Bradley’s second-chance at being First

tapes of him and I tried to capture his voice, specific intonations and also his physicality. At the same time, one has to be careful not to try for a totally accurate impression so you don’t forget the actual character and the fun you can have with it. You can get a little bit bogged down if you’re not careful – playing a character who is so well-known. The audience know – they’ll be the best judge and they’ll say, ‘well, that’s not how I saw them, how I remember them’.

‘‘Fortunately, the reaction from Adventure in Space and Time, from the people I spoke to, was overwhelmingly in favour. They generally thought I’d captured him. I like to think I captured his spirit, rather than doing a dry, academic recreation of every gesture and intonation.’’

And luckily for Bradley, this won’t be the last time he gets to find his inner-First Doctor. He’s already recorded 16 audio adventure stories, which have just debuted as a box set, and is hoping to do some more.

‘‘That reunited myself with Jemma Powell and Jamie Glover,’’ enthuses Bradley. ‘‘We worked so closely on Adventure in Time and Space and we had a great few days back in the recording studio. And, of course, with audio, you don’t have to learn the thing. You can read from from the page, so there’s lots of time for ‘coffee and gossip’, as they say.’’

One person the Yorkshire-born actor was disappointed not to catch up with on the set of Christmas Special though was his former Broadchurch co-star Jodie Whittaker. Set to play the 13th incarnation of The Doctor, her scenes were filmed after Bradley’s had been completed.

‘‘I was just so delighted when I heard she’d got the job,’’ he says. ‘‘I think Jodie is a superb actress and she’s not only got this deep emotional range, as we saw on Broadchurch, but anybody who has hung out with her on set knows that she’s got this wonderful cheeky sense of humour. And I think she’ll bring all those qualities to the table when we see her on Doctor Who.

‘‘I think she’s going to be brilliant. And I’m also so happy that Chris [Chibnall, who created Broadchurch and is now taking over as Doctor Who showrunner] is writing it, because he hasn’t just come in out of the cold.

‘‘He has done Doctor Who [most notably writing the Bradleystarring Dinosaurs on a Spaceship], so he knows the territory, does Chris.’’

Like hundreds of millions of viewers around the world, Bradley has yet to see the Christmas episode when we talk.

He says, unlike most of the work he’s done, he can’t wait to see the finished product.

‘‘Normally I go, ‘that was great, let’s move on and it will come out one of these days and I’ll see what we’ve been doing’, but with this one I’m really keen to see the final result.’’ This year’s airs on Prime on Boxing Day at 7.30pm.