DOCTOR WHO? IT’S MORE LIKE DOCTOR WHAT-THE-HECK!

JYOUNGER readers may be mystified by the expression “curate’s egg” as in: “The new series of Doctor Who was a real curate’s egg.”

It dates from a 1930s cartoon in the nowdefunct magazine Punch.

A B&B landlady is shown asking her breakfasting guest, a young curate: “How’s your egg, Reverend?” to which he replies as he toys unhappily with it: “Good in parts, Mrs B… good in parts!”

Well after a scintillating start, series 11 of Doctor Who (only 11?) with Jodie Whittaker, left, as the Time Lord, stuttered its way to last Sunday’s dismal finale; ratings plummeted. There were good bits – the one set in America’s 1960s racist deep south was excellent, as was one built around the bloody partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.

The rest was rubbish – clichéd dialogue, impenetrable plots, over-reliance on digital special effects and a bid to mask weak episodes with endless crashing background soundtracks. Memo to writers.

We want tales about the vagaries of time travel, not cheap monsters and actors yelling over deafening drum beats.