Notebook
Life has brought its ups and downs but nothing — fingers crossed — will match the utter terror when, aged perhaps eight or nine, I rang on my best friend's door and it opened to reveal a Dalek. I screamed. He'd got the costume as a birthday present. It must have been very gratifying.
All of this explains why, on Sunday night, I was standing outside a faked-up Downing Street jabbering away about the whereabouts of the Prime Minister at this time of national emergency, while SAS men, riot police and a tank moved all around.
It had nothing to do with David Blunkett's new leaflet on terror. The BBC is at last bringing Dr Who back to television, with the wonderful Christopher Ecclestone and Billy Piper... and, yes, in a tiny, blink-and-you've-missed-it, walk-on part, me. I've made it at last. For someone of the Patrick Troughton/Jon Pertwee era, this is a bit like being asked to carry a spear in the first performance of a lost Shakespeare play.
Nor will I give away what little I've heard of the plot, except to say that Tony Blair doesn't get eaten by Daleks, for three reasons. First, Downing Street has plenty of stairs. Second, Daleks don't eat people. Third, there aren't any Daleks in it anyway. But there are awful monsters, and terrible things do happen. And if they don't get the little ones scurrying behind the sofa as in the old days, there's always me in hideous, well-lit close-up, ears flapping wildly....
Spelling correction: Christopher Eccleston
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