TOTAL RECALL

Russell has a fete-full encounter with David Tennant.

The present becomes the past before you know it, and it’s a mite sobering that it’s now more than 10 years since I met David Tennant around the corner from my house. As this photo and brochure show, the then Doctor Who came to open the summer fete of Ashmount School in North London. There was a board with “Special Guest Dr Who” on it outside the school, which was charming, the kind of thing you used to see in the ’70s, when I was a kid. The school was near where he lived at the time, in Crouch End, so I suppose they must have got him that way (was he paid? No idea). I was living on Hornsey Lane in Highgate; if I hadn’t have been there’s no way I would have seen him, because, not surprisingly, there was no advertising elsewhere.

It was a sunny summer Sunday as I trotted along, paid my 30p entrance fee, and in a while Mr T bustled in, freshly laundered and grinning, with a couple of police officers by his side.

Tennant spoke for a couple of minutes but all I can remember his smooth Scottish voice purring was, “I’ve never opened a fete before, uh, but I declare this fete open.” I remember thinking he was very slim, and how it was unusual seeing him in a T-shirt. The year 2006 was a great year for the show and I adored it (these days not so much). The return of the Cybermen thrilled me, what might be in the Satan Pit was so exciting I talked about it with a sales assistant in WH Smiths on Oxford Street, the Dalek at the end of “Army Of Ghosts” was fantastic, and I even loved “The Idiot’s Lantern”, in part because it was set about a mile away from my house. Tennant is, in my eyes, the best of the modern Doctors, and the second best of them all (after Tom). His enthusiasm, personality and, let’s be honest, looks, ensured that Doctor Who really took off again that year. He’s since gone on to prove what a brilliantly versatile actor he is, while never forgetting Who. But the reason I so fondly remember my encounter with him is not just because he was the star of my favourite TV show but because I was seeing children having the sort of experience that I would have loved to have had in the ’70s if Tom Baker visited my school. It was nostalgia, modern-style. Now – somehow – it’s become nostalgia, old-style.

Russell also once did a film quiz with Paul McGann on his team!