I loved it from when I was a small child. I was pretty obsessed with it as a show and as a character. So when the very unlikely circumstances arose that I was asked to take over on the show, a show which had not existed for many years in between, it felt like a wonderful, impossible opportunity. I loved it. It was everything I hoped it might be. And it definitely changed my life in so many ways, professionally and personally, that I don’t feel the need to distance myself from it. I’m also aware that I probably can’t. If I never worked again, the first line of my obituary probably been written. Doctor Who attracts that kind of attention and enthusiasm.

David Tennant is the type O-negative of people, what my friend Charlie calls the universal boner. He is tall and sort of ginger, always shaved yesterday or the day before and has a very non-actorly habit of never looking directly at his scene partner, perhaps he might just be too rumpled and tired to do so. When he does make eye contact, it is always suddenly, with amber-colored eyes blazing and usually simultaneously yelling some English-adjacent Scottish noises. But when David Tennant finally does make eye contact, it is with an intensity that could be murderous or could be love. Often the scripts he chooses call for both simultaneously. And the whole combination is utterly, disarmingly charming enough to startle one, momentarily, away from whatever sexual preferences existed before and briefly replace them with a sexual preference for David Tennant and David Tennant only.