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!