The next issue of Doctor
Who Magazine, hitting the shelves tomorrow, is a special edition
celebrating forty years of the magazine. Forty years! It seems only thirty-nine
and a half years ago that my mum brought home issue 26 to see if I’d prefer it
to The Dandy. A year later – it took
a while to get our newsagent to place an order – I became a regular reader with
issue 55. And it’s kind of been a part of my life ever since, apart from that
brief seven-year-period where I’d given up on Doctor Who. Bad fan!
Anyway, you don’t care about that, you want to know what’s
in the magazine. Well, all sorts of loveliness, there’s even a free DVD, and on
top of that there’s three bits by me. Firstly, a piece investigating how fan
opinion of television stories has changed over the past four decades, according
to Doctor Who Magazine’s readers’ polls. For this, I pulled out every past
issue with any sort of poll and subjected it to rigorous statistical analysis.
My favourite part of the article, though, is a box-out on Fifty-Six Years of Turkeys.
There’s also a few words from me on Terrance Dicks’ Doctor Who novel Made of Steel, and then there’s a quiz on the magazine at the end.
It’s a no-prizes quiz, just to please, to entertain, to please the readers. I’m
particularly proud of questions 37, 38 and 41 which made me hoot with laughter when
I thought of them. It’s just a bit of celebratory fun, so I hope it amuses.
In other news, next month one of my Doctor Who audio stories, Max
Warp, is going to be released as an LP. On vinyl! Exclusive to ASDA,
everyone’s favourite supermarket. It’s very exciting to be available in a new
medium. The story itself is one of my favourites, I’m still amazed to think
that I’ve written for Graeme Garden, James Fleet and Duncan from Blue, as well
as Sheridan Smith and Paul McGann. At the time I’d spent a few years plugging away
in the lower reaches of comedy-land so I was very much in a comedy mode,
writing lots of witty lines and silly business. It also marked a return to Big
Finish after a few years, so I was also in showing-off-what-I-can-do mode as I
felt I had something to prove. A mode in which I have steadfastly remained ever
since.
Lots of people have said very many lovely
things about it, so if you have a record player, or even if you don’t, why not
pick it up when it turns up in ASDA on November 15.You can find out more about it here.
