor Who Appreciation Society, although obviously from the time I’d left to go away to university the previous year this association was from a distance.

 
I’d edited their newsletter, and although I’d handed over the reins when I left, from Norwich I put together a special edition of it for the anniversary, which my friend Tim printed and distributed – to all of the dozen or so members! – back in Sussex. I also ended up writing most of the content, but had great fun doing so!
 
It was a slightly strange time, as the recommissioning of the show had been announced in September but its arrival, and even its production, was still a long way off. We had the online animated version Scream of the Shalka and I bought the CD of the Big Finish Productions anniversary story Zagreus, which I found confusing and disappointing. The announcement of the return had sparked me into becoming a bit more involved with online fandom, and I had begun to become a bit of a regular amateur ‘stringer’, of sorts, for the much-loved Doctor Who News Page run by Shaun Lyon on Outpost Gallifrey, scouring online sources for any news to pass on.
 
On the anniversary itself, a Sunday this time around, I actually re-watched the first serial on a VHS borrowed from Norwich library! My tape of the serial was boxed up back home in Sussex, it wasn’t out on DVD yet, and online streaming didn’t yet really exist. This may have been one of the last times I watched a Doctor Who story on a commercial VHS release.
 
2013
Still in Norwich, now aged 29 and working as a full-time member of staff for the BBC. Working for the BBC! I never could have imagined such a thing twenty years earlier. I would have been very excited to have known that it would one day happen, though – and even more so to know that it would mean I would be able to have some sort of professional involvement with the series I loved so much.

The previous year, all of the BBC Local Radio stations had done something called “My Beatles Story” – marking the 50^th anniversary of the release of their first single. The idea was to find people living in the area you covered who had some interesting story about, passion for or connection to The Beatles, and record features of them telling their tales to run on the chosen day.

 
I’d already started by this stage to get myself a little bit of a reputation within the station for an ability for documentary and feature work, and I’d been chosen – admittedly probably because few others would have been either interested or had the time – to be the person in charge of the BBC Radio Norfolk “My Beatles Story” pieces. I’d managed to do quite a few rather nice pieces for the day itself, and had put a compilation of them together for Christmas 2012.
 
The following year, then, when I heard whispers that we’d be following this up across BBC Local Radio with “My Doctor Who Story”, I was desperate to be the one to do it. In truth, I probably once again didn’t really have much in the way of competition, but I was very relieved to once again be the one asked to do it.
 
Ten years on, I still think that 13 features I managed to put together for “Norfolk’s Doctor Who Stories” are some of the best pieces I have made in my radio career. I think they had the right combination of knowing enough about the subject to ensure that they were conveying what the interviewee was saying and what they remembered in an accurate and insightful way, but I had enough radio craft by then to be able to make them engaging and accessible for a general listenership. I was and remain very proud of them, and was particularly pleased that more than one colleague of mine who had no particular interest in Doctor Who told me how good they thought they had been.
 
It was also, of course, a great thrill to be doing actual Doctor Who-related work for the BBC. So much of the reason why I have ended up working for the BBC, and why I am so proud to do so, is because of the interest in broadcasting and its history which was sparked by reading about and becoming interested in Doctor Who and its history. The material I came up with in 2013 even got a plug on the BBC Doctor Who website, which pleased me no end.
 
They were important pieces for my career outside of radio, too. One of them was with the writer David Fisher, and I came up with the idea of fashioning the interview into a piece for Doctor Who Magazine, which they accepted the following year and eventually published in early 2015. This led on to eventually doings all sorts of other bits and pieces for them, which has in turn helped to lead on to even more other things.

The anniversary itself was a Saturday, and I actually took time off work that weekend so I could travel down to Sussex and watch the special, The Day of the Doctor, in the same living room in which I’d fallen in love with the show all those years ago. Although I think the absolute highlight of the anniversary for me had probably come earlier in the month, when I’d had the chance to attend the premiere of An Adventure in Space and Time at the British Film Institute in London, which was a very moving experience.

 
2023
Still in Norwich, still at the BBC, and now at the age of 39 becoming a middle-aged man, recently switched to being a newsreader rather than a producer, too. There wasn’t really any concerted effort to do any BBC Local Radio-wide celebration of the anniversary this time around. Perhaps partly because a 60^th doesn’t seem quite the same landmark as a 50^th, perhaps partly because fashions and trends change for such things, perhaps purely because there are different demands and requirements of the service now.
 
But it has to be said I have not been short of work or excitement for this one!

I only did one piece for Norfolk this time around – I really wasn’t sure what else I could do after all those pieces a decade ago. But I was able to tell some new stories, particularly focusing on Patrick Troughton’s time serving in the Royal Navy in Great Yarmouth during the Second World War, for which I was able to interview his son Michael.
 
Having learned while researching Pull to Open that Sydney Newman had once lived in Durrington, and having known that William Hartnell once lived in Worthing, I was able to pitch to Radio Sussex the idea of a bespoke piece for them based around that, which they kindly accepted. So I was able to do a BBC piece about Doctor Who which opens in my parents’ living room! That may be taking the idea of ‘local radio’ to extremes, I know, but it was a good piece – I promise!
 
BBC History had recommended me as a Doctor Who ‘expert’ to the Central News Service, CNS, the part of the BBC which provides the Local Radio stations with material related to national news stories, and general feature items. They asked me to do a Doctor Who piece which the stations could run today, and thanks to BBC Radiophonic Workshop archivist Mark Ayres I was even able to include in it a little treasure not broadcast for 60 years – a recording of the actual continuity announcement into the very first episode of the show. An edit of this piece even ended up going out on the BBC World Service this evening - hello world!
 
CNS also offered me up to stations for two-ways to talk about the anniversary and the show, so I spent two hours this morning in our little broom cupboard studio in Norwich speaking to presenters across the country. Which was actually really good fun, and by the end I was a bit sad there weren’t still more to go! Having been on the other end of that process so many times over the past 15 years, it was fascinating to experience it from that perspective, too. I think I gave good value, and overall today I ended up appearing, in either recorded or live interview form, on I think 24 stations, from Radio Cornwall all the way up to Radio Scotland, who aren’t served by CNS but separately asked me if I’d have a chat this lunchtime!
 
There may also be one more radio piece to come – I will keep you posted…
 
BBC History also helped to make the anniversary even more special for me by inviting me to be on a panel of speakers they assembled for an internal BBC event held yesterday at Broadcasting House to help mark the anniversary. I was of course delighted to be asked, although I did feel slightly out of place, given all the other speakers were actual, proper people who are really involved with the programme and its associated activities in one way or another!

But it was a lovely event to be a part of, and once again it felt very pleasing indeed to be a part of the BBC’s own celebrations of that show that I love. It was nice to have the chance to visit Broadcasting House again, too – the first time I’d been there for a few years. If you work there every day perhaps you get used to it, but on the few occasions I have been there is always that little thrill. That sense of history; of being a part of that heritage.

 
There have been other bits and pieces, too… Aside from my having written a book about the creation of the show this year, of course! An article today about Flight into Danger’s link to Doctor Who for Sci-Fi Bulletin… Another online piece for the BBC which should appear over the weekend…
 
Oh yes, and the anniversary itself. Well, I watched An Unearthly Child at a quarter past five. How could you now? It would be rude not to!
 
Happy birthday, Doctor Who. And Merry Who­-mas to you all!

"We regret to announce..."

Sixty years ago today, a man was murdered.

There will have been many murders that day, across the world. But this one was heard about all around that world. 

An innocent man was shot to death, next to his wife.

It's worth keeping that in mind, I know, when you discuss the idea of the assassination of President Kennedy as an object of fascination and discussion. I know who he was, the position that he held, meant that his death transcended "mere" murder. Just as everything about his life did, once he held that office, and indeed probably as soon as he ran for it.

But you still need to call it what it was, every so often, just to remind yourself.

I freely admit it's been something which has interested me for years. Not in terms of conspiracy theories or anything like that, but because of the place it occupies in time and culture. The events with which it is indelibly associated. Including, of course, the creation of Doctor Who, which made its debut the very next day.

That place it holds in the cultural sphere is absolutely fascinating, as is how the BBC reacted to the news that evening, November 22, 1963. I dedicated an entire chapter of my new book Pull to Open to it, and even a reviewer who didn't like *all* of the book felt that this was "an emotional chapter, showcasing his ability as a writer." Other people have said it was the best chapter, too, and it was certainly my favourite to write, I think.

So I thought perhaps I could bring some of that story to a wider audience, perhaps even through my day job. I made a radio package about the BBC's coverage of the Kennedy assassination, and submitted it to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. They liked it, and almost ran it today, but alas breaking news meant they had to drop it. That's okay, obviously. I understand that - a news programme ought always to be beholden to the present rather than the past.

A shorter version did go around to the BBC Local Radio stations thanks to my colleagues at the BBC's Central News Service, but as the full version is unlikely ever to see the light of day otherwise, here it is:

As a tie-in, the wonderful people at BBC History have also published an article I have written, going into more detail about the events of that evening from a BBC perspective. It's always nice to be able to have a piece on the BBC website, and I'm very grateful to them for taking it and putting it up there.

Cover Story

I wrote a few weeks ago about how proud I was to have been asked to do a little piece for the 100th anniversary issue of the Radio Times. I hadn't really expected this to be anything other than a one-off, so you can imagine how pleased I was to be approached to do another piece for them - about, you've guessed it, Doctor Who!

This coming Thursday, the 23rd, is the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who - about which a lot more to come on this blog! The Radio Times of course have a long-lasting relationship with the series, and although they aren't publishing their actual Doctor Who anniversary issue until next week - due to their listings starting on a Saturday, and the first of the anniversary specials going out on Saturday the 25th - they still wanted a piece for the issue which covers the anniversary date itself.

So they asked me if I could perhaps write an article looking at that relationship between the magazine and the show, and highlighting a few of the many, many covers they have dedicated to it down the decades. Which, of course, I was only too pleased to do! The issue came out this week, and it was nice to see that my article gained one of the cover lines!

I couldn't resist taking this picture of the magazine out and about "in the wild"!

There should be more Doctor Who items to share this week, in both written and audio form. I'm very fortunate indeed in that, in my own little way, I get to help share in the celebration of this show which means so much to me.

And luckier still of course to have been able to have had another book about that show published this year. I have continued to receive some good notices for Pull to Open, with some very kind reviews on Goodreads, a nice review and interview from AJ Black, and a glowing piece about the book on the Doctor Who Companion website.

It should be an exciting week coming up - and an enjoyable one whatever happens. I'm really pleased that I was able to get Pull to Open written and published in time to be a part of it all.

Other Listings Magazines Are Available

Last year I wrote about the 100th anniversary of the BBC, and why I was so proud to be associated with it. Today marks the centenary of another British cultural institution, one which for most of its history until being sold off in 2011 was a part of the BBC, and indeed was its official "organ". For it is 100 years ago today since the first issue of the Radio Times listings magazine was published - and to my surprise, but no little pleasure, I have found myself also becoming associated with the magazine for its centenary special issue.

We were always a Radio Times household when I was growing up. I am just about old enough to remember the pre-deregulation days when we would get both the Radio Times and the TV Times to have both sets of listings. But, like many households in the UK, once they were both publishing each other's we got both for precisely one more week before deciding on which side our bread was buttered and continuing with the Radio Times alone.

I can remember it feeling like one of the signs of being an independent grown-up when, after having moved away to go to university, I had to start buying my own copy if I wanted one. I think the magazine is a great cultural time capsule, too. For TV and radio history, obviously, but also for the more wider popular culture of the time, too. Just the other day I was browsing some covers of issues from 1989, and I think you'd find it hard to have a better barometer of just who and what were in the public consciousness in any given era of Britain in the second half of the 20th century than the covers from across those decades.

I've been very proud to have had a couple of my documentaries selected as "Today's Choices" in the radio pages down the years, and even to have once managed to get them to play along with printing a clue within the magazine for Treasure Quest. But I was even more proud earlier this month to rather unexpectedly find myself asked to write a small piece for them - and not for any old issue, either, but for the centenary special.

It's a short feature about Eric Maschwitz, one of the early editors of the Radio Times and a fascinating character - a lyricist who wrote the words to A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square; a screenwriter who co-wrote the screenplay for Goodbye, Mr Chips; a radio executive who created In Town Tonight; and even a spy involved with counter-intelligence operations in neutral New York in the early days of the Second World War.

He also, in one of his latter roles as a BBC television executive, had a part in the chain of events which led to the creation of Doctor Who. Which is why I wrote about him in Pull to Open, and why I in turn ended up being asked to write this short piece.

So, happy birthday Radio Times. And thank you for letting me become a small part of that history!

What Next...?

 

With friends, colleagues and ex-colleagues at the end of the Treasure Quest 'wake' after the final show, at the Coach and Horses pub near the BBC in Norwich

It’s been an emotional week for me, and for several of my colleagues – some of them now, sadly, former colleagues, but still close friends – as last Sunday we said goodbye to Treasure Quest, the BBC Radio Norfolk programme which I have produced for the past 15 years, ever since its regular run started in May 2008.

 
Or rather, which I did produce. It still feels strange to refer to it in the past tense.
 
It ran for 732 quests across 808 episodes – taking in 11 two-parters, five shows where the weather stopped us going out, and 60 ‘Virtual Quests’ during the pandemic – and I was involved in all but about nine of them across that time. I’ve written before on this blog about how much the show has meant to me, and that’s been a big part of the wrench of it ending, of course. I’m very proud of so much that we were able to do after I wrote that piece, too: keeping it going through covid with the Virtual Quests which really seemed to mean so much to people; turning it into an on-air mystery game for a Boxing Day special; having the new team of Sophie and Julie together for a final three years.
 
But what’s also made the final end emotional, and moving, has been seeing how much it means to other people. I knew it was a popular show which had built up a community of listeners around it who really valued it and felt a part of it, but seeing the hundreds of comments come in about what it means to people and how much they’ll miss it has been quite humbling. It’s very sad to think of that ‘community of the air’ now having been dispersed, forever.
 
I wrote last year, for the BBC’s centenary, about what a privilege it has been for me to be a part of the BBC. And a large part of that feeling has come from the opportunity to be a part of the team making a show which really did mean something to people, and became a part of their lives – a very rare and special honour. I think all of us lucky enough to have been in the ‘TQ Family’ felt that way, all through the years. And we were very proud of everything that we did together.
 

 
So it’s been a strange and sad week, and left me feeling a little adrift – especially sitting here typing this at home on a Sunday morning, when for over a third of my life so far I’d have usually been at work producing TQ.
 
But there have been some brighter spots, relating to the continuing positive reaction I’ve had to Pull to Open. Two reviews of the book appeared this week, both of them extremely pleasing. Paul Mount for Starburst says in his review that “Books about the history of British TV in general and Doctor Who in particular don’t get much more essential than this one.” For SFX magazine, meanwhile, Nick Setchfield gives it four-and-a-half stars out of five and says it “succeeds in turning the facts of a TV legend’s birth into a freshly engaging narrative.” Mount also calls it a “formidable work of long-form investigative journalism”, while Setchfield praises my “cultural historian’s eye for context.”
 

So that has all been nicely ego-boosting!

 
As have the continuing images on Twitter of people sharing their pictures of having received the book, and commenting on either their excitement at looking forward to reading it or their positive thoughts after they have done so. I was particularly flattered to see the very kind tweet from Richard Marson, whose own writing on British television history is widely admired. He’s very much an expert in this area, so to see him refer to the book’s “great job of contextualising the birth of Doctor Who and navigating the available sources to form a clear picture of the key events and characters” was very nice.
 

What happens next, I don’t know – on most scores, really. My future at the BBC is still currently to be decided. In writing terms there are a couple of little irons in the fire for pieces coming up related to Pull to Open, about which more before too long hopefully. People have been asking about and suggesting ideas for future non-fiction books, but there isn’t yet any concept which really strikes me as one I’d like to get my teeth into. I do have one idea for a non-Doctor Who non-fiction book, again related to British television history, but I’m not sure whether it would really have enough of a potential audience for anyone to want to publish it.

 
Finally, on a literary note, on Thursday evening I was at the joint book launch in Norwich for the married authors Rachel Hore and DJ Taylor, whose new novels The Hidden Years and Flame Music were both released that day. I was quite pleased with the resulting radio piece, particularly my idea of pitting them against each other in a sort of Mr & Mrs game asking them questions about each other’s new books. This seemed to go down quite well – have a listen to see how they did!
 

Open Out

It's here!

After a little bit of a delay, my new book Pull to Open has finally been released! Copies have been arriving with people over the past week, and very excitingly on Friday I received a box with my copies inside. Not that I'm so massively egotistical as to want lots of copies of my own book hanging around the place - although I do want some, of course! - but there were various people to whom I'd promised copies.

I am very proud of it - and the pleasing thing is, it seems to be going down very well so far with those who have read or are in the process of reading it. Earlier this month I recorded the first interview I'd done with someone about the book with someone who'd actually read it, which obviously was a nervous moment. But Steven Schapansky of the Radio Free Skaro podcast was extremely complimentary, and was kind enough to record a very long chat with me for their most recent edition which was released last Sunday. If you'd like to have a listen to that, you can do so here:

There's also been a very kind review from the Sci-Fi Bulletin website - 9 out of 10, I'll take that! And it was also flattering to see Doctor Who Magazine generate a nice amount of space to the book in their 'Gallifrey Guardian' news pages. This was the medium through which I first read about so much Doctor Who news and heard about so many new books and products when I was a child and a teenager, so it was very pleasing to see it featured there. I've also done interviews about the book for the CultBox website, and for the Who's Views YouTube channel.

As the book has been arriving with people in recent days, one of the things that's been nice has been seeing photos posted on social media as it's excitedly shared that they have it. Many of them also sharing the free Sydney Newman sticker, in the style of the 1972 Sugar Smacks stickers, which they get with it! Thanks to Paul Burley for creating that one. People being excited to receive a book that I have written is one hell of an ego boost, as I might imagine. I just hope these people are all as pleased by it once they've read it!

There've also been some very generous comments online, including very flatteringly from the esteemed Doctor Who historian, and general television historian, Andrew Pixley. One aspect I'm particularly pleased about is that people seem to be enjoying one of the main elements of the book, providing extra background and context about British television and the BBC of the time, to try and give more of an idea of the world into which Doctor Who emerged and why certain things happened. I knew that people like me would probably enjoy it - so it's nice to know that there are other people with tastes along those lines out there to justify that faith!

But anyway, yes - an extremely successful launch so far, I'd say. I really am very happy and very proud.

I should also add that before the book came out I was kindly interviewed by The Doctor Who Show podcast - another very enjoyable interview which if you wish to hear you can find below. The start of another 'Podcast Book Tour', perhaps? If any other podcast producers out there would like a chat, I'm more than happy to oblige!

Another Passion

 

Anybody who's cast even the most casual of glances across the content of this blog would be left in no doubt that I am a Doctor Who fan. It's the enthusiasm of mine which gets written about the most here, which is no surprise because this is a blog about my writing and it so happens that Doctor Who is the subject about which I have found myself most often professionally engaged to write.

(On the subject of which, by the way, thanks to The Doctor Who Show podcast for once again interviewing me, as they did for The Long Game, about my new book. You can hear the interview here if you'd like to know more about the book).

But there other things in life in which I am interested, of course. Not least among them is Formula One Grand Prix motor racing, of which I have been a dedicated armchair follower since I was 11 years old and happened across the 1995 Brazilian Grand Prix on television one Sunday afternoon. 

It's not that Formula One has never crossed my path professionally at all. Back in 2014 I was fortunate enough to make a documentary about Ayrton Senna's early career in Norfolk which gained some success, and last year I produced a documentary telling the story of George Russell's first year with the Mercedes team. 

More recently, however, I have been helping to look after our weekly Racing Torque motorsport show at work, and at the end of last month this resulted in an incredible opportunity to visit the Oxfordshire headquarters of the Williams Formula One team - one of the great names of the sport, and the team of which I became a fan when first starting to follow F1 in 1995.

This of course resulted in a report for Racing Torque, various other bits and pieces across the station - and, for the first and probably only time, a bylined piece by me on the BBC Sport website. Yes, for this week only, I have been able to have a little bit of a play at being an F1 journalist!

Which is of course immensely pleasing, and another reminder of how very lucky I have been to have this job, and the amazing things I have been able to do through it.

Something else I have done this week which was equally, if not more, pleasing was a piece for BBC Radio Sussex, about my old primary school's 150th anniversary celebrations which I went to last Sunday. After 16 years in the BBC, it was nice to be able to finally do a piece for my "home" station - and in my home village, too, celebrating that school. And if I had been able to go back in time and tell the 11-year-old me who left that school in the summer of 1995 that in 28 years' time he would be writing professionally-published books about Doctor Who and getting to visit the Williams headquarters, on BBC duty for his actual job... Well, I can't help but think he would have felt things hadn't turned out too badly.

Mind you, he would probably have a go at me for not having had a novel published yet... But there's still time!

Pull to Open

Yesterday evening was very exciting for me. After a long time waiting for everything to be sorted and settled and ready and it to be appropriate for it to be made public, my publishers (and it feels exciting itself just to be able to say that!) Ten Acre officially announced my new book! It’s called Pull to Open, it tells the story of the creation of Doctor Who in 1963, and it will be released on the 24^th of July.

I wrote the book through 2022, and Stuart at Ten Acre was gratifyingly very keen to take it when I sent it to him at the end of the year. It’s taken a while having to wait for certain bits and pieces to fall into place and doing some edits and other admin, but finally we’re almost there and the time was right to announce.
 
But why, some people may ask, go back to 1963 again? Why go back to tell a story which has been told before? When even in the introduction to The Long Game I mentioned how although the creation of Doctor Who was a story which had long fascinated me, it was one which had already been well-told by others.
 
So why have my go at telling it now?
 
Well, I gradually came to realise that although that was true, it had never been told in quite the way I fancied telling it.
 

Doctor Who: The Sixties, a Christmas present I received in 1993 which helped start me off on this journey.

After The Long Game had come out in the autumn of 2021, it became clear that I could, in fact, write something other people would want to read, and I had done a pretty good job of it. Lots of people bought it. Lots of people said very nice things about it. At the very end of the year, in one of the interviews I did to promote the book, with AJ Black for his website, he asked me if I had any other books lined up.

 
“I can’t imagine ever writing another non-fiction book, either Doctor Who or otherwise,” I told him. “But you never know! If I am struck by a good idea for one I might give it a go. Certainly in Doctor Who terms, I think pretty much anything else I might want to write about has already been very well researched and written about by other people. Whereas with The Long Game I knew I had something new and a bit different which hadn’t formed the basis of a book before. If I ever think of something else like that, I might have another try!”
 
And that kept nagging at me, once the interview came out. It felt like a waste, somehow. All that good will I had built up with The Long Game, there had to be some way I could channel it into something else. Frankly, I knew that if I put my efforts in 2022 into trying to write fiction there was very little chance of it being published. If I put them into writing a non-fiction work, specifically a television history of particularly Doctor Who one, I knew that it would be at least seriously considered and probably had a very good chance of being published.

 
But what could it be…?
 

I’ve written before on this blog about how the creation of Doctor Who in 1963 has cast a kind of spell over me. I think many of us have particular little slivers of history, little eras, which form a kind of bubble of interest. Where a particular combination of the people and the circumstances and the background and the culture and the society all get a hook into our consciousness somehow.
 
BBC Television in 1963 is very much that for me. It’s why, nearly 20 years ago now, I had a go at writing the story of the creation of Doctor Who as a novel. That was no good, of course, and it would be no good trying that again. So what else could I do with that interest?
 
I did have one ‘way in’, as it were. In 2021, I’d written a piece for Doctor Who Magazine about the co-creator of the programme, Donald Wilson. This was something I’d first researched way back in 2015, and it was originally a much longer article, but eventually by the time it reached print there was only space for a shorter piece. But I still had all of that writing and research. I knew I had a ready-made chapter on Wilson’s life.
 
But a chapter of what…?
 
Once again, it came back to that nagging feeling. Another book. A Doctor Who book. And finally, the realisation that I could tackle the very start of the show in a way which I didn’t think had been done before.
 
Firstly, with this book, the creation would be the story. Those books I’d loved so much in my childhood and my teens, like Doctor Who: The Sixties or The Handbook: The First Doctor, had begun the story and then carried on to tell the tale of a whole era. This book would only go up to the end of 1963 – the point at which Doctor Who was about to go nuclear, so to speak, as the Daleks rolled onto Britain’s screens for the first time. Poised with a happy ending, just as The Long Game was with its finale of the return of the show being announced in September 2003. A perfect, ready-made narrative structure.
 

But secondly, I knew from the kind comments I’d had that one of the things people had really enjoyed about The Long Game was the way in which it provided the wider background and context of what was going on in the BBC at the time. Who these people were who had taken these decisions, and how they’d come to be in those jobs at that time. Not just what had happened and when, but why it had happened. How the BBC and the wider British television industry was working at that point in history.
  

I knew that if I could bring all of that, and combine it with the strong narrative thread of the events slowly coalescing for Doctor Who to rise into existence, I could write a really strong book. With 2023 being the show’s 60^th anniversary year, it seemed perfect. So, hopefully, that’s what I’ve done. On the 16^th of January 2022, I sat down at my laptop and typed the opening words: “When did Doctor Who begin?” There’s been a lot of writing, research and effort since then, but now, 130,000 words later, I have a book.

Among all the many, many lovely comments I’ve had since Pull to Open was announced by Ten Acre yesterday evening, one of the ones by which I was most touched was from a user called DeeDeeTee on the GallifreyBase Doctor Who forum. They wrote that: “The Long Game was an incredible read. Paul's skill is managing to tell the history of the BBC through the history of the show. I'm really looking forward to seeing how he weaves this magic in telling the story about the very beginning...”

It’s a wonderful feeling to find that someone you don’t know at all has read something you have written and understood exactly what you were trying to do with it. Trying to explore and explain part of the deep, rich and complex history of the BBC through the narrative of how that history influenced the development of Doctor Who.

Whether or not I have succeeded… Well, time will tell. We’ll see what people make of it next month.