AFTER my visit to New York last week, I spent the weekend in Los Angeles in the company of a splendid bunch of people who gather together annually to celebrate their affectation for Doctor Who.

It is heartening that they are still prepared to tolerate the old fogies who used to portray the nation’s favourite time lord in the age of the new improved programme and the ever youthening Doctor.

As if David Tennant hadn’t already proved the visibly beneficial power of time travel on the genes, the imminent new one, Matt Smith, we are told, is so young that he is likely to be asked for ID if he tries to purchase an intergalactic gargle blaster in licensed premises either side of the Atlantic.

On my day off in LA, I accompanied some friends to Santa Monica, and while the residents of South Bucks were still sliding around on the icy roads, I was strolling in shirt sleeves along the beach among palm trees, by that other ocean the Pacific in temperatures of around 60 degrees.

The locals were complaining of the cold, by the way.

As we passed a Belgian chocolate shop, one of my companions uttered the word “Chocolate” in precisely the same tones that Homer Simpson habitually intones “Beer!”

In my current state of self denial – my daughter has decreed a diet and I obey – I protested “No!” She repeated her mantra – and I repeated my denial, two or three times.

As we waited for the lights to change to “Walk” to allow us to escape the seductive temptations of confectionery, I intoned Homer’s actual words to indicate my attitude to her demonstration of chocaholicism.

An American woman standing at the kerbside turned around and said “Now you’re talking!” and laughed. We chatted for a moment or two and, as she walked away, I said to my companions who looked, I thought, inexplicably perplexed at my behaviour, “You know she looked a bit like Pamela Anderson.”

“That”, replied one of them “ …was because she was Pamela Anderson!” Apparently the pneumatic star of Baywatch and other perhaps more infamous films bears unique tattoos that everyone, except your columnist, had instantly recognised.

I would love to think that as she entered the adjacent interior design outlet, she said to her female companion that I looked a bit like that bloke who used to play Doctor Who. No, not Tom!

The other one!