BAKER’S END: THE KING OF CATS

Tom turned up to 10

RELEASED 2 SEPTEMBER 63 minutes | Cd/download

Publisher Bafflegab Productions

Tom Baker’s obsession with death (this is a man who had the inscription carved on his gravestone decades ago) and insatiable appetite for tall stories combine in this demented comedy – the first in a bi-monthly series – set during the former Time Lord’s funeral in the peculiar hamlet of Happenstance.

Baker plays himself, accompanied by Doctor Who grande dame Katy Manning as an ex-colleague drawn into the mystery of how the teatime telly legend met his sticky end. Was he really run over by the TV detector van? Or, as some say, did he suffer a fatal fall while climbing naked on the roof of the village Post Office-cum-Mini Mart?

Entirely built around the actor’s larger-than-life reputation, this is Baker with no filter, channelling the spirit of The Goons with a performance so large you can see it from Gallifrey. The presence of the equally fanciful Paul Magrs on script duties, meanwhile, results in a critical mass of whimsy involving crazed hurdy-gurdy players, twerking pensioners and grannies with weaponised bosoms.

“It was like we’d taken leave of our senses,” says Manning’s character at one point. Well quite.

Magrs previously wrote the Bakerstarring Hornets’ Nest, Demon Quest and Serpent Crest series for BBC Audio.