All Aboard the Bandwagon!

For some time I have noticed the number of times that references to Doctor Who appear in quite unexpected books. It can be quite a good game to play if you happen to be in a bookshop with some time to kill.

I first noticed this phenomenon with The Kenneth Williams Diaries (ed. Hunter Davies, Harper Collins, 1993).  On Saturday 29 November 1975, Willams observed that ‘Dr Who gets more and more silly.’ Episode 2 of The Android Invasion was clearly not his cup of tea, but the idea that Kenneth Williams was a regular viewer of the programme takes a little getting used to. It is a huge shame he never appeared in it – he couldn’t have been any worse than Ken Dodd.

I have subsequently found references to Doctor Who in a number of showbusiness autobiographies by people who never appeared in the show. Aled Jones (Virgin Books, 2005), stakes a claim for his interest in the programme with a wealth of circumstantial detail. ‘The other programme that I never missed was Doctor Who. True to tradition, the moment the music started, I would dive behind our leather sofa, from where I would watch the whole episode. I was particularly frightened of the Daleks and would hide every time they came on screen. But, despite my fear, I still desperately wanted to watch it each week. One day when she was cleaning, Mam discovered that I had been nervously gnawing away at the back of the sofa and that her pride and joy now had teeth marks all the way along the top from one end to the other.’* 

Nigel Havers’s autobiography Playing with Fire (Headline Review, 2006) contains a photo which purports to show Nigel and his father watching the very first episode of Doctor Who. Given that in a Doctor Who Magazine interview Mr Havers claimed only ever to have watched the first episode prior to performing in one of the Big Finish audio adventures for BBC7 it shows rare foresight to have had a photograph taken of the occasion.  Cynics might however point out that the television screen is not visible in the photo.

References to Doctor Who are not confined to autobiographies, however. I recently read First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde (Hodder, 2007), set in an alternative reality Swindon, which contains a scene in which not only does the heroine’s brother come to collect a video of Remembrance of the Daleks, but there is a discussion about who was the best Doctor: ‘“It was Tom Baker,” said Joffy, ending the embarrassed silence. Miles made a noise that sounded like “conventionalist”, and Landen went off to fetch the tape.’

Now that Doctor Who is popular again (for the moment) these references are likely to increase.

All aboard the bandwagon!