On the Christmas list

They've made a list, they've checked it twice...

Well, I actually don't know how many time they've checked it, nor how the items on it were selected, or how many people were involved in the process. But I do know that BBC Studios, the BBC's commercial subsidiary which among other things deals with licensing, merchandising and so forth, have published an official Doctor Who Christmas gift guide on their website for the show.

And I am on it!

Well, not me personally. You can't wrap me up and send me to the Doctor Who fan in your life as a Christmas present, which is probably good news for all concerned. But they have included among their recommendations the audiobook version of my book Pull to Open, which was released last month.

Okay, so the audiobook is an officially-licensed BBC Studios product, as indeed are all the other items on the list, so you may say that this is more of an advertising feature than anything else. And of course, you would be right. But there are plenty of other things they could have included, even just from the audiobook range. And for whatever reason, Pull to Open has been selected to be on it, which is rather pleasing.

Admittedly, I am not entirely certain how you give as a present something which isn't actually available as a physical product, but only via download. But it is, as they say, the thought that counts, and of course I would heartily endorse the idea of giving the gift of Pull to Open this Christmas! If nothing else, it presumably makes a good last-minute gift idea for a Doctor Who fan right up to and including on the day itself, as you don't actually have to either go out and buy it or get it delivered.

Incidentally, in the event that anybody is reading this after having received Pull to Open as a present - Christmas or birthday, the audiobook version or the full-length paperback - I'd love to hear from you. Especially if it was a welcome gift which you enjoyed, obviously! I like the idea of my work being given as a present, so do please leave a comment below and let me know!

Back in Time

It’s out! Again!
 
Well, actually it’s been out for a couple of weeks now, but today being the 61^st anniversary of the first episode of Doctor Who being broadcast, it seemed appropriate to write here today about the audiobook version of Pull to Open now having been released.
 
It’s a strange thing, to listen to your own writing being read by an actor, in the person of Christopher Naylor here. Of course given that I have spent over 17 years now working for BBC radio, I am used to having words which I have written spoken aloud by others. But this felt slightly different. It’s more of a performance, and it does feel rather nice listening to it being read that way.
 
It's also very nice, of course, to have an official piece of Doctor Who work released under the BBC banner. I’ve written a fair bit for Doctor Who Magazine over the past decade, which is also officially licensed and comes out with the BBC logo on it, but again this is slightly different. A full-length audiobook, a long, sustained piece of writing, and an official part of the BBC’s wider Doctor Who output beyond the television series.
 
Not, of course, that I would dissuade anyone from reading the original paperback edition from Ten Acre, which is still very much available. Indeed, if you happen to be reading this having bought and enjoyed the audiobook version – and if so, thank you! – then you may still enjoy the book even more, as it’s much longer and is able to include much more background and detail.

One rather nice thing about the audiobook is that it’s actually featured quite highly in the charts. Well, all right, in one specific Amazon chart for one specific category of audiobook. But it still counts, and I’m taking it! Although admittedly I probably won’t be going so far as to add “best-selling” to any of my online profiles anywhere… Not quite yet, at least!
 
But thank you, Doctor Who, for once again enabling me to feel as if I have in some small way done something, and achieved something. It’s always been a very positive presence in my life, as it has been in so many people’s, and it’s lovely to think that there might be someone out there who’s fascination with its history might be sparked off by Pull to Open in the same way mine was by the likes of the Howe-Stammers-Walker books all those years ago.

Pick Up a Penguin

It's only one month now until the release of the audiobook version of my book Pull to Open, which tells the story of the creation of Doctor Who in 1963. And here's a little bit of pre-publicity for it, in the form of BBC Audiobooks' Doctor Who catalogue for this autumn. Published on the Penguin website, as Penguin Random House are the company who release BBC Audiobooks titles.

It's nice to be in there alongside all those other forthcoming audiobooks, and as an official piece of BBC Doctor Who merchandise, too. It's also nice to be able to bring a version of Pull to Open to those who, for whatever reason, are unable to buy or to read the full-length printed book version from Ten Acre. Which is, of course, still available for anyone who is interested.

In other news, it looks as if there might be a very exciting possibility of something else Doctor Who-related happening, writing-wise, in the future, although it's still early days so I can't say anything more about that just yet. I have also finished a draft of a possible new non-fiction book, too. It's something on which I have been working for much of the year, not directly Doctor Who-related this time, although it still needs further work for which I am awaiting another couple of archive research trips next month before I hopefully have a more complete draft ready by the end of the year.

Oh yes, and I have started writing a new piece of fiction. Something inspired by a comment I read in some research I was doing last month, which suddenly resolved itself into a plot in my head and which actually seems to be going rather well so far. Whether it will end well is another matter, but I am at least not totally despairing of its quality even as I write it, which is perhaps half the battle. I might even actually be enjoying writing it, which for fiction is often a rare pleasure, I find...

Aural History

Usually down the years with this blog, I have tended to write about exciting developments in my writing career as soon as possible. Partly to show off about them, of course! But also because I enjoy having this blog as a record. I do have a private diary as well, in which I write about what goes on in my life purely for my own personal posterity and interest to look back on. But somehow, having it all here as well, all laid out in neatly ordered little chunks as it develops over time, is also nice to have.

Which is all a very roundabout way of getting to the point and saying that something exciting has happened - or at least, is happening - and I haven't got around to writing about it here yet. I'm not exactly sure why. Possibly because it was a while after I knew it was happening before it was officially announced and I was able to talk about it. A little bit because I have been busy working on a new writing project over the summer. But I think mostly because I simply hadn't got around to summoning the effort to sit down and get back to the blog.

So, here I am!

Late last year, I happened to come into contact with Michael Stevens, the editor of BBC Audiobooks and their official range of Doctor Who releases. It transpired that he had bought, read and enjoyed Pull to Open, and we got to talking about some possible Doctor Who ideas I could perhaps be involved in for the audiobook range. Eventually, Michael decided that it might be nice to put out an audiobook release of Pull to Open.

Everything was agreed, I prepared a suitable abridgement, and earlier this year it was recorded - rather pleasingly, at BBC Audiobooks' studio at Television Centre, the building where back in April 1963 Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson had sat down and created the basic format of Doctor Who together in the first place. I was going to go along to the recording, which would have been very exciting, but sadly the practicalities of it all didn't work out in the end. Probably just as well for them - the last thing they needed was me hanging around getting in the way!

But it's all been successfully recorded, and is due to be released this November. The reading is by Christopher Naylor, well-known to Doctor Who fans as the actor who these days plays Harry Sullivan in Big Finish Productions' Doctor Who audio dramas, in place of the late Ian Marter. There won't be a physical release of Pull to Open - it's rather long, and would take up a fair few CDs! - but there is still a 'cover' for promotional and online shopping purposes, which I'm pleased to say has been adapted by the original team behind the Ten Acre version, Stuart Manning and Andrew Orton. But now with the official Doctor Who logo and the BBC blocks on it!

Yes, to paraphrase the wonderful Completely Useless Encyclopedia, I am now officially Worthy Of The Diamond Logo! And because of the unique way in which BBC Audiobooks works, a Penguin author, too... The audiobook went on pre-sale a few weeks ago and since then it's been bobbing about in the audiobook bestseller charts on Amazon in the "Film History & Criticism" section. Which it isn't either of, of course - but I'm not complaining!

"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!

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.