By Jeremy Miles
Actor and comedian Toby Hadoke is something of a Doctor Who obsessive. He's been hooked on the TV programme since he saw a classic re-run of the episode Invisible Enemy when he was a child.
"I knew as soon as I saw all their faces turning furry that this was something very special indeed," he says.
So what better subject for his latest comedy tour than the curiously changing fortunes of the good Doctor?
His new show called Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf starts a nationwide tour at the Forest Arts Centre in New Milton on Saturday,February 2.
Based on two acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe productions, it charts the rise and fall, and subsequent rise again, of Gallafrey's last pioneer and his time-travelling police box.
It is told from a distinctly personal point of view. Part memoir, part tribute, part stand-up, it offers observations that are both incisively satirical and strangely touching as Hadoke charts the Doctor's triumphs and disasters and his own progress from child to man.
Most interesting perhaps is the reminder that Doctor Who - famous and popular once more - spent years in the TV wilderness, Throughout that deeply unfashionable period Hadoke kept the faith. Others were far more dismissive. He tells me that in the 1990s burglars broke into his flat and stole a broken guitar, a Bananarama single and half a jar of instant coffee but left his Doctor Who video collection untouched. "They're collector items now," he says, perhaps just a tad smugly.
Oh and that title? Yes, he tells me, moths really did eat his Doctor Who scarfe