No, I'm not back in Doctor Who (From Bucks Free Press)

No, I'm not back in Doctor Who

9:57am Friday 26th June 2009 in

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THIS week several people contacted me to say how delighted they were that I was to appear in a Doctor Who ‘multi-doctor special’ for Children in Need this autumn. “Am I? Am I really? How lovely. Erm… what makes you think that?” “It’s in the Daily Mirror.” So I checked.

Well I never! Apparently all eleven Doctors Who are to be involved in a special story. Ah yes, oh wise reader, you know too that three of them are, alas, no longer with us.

That is to be resolved, (we are told by the journalist responsible for the piece, Clemmie Moodie), by incorporating archive footage of the late and much missed Messrs Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee.

An unnamed ‘source’ (perhaps another clue to the likely accuracy of the information given to the Mirror) spoke of the difficulty experienced in setting the project up.

“It’s been a logistical nightmare getting all the actors together and available for shooting on the same days.”

Well, it will continue to be a logistical nightmare, not to mention a complete impossibility, if no one actually contacts all of the actors.

They certainly haven’t progressed the nightmare far enough to even speak to my friend Sylvester McCoy or me, or our agents! The crystal ball gazing informant even speaks warmly of us all waiving our fees. Wow! All of us? Even…? No I won’t go there.

Ms Moodie relates this news to a previous Children in Need story – The Five Doctors – filmed in 1983. This was, in fact, part of the normal series during Peter Davison’s occupation of the Tardis and not a Children in Need story.

But despite that I did, for a brief moment wonder whether, this time, the rumours of multiple potential re-regeneration might be true, until I remembered all the other occasions when there has been fevered excitement about the possibility of gathering a – what would the generic term for Doctors be? A crusade? An operation? A salvation? A salvo of Doctors?

On all those occasions the rumour has turned out to be no more than an enthusiastic interpretation of wishful thinking.

Now the BBC has issued a statement “Nothing has been finalised yet, although there is discussion of a Children in Need Doctor Who special. It is too early to say what.”

Ah! The voice of reason.

Back to the day job then.

I’d never have got into the costume anyway.

Unless, of course, it was bigger on the inside.