This was produced in 1976 by Denys Fisher. Actually, Denys Fisher didn’t have much to do with Denys Fisher because he’d flogged off his company to Palitoy by then. So, I suppose we could call it the Palitoy TARDIS. It’s also sometimes known as the Mego TARDIS but that’s wrong wrong wrong because Mego didn’t produce it and if you call it ‘the Mego TARDIS’ then you cannot possibly be a true Doctor Who fan because true fans have such facts at their fingertips.

So! The Denys Fisher TARDIS was marketed in the UK and in Italy. The Italian version was called Cabina della Polizia. You will be pleased to hear that I have run this through Google translate and will be astounded to discover that it means ‘Police Booth’ or ‘Police Cabin’, ‘Police Cubicle’, ‘Police Cage’ (huh?), or ‘Police Beach Hut’.

I favour the last translation. The idea of the chameleon circuit disguising the TARDIS as a beach hut is splendid and it easily allows our imaginations to wander and to imagine scenes and vignettes featuring this concept. It is a veritable certainty that it will plant in the mind of our esteemed and beloved editor the image of Amy Pond emerging from the Police Beach Hut in a bathing costume. Possibly carrying a beach ball, a la Lis Sladen in The Seeds of Doom. Or, for other readers, of Harry Sullivan in a mankini. Or Ian Chesterton in Sixties bathing shorts which come down to below his knees, his mighty biceps and pecs rippling in the breeze.

Perhaps I should not pursue this chain of thought further.

(I don’t think the Italians had seen Doctor Who by 1976, so precisely how many kids actually bought the Cabina della Polizia is anyone’s guess. There was also an Italian version of the Doctor figure; on the box, it said he was an ‘intrepido esploratore della galassie’. For some reason, they also called Leela ‘Lella’. Ours not to reason why.)

Thus it came to pass in 1976 that the Denys Fisher Police Beach Hut joined the Denys Fisher figures of the Intrepido Esploratore and of Lella.

And it was BITTERLY DISAPPOINTING.

It was about a foot in height and it was basically a cardboard box. That’s it. A cardboard box. To add to the excitement, it came in a cardboard box. So you got two cardboard boxes for your fiver.

As an eleven-year-old, I was enraged that it was not even to scale (it was too small: the Tom figure was just a little shorter than the doors). The panels were just printed on. Denys Fisher/Palitoy did splash out a bit on the lid, base and doors, which were plastic. Wow. As kids discovered to their chagrin, the hinges on the doors were fragile and broke easily.

All this exemplifies the deprivation to which children growing up in the Seventies were subject. Not for us the wizard Character Options TARDISes: lovingly created scale models with a flashing light (gosh!) and sound effects (the ecstasy!) and crafted in sturdy plastic. No. We had to make do with a cardboard box which looked a bit like the police box on the telly but didn’t really.

But it did have one very special feature.

Dimensional transcendentalism would have been fab but it was clearly beyond the designers of the Beach Hut. Instead, they decided to put a black cardboard cylinder inside it, with a recess with a bit of Velcro on. To this, you attached the Tom figure. (It didn’t work with Lella because Lella had a plastic leotard and this didn’t stick to the Velcro.) You then twirled the light on the top of the Beach Hut, which rotated the black cylinder, and held down the green button on the top of the TARDIS. Clunk, crash! Open the doors and the Intrepido Esploratore had disappeared! Where could he possibly have gone?

Spoiler: he was at the back. But when you opened the doors, the back of the black cardboard cylinder presented itself to you. It, too, had a shallow recess in it. So it looked as though Tom had vanished into the depths of the TARDIS. Clever, eh? To rematerialise Tom, all you had to do was to spin the light again, hold down the red button, and – clunk, crash! – there he was!

To this day, the Denys Fisher TARDIS makes me wild with rage. The real TARDIS doesn’t have a big black cylinder you step into. Nor does it have a big red button and a big green button on the top. It has a flashing light. And anyway, the light on the Beach Hut was flimsy and rubbish and it had rubbish silver stickers on either side and it broke off after a few goes. And the panels and windows on the plastic doors were big stickers, so the temptation to peel them off – all kids like peeling off stickers – was almost irresistible. And the Intrepido Esploratore tended to fly off if you rotated him too vigorously and then he’d get stuck at the back. These traumatic childhood experiences stay with you into adulthood and I still have anxiety dreams about trying to prise Tom out of the back of the Beach Hut.

The Denys Fisher TARDIS is pretty rare. You can pick one up for about £80 on eBay; if it has the box, it’ll set you back the best part of £200.

Shouldn’t bother, if I were you. Stick to Character Options.

Let the reader understand that this was not commercial exploitation of Skaronian technology on the part of British Aerospace or similar. It was not a functioning weapons system. No, no, no. Dalek’s Death Ray was in fact, according to the contemporaneous TV advert voiced by a bloke trying to do a Dalek voice, a “Spine! Chilling! Ice! Lolly!” (For our American friends like Rick, an ice lolly is what we Brits call a popsicle. I don’t know why we call them that. We just do. Students of etymology may be able to furnish you with a better answer: apply to them.) 

Dalek’s Death Ray was manufactured in the mid-Seventies by T. Wall and Sons. Not by the great man and his offspring personally, you understand: they had serfs to do the actual work. T. Wall and Sons had a big factory in Gloucester. It’s still there. Doubtless, this was the place where Dalek’s Death Rays were made. Apparently, the business originally produced sausages and pork pies, though not the sort of pork pies favoured by Boris Johnson. Only later did they diversify by branching out into ice creams. T. Wall and Sons is now part of the Unilever Group. No further information on T. Wall and Sons is available as there is (scandalously!) no relevant Wikipedia entry and I simply can’t be bothered to undertake further research. It is enough for me – and for you, dear reader – to know that Wall’s made the Dalek’s Death Ray and a nation rejoiced. 

Dalek’s Death Ray was an ice lolly. You ate it. It cost 5p. In today’s money, that’s 40p.  

Dalek’s Death Ray wasn’t very nice. As far as I remember – being a loyal Doctor Who fan, I felt honour bound to eat the things – the top half was a sludgy brown colour and tasted vaguely of chocolate (bet there wasn’t any chocolate in it, mind), while the bottom half was a lurid green and genuinely did taste of mint. It was one of those ice lollies that had a gritty texture and disintegrated when you bit into it. I think the colour scheme for the said confection was based on the Daleks in Genesis of the Daleks; they were gun metal grey, of course, but they looked green in some lights. (Odd thing: there was a resurgence of Dalek products during Tom’s time as the Doctor, even though there were only two Dalek stories. No one seems to have told the manufacturers, who carried on pouring out Dalek products, regardless. Ponder: the Daleks continued to grip people’s imagination, even when they weren’t on screen for years.)

There was an ice cream van that parked at the gates of my all-boys comprehensive school in the Seventies and you could satiate your fix for Dalek’s Death Ray by checking the coast was clear of teachers and nipping out to this mobile purveyor of paradisaical produce. (Or you could get them from the local newsagent, who also sold single cigarettes to ROUGH BOYS for 10p a pop, until the Old Bill swooped on them and told them to desist as it was against the law.) A fond memory from my schooldays is that there was an ape called Borer (I think that was his name, anyway); the said Borer was a huge adolescent – think The Incredible Hulk squeezed into a polyester blazer – whose hobbies were football and violence. Borer had money and he would spend a whole pound on buying 20 Dalek Death Rays. The said, pithecanthropus would then unwrap them and throw them at nice boys who he hated, including me, which caused his entire 20 stone frame to quiver with his snorts of derision and triumph. God, I loved school. 

As far as is known (i.e. it isn’t known at all; I’m just guessing), no examples of Dalek’s Death Ray still exist. Did they so exist, they would be a bio-hazard. However, some of the sleeves are still around. The artwork is attributed to Frank Bellamy, who did some superb work for TV Action and for the Pertwee and Baker editions of Radio Times; sadly, the ice cream pics weren’t his best work. Some of the backs of the sleeves had some brief articles about the Daleks’ alleged achievements; for example, there was an explanation of how the Daleks discovered the colour grenium. It is a colour invisible to the human eye, you see. So, paint a Dalek with it and it will become invisible. A risible concept because it wouldn’t work because it’s scientifically impossible. Anyway, we all know the Daleks pinched invisibility from the Spirodons.  

The sleeves for Dalek’s Death Ray do occasionally come up on eBay. If you’re tempted to invest in one, be careful: any traces of the original ice lolly will by now be highly toxic, so sterilise your new treasure carefully with boiling water. Careful about boiling away the colour on the sleeve too. They might also contain traces of grenium, so if you touch them, your hand will disappear. They go for about 40 quid a pop.   

Bet Borer wishes he’d still kept his. He’d be a millionaire by now. 

Well, this is a find. A chronicle of the Doctor’s lesser known adventures, beautifully written up for a lavish new volume by one David Whitaker. You may not have heard of him: David was a great friend of the Doctor and they collaborated on a number of projects. They worked on a novel based on our travels on Skaro, which David was kind enough to write in the first person – and that first person was yours truly! And now, there’s this, hot off the presses. Marvellous! Of course, the Doctor did not want his involvement to be widely known. He was happy to see his adventures in print, but he never wanted the people of our world to realise that he really existed, or that David was writing fact, not fiction. And the book’s really something. Some wonderful pen and ink illustrations of the old boy on his travels –

Kindly give that to me, Chesterton.

Well, I was just explaining the origins of this book to our readers, so if you don’t mind –

Yes yes yes, dear boy: never mind that. That volume happens to be someone’s property, and that someone doesn’t happen to be you. Just hand it over, there’s a good fellow.

Oh, very well.

Thank you. Ah: yes! Yes yes yes yes. Ho ho! Do you know, I recall these events with total clarity. The peril of Mechanistria! My visit to the lair of Zarbi Supremo! I disguised myself with great brilliance as one of the myrmidons of that mighty insect, to defeat his malevolent machinations. And that unfortunate episode with the giant space-farers who were visiting that world of Vortis – perhaps something best forgotten.

Why best forgotten, Doctor?

Well, you see, dear boy, they could not quite believe I was as much a man as they were. They were quite eight feet tall, whereas, you know, I am rather shorter in stature.

Really? Oh, hang on, I’ve found the page. This chap wasn’t very polite to you, was he, Doctor? He says here, “Who in the name of the Furies are you, my friend? You are a man, that I can see, but what a man? A puny, old specimen of mankind…”

Yes, thank you, Chesterton, that’s quite enough.

And then it says he stripped your clothes off to prove to his fellows that you were… hang on, he says, “a man and no insect.”

Yes, thank you, Chesterton, that will do! Dear me: a most undignified and unedifying episode. Best forgotten I think. Oh, do stop grinning, there’s a good fellow.

Sorry. Oh look: there’s the Voord again. And some other chaps.

Ah yes, indeed. I recall with the utmost clarity my encounter with the Fishmen of Kandalinga!

The WHAT?

The Fishmen of Kandalinga, dear boy. Have you become suddenly afflicted by partial deafness?

You’re making it up.

And I tell you, Chesterton, I fabricate nothing! My encounter with the Fishmen of Kandalinga was a most perilous episode and is moreover a matter of historical record. I recall that the unfortunate piscine gentlemen were constantly accompanied by a most pungent odour of haddock. Dear me! If I close my eyes, I can smell it to this day.

And did you bump into the Daleks?

Ah no, no. Not on this occasion. I recall there was some problem with the rights.

I beg your pardon?

The rights, Chesterton, the rights! David had problems with the rights, he informed me. Not that I quite comprehended his meaning. I do not believe Daleks should have any rights whatsoever, of course. Dear me, your hearing is far from acute these days. I really think you should make an urgent appointment with an otorhinolaryngologist.

You just made that up, too.

My dear boy, these constant attacks on my probity! Consult a dictionary, my dear fellow. You will find both the word and the definition in there, set out with the utmost clarity. An otorhinolaryngologist is a doctor who specialises in disorders of the ear, nose, and throat. Dear dear dear. I sometimes worry that you lack sufficient intellect to teach those poor young men and women in that ridiculous school of yours.

Well, you said you were a doctor of practically everything. Why don’t you take a look?

Simply because I have better things to do with my time, dear boy, than to contemplate the interior of your auricular canal. And I have no doubt it would present a most repellent prospect. Now stop wasting my time. Dial up some coffee and cake on the food machine and leave me to my reading. I wish to re-acquaint myself with David’s most excellent narrative of my travels.

Oh, all right. Have it your own way. I’ll go and iron my new cardigan. I’ll see you later.

Very well. And I trust that by then your temper will have improved! You really should cultivate a serene and unruffled demeanour, dear boy. I always do. Model yourself upon me at all times, that’s my advice.

[Chesterton bangs out of the control room. Dr Who settles himself in his Louis Quinze chair and opens his volume. He chuckles quietly to himself.]

Sheer poetry, you see. Sheer poetry.

[Track back to wide shot of Dr Who, in the interior of Tardis, intent on his reading. He is, for once, perfectly happy.]

Note:

The first – and best – Doctor Who Annual was published in 1965, presumably for the Christmas market. It cost 9 shillings and sixpence, i.e. 47½p; the equivalent of about £9.50 in today’s money. No year is given on the cover, but it would be more logical to say it’s actually the 1966 Annual: annuals are usually dated to the year after they’re published, you see.

It had a huge print run and is fairly easy to find on eBay. A good condition one should be about £30; bashed up copies go for less. The illustrations are rather wonderful and the stories are actually worth reading. They’re usually attributed to David Whitaker, though this is uncertain; there’s no credit in the book itself. Even so, the prose style certainly fits the attribution.

So, lots of children enjoyed a very good Christmas present back in 1965. They’d be in their 60s now…

Oh, sorry. Someone wants to say something.

Yes, yes, dear me, my dear boy, I nearly forgot! I meant to say it earlier. Well, no time like the present. Now what was it I was about to say, hmm? Ah, yes. Yes yes yes yes.

A HAPPY CHRISTMAS…

TO ALL OF YOU AT HOME.

This is the holy grail for Doctor Who merch collectors. It is rare. Very, very rare. I’d guess, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that there might be 20 of these left in the world. It is as rare as a sighting of Lord Lucan galloping past on Shergar. As rare as a truthful utterance from the lips of Donald Trump. Nearly as rare as a film canister of episode four of The Tenth Planet. As rare as– well, you probably get the gist.

It’s the Scorpion Automotives Dalek.

Did I mention it was rare?

It is not to be confused with the more common and more risible Berwick Dalek playsuit, an example of which was sported by the young lady playing Jessica Carney in An Adventure in Space and Time. I covered the differences between the two in the very first of these Collector’s Corners. There, I said:

There were two Dalek dressing up outfits available in 1965. The magnificent Scorpion Automotives one was horribly expensive and was only owned by rich kids who went to posh schools, had a swimming pool, and were probably called Rufus and Chloe or Eustace and Jocasta or something.

The bargain basement version for the plebs was the Berwick Dalek Playsuit.

As you probably know, the Scorpion factory (where they made toys, not scorpions, you understand) caught fire and very few of their Dalek outfits survived…

And yet, dear reader, and yet…

One of them surfaced this March on eBay. In my home town. Bedford. Yes, Bedford: site of the notorious Dalek mines. A bloke found it in a house clearance. And here it is.

I put in a bid. I reckoned a tenner would do it. Maybe a bit more. I was willing to go up to fifty smackers. But: here’s the thing.

Guess how much it went for?

£3,300.

THREE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED QUID?!?!?

Three thousand three hundred quid! That’s insane! I mean, the original price was 8 pounds 15 shillings and sixpence. It sold for 376 times its original price! As the Doctor said in City of Death, “That’s a very nice piece of capital investment.” (According to some inflation calculator page I found via Google, £8 15s 6d is worth about £150 in today’s money – that’s $207 for American readers. So it was always expensive. Just not as expensive as it is today.)

3300 quid is more than I paid for my Ford Fiesta! It’s a third of a deposit on a flat!

£3300 would also buy you:

• 253 Jodie Whittaker action figures from Character Options
• 105 gallons of beer (and which would you prefer, eh?)
• About 33 boxed Marx Tricky Action Daleks from 1965
• 660 bottles of plonk from Aldi
• A peerage (well, maybe not a peerage, but I bet it could get you an OBE)
• About 10 signed photos of William Hartnell
• 330.3 copies of Philip’s new book
• Over a third of a tonne of chocolate

I mean, look, I grant you that the Scorpion Automotives Dalek is very nice. But even I wouldn’t pay that for it.

Here is a pic of a less bashed-up one for you to ogle. Just think: some day, one just like this might be yours.

We can but dream.

Fluffy bunnies, fluffy bunnies! Hello, boys and girls! Here is a happy hoppy fluffy bunny story for you all, all about that mysterious old codger who travels in time and space (as played by William Hartnell) in his jolly happy merry time-ship Tardis, spreading joy and happiness among all the weird funny people he meets on distant planets! Join us as we journey with Dr Who (as played by William Hartnell) on his new adventure!

Yeah, anyway. As proof that you could make a few quid from bunging out any old tosh if it had Doctor Who on the cover (or “Dr Who”, as was more usual in those days): in the year 1966 it did come to pass that World Distributors issued the mighty and immortal tome, Dr Who (as played by William Hartnell) Sticker Fun Book: Travels in Space.

It was a book and it had stickers in it. You could take the stickers out and stick them on things. The wall, your bed, the dog. Yourself. Whatever. This was fun. Hence “sticker fun book”. I think I’ve got that right.

You could also, if you were so minded, colour in the pictures. I have never met a child or a former child who has ever bothered to complete a colouring book because they are a deeply dull concept. Never mind. Normally, you did the first one and then got bored, so wandered off to see what was on TV. But the stickers, the stickers – they were fun!

To elate yet further the children who had paid good pocket money for this excrescence, the book included a complete, original, untelevised adventure story for the Doctor – sorry, for Dr Who (as played by William Hartnell). As was the norm for World Distributors, it was written by some hack who had never seen the programme.

Yes! As you read it! Because NOW, for the first time in 54 years, you can now enjoy this stunning adventure story for Dr Who (as played by William Hartnell) IN ITS ENTIRETY, as the DWC proudly presents its complete text! With the original illustrations!

Can you wait any longer? Start reading!

Dr Who (as played by William Hartnell) Sticker Fun Book: Travels in Space

During his travels in space Dr Who discovers a strange planet. The Tardis has landed in an area of jungle and swamp, inhabited by giant animals. Dr Who soon finds that these are harmless (1). Join him as he explores the planet…

Everything on the planet is enormous. Even the plants seem overgrown and Dr Who has difficulty in finding a way through them.

He disturbs many large insects on his journey. But everything seems peaceful on this planet. He wondered what kind of people lived here.

He soon found out! Suddenly, from behind plants and rocks, appeared peculiar little men. They had been watching Dr Who for some time, wondering if he was friend or foe.

They told Dr Who all about themselves.

They were called Floramites (2) and they were very happy (3) except when they were disturbed by the mechanical men from the other side of the planet.

Just then the mechanical men appeared.

Having first paralysed them with his ray gun (4), Dr Who talked to them sternly (5). Afterwards they apologised to the Floramites and made friends with them. They weren’t really bad – just mischievous!

Now they all had a wonderful party together; the giant animals joined in too. They were all very grateful to Dr Who for bringing peace to their planet at last.

Dr Who was soon back in his wonderful Tardis, continuing his journey in space and passing many familiar stars and planets on his way.

He was very pleased that he had landed on the mysterious planet. (6)

A commentary on the text:

(1) Note the build up and subsequent understated but effective resolution of tension and suspense in the narrative.

(2) Fluffy bunnies! And yet… note the visual similarity to the Vervoids. Possibly a distant relative and therefore potentially not what they seem.

(3) Oh, they are what they seem. Bless! They’re almost as cute as the Pting!

(4) His WHAAAT?!

(5) Fascinatingly, Hartnell’s Doctor here foreshadows a character trait fully realised in Jodie Whittaker’s incarnation. A jolly good telling off from the Doctor is just what all naughty aliens need! Dear dear dear dear. How very disturbing.

(6) Moniker nicked by Robert Holmes as the working title for Parts 1- 4 of The Trial of a Time Lord. No records exist of any lawsuit by World Distributors for plagiarism.

And that’s that! All you need to know about the Dr Who (as played by William Hartnell) Sticker Fun Book: Travels in Space.

Horrible, isn’t it?

The Dr Who (as played by William Hartnell) Sticker Fun Book: Travels in Space is as rare as Jethrik. If you really want one, you can very occasionally find one on eBay. Around 200 smackers to you, squire. What a bargain!

Bet you didn’t know that Denys Fisher was the inventor of Spirograph. True! (For younger readers, Spirograph was a collection of transparent cogged plastic wheels with holes in for you to stick coloured pens into. By rotating said wheels, you could draw funky patterns on pieces of paper. It was an amazing toy and was the equivalent of the Xbox for those of us who grew up in the ’70s. Anyway.)

In the mid-Seventies, Denys Fisher (who’d now flogged off his company to Palitoy) produced seven Doctor Who figures: six originally, with a K9 added later. By far the most remarkable was their Intrepid Explorer of the Galaxies – well, that’s what it said on the box – Leela.

As you can see, it is a remarkable likeness. It is, in fact, INDISTINGUISHABLE from Louise Jameson in every respect. You will no doubt have difficulty in working out which is Louise and which is her plastic simulacrum. (Hint: Louise is on the right.)

The first two of the range to be released were the Doctor and the Cyberman figures. No, I’m not going to show you the pictures. If I do, I will run out of fodder for future Collector’s Corners. I was 11 at the time, so it was in 1976 that they came out. We were living in Littlehampton and there was a toy shop. I regularly mooched about in there until I was chased away by the enraged proprietor, who probably thought I had nefarious designs on his Hornby railway trucks. One fine day, I descried, to my delight, the Doctor and Cyberman; promptly did 50 hours of cleaning and other domestic drudgery around the house; saved up enough earnings to buy the Doctor and Cyberman; and was bitterly disappointed because, as so often in life, once the object of your desire is obtained, you don’t know what to do with it. They fraudulently depicted the other figures – Leela, a Dalek, the TARDIS, and the Giant Robot – on the back of the packets for the Doctor and Cyberman but didn’t tell you they weren’t available yet. So, many more hours were wasted in mooching about said toy shop every Saturday for months on end, and many more hasty departures from the enraged proprietor who didn’t like me at all.

The plastic Leela was rubbish. It was about nine inches tall. It had mad and crazy hair. You could, though, pull its head off and push it back on again; the head was squashy and could easily be reinserted onto the plastic ball at the top of its neck.

It had a bendy knife. A real metal one would be too similar to Za’s, of which Hartnell said, “This knife can cut and stab. I have never seen a finer knife.” But it might have hurt the kiddies who were obsessed enough with Doctor Who to buy this delightful dolly. So bendy plastic it was. Unlike the Doctor toy, Leela’s legs didn’t have a hinge at the knees; they bent. Just like the legs on Barbies. But if you bent them too far, they snapped half way across, producing a hideous injury that the tribeswoman of the Sevateem might have suffered were she not a sufficiently mighty enough warrior to escape invisible monsters who had a fetish for stamping on alarm clocks. Being a good and clean child, I never wondered what was under the top of the shirt bit, so NEVER undid the press-stud on the collar to see underneath. If anyone says I did, they are filthy liars and I will sue.

Some saddo worked out that, if Barbie were real, she would never be able to stand up because her proportions were all wrong. The Leela doll was a bit like that. The only way you could make her stand up was to stick her feet into a big blob of Blu-tac (a marvel which had, like the Leela doll, just come onto the market).

The Denys Fisher dolls do come up from time to time on eBay and they are horribly expensive. The rarer ones like the Dalek, Giant Robot, and Leela command ridiculous prices. Leela is probably the rarest. An unboxed one with plastic bendy knife intact will set you back at least £200 and a boxed one will cost you the best part of 500 quid.

But don’t bother. It’s pants.

The Doctor Who and the Daleks Omnibus is actually really really good. It was produced by Artus Publishing in 1976 and was only for sale in Marks and Spencer’s (hence the “St Michael” on the cover: the M&S brand name).

It’s a big format hardback and basically it’s an anthology of bits and pieces about the Daleks, plus slightly cut versions of the two Target novels of Genesis of the Daleks and Planet of the Daleks. Those two books are among Terrance Dicks’ finest: really well written and worth reading even if you know the TV versions backwards. Genesis restores the dialogue between Ronson and the Doctor about Davros’ backstory, cut from the script, and Planet is Mark Gatiss’ favourite too (he also reads the audiobook and does a splendid job of it).

What makes it, however, is the wonderful artwork. Bordering on the psychedelic, the art is very fine indeed and constitutes a fine example of Seventies magnificence.

Maaan, did someone mention the Seventies? That was one mellow decade, Daddio.

Quite so. Here is the double spread introducing Planet of the Daleks:

I mean, it’s really really good, isn’t it?

Far out! Say, isn’t that that flower child Jo Grant behind the Doc? She was one groovy chick…

Indeed it is. Sometimes the artwork differed radically from the TV imagery, as in the depiction of Nyder from Genesis, which is actually a copy of a photo of one of Hitler’s generals…

Dang, man! That is so hip!

Or, for another piece of psychedelia, here’s a party of Kaled and Muto slaves being forced to load the Thals’ rocket with explosives:

Right on! Rockin’ pic of loading that rockin’ rocket, José!

Don’t call me José. How about this one of Mutos in the wasteland?

Far out, baby! Hit me with some more of those crazy psychedelic pics, Daddio!

Very well. Daleks attacking Thals:

Ten-four! Outta sight! Cool, groovy, mellow, far out, right-on and dang! Cats love them canvases, man!

Talk English, man. I do not understand your idiom.

Gimme more psychedelia, groove-master! Hit me with what you got!

Alas, my store is now empty. The remaining artwork – all uncredited, alas – is less Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds than the previous examples but it’s all still pretty good. Two more, then. One’s generic; the second shows the Dalek army being splurged on by the icecano:

There was another volume in this series for Marks and Spencer’s, called Big Match: Brian Moore’s World of Soccer. Sounds really interesting.

The Doctor Who and the Daleks Omnibus is rare-ish but it clearly had a big print run and it comes up pretty regularly on eBay. A good condition one with the dust jacket is usually between £20 and £30. One of the best Who books ever produced, I think.

Maan, yeah: cool and crazy, Daddio, cats and chicks. It’ll make you mellow and make those good times roll!

Oh, shut up.

Alright, mate? I can see you’re a man of the world. You look like someone who likes a bit of fun, know what I’m saying, squire? D’you wanna come down this back alley? Want to show you something I got in my mac you might be interested in. That’s it, guv, step this way. Not overlooked, are we? Nah. Champion! Hold on, I’ll just take a quick shufti around, just to be on the safe side. Never know when the rozzers might be lurkin’ somewhere, see. Right, we’re fine. 

’Ere you are. Whatchoo think of that then, eh? Magic, innit? Lovely. A bit fruity, wouldn’t you say, squire?  

That’s a Dalek, that is. It ain’t got no clothes on. Naked as the day it was born. Or built. Whatever. Phwaooar, though, eh? Eh? It’s got more pictures of it inside: look at that! Cor, wouldn’t mind seein’ some of that in the pub on a Saturday night, know what I’m saying? Look at them curvy bits and all them protuberances! All them probes on it! Magic, eh? Hurhurhur.  

Oh yeah, there’s some bird with it as well. Dunno who she is. But never mind the dame: look at that Dalek! Them burnished surfaces! Them smooth lines! Them lovely bumps! 

Tell you what, I can do you a deal. Three hundred quid, cash.

What? You’re not interested? Listen, son, there’s blokes out there who’d pay a grand for this. It’s an original, too, not one of them fan reprints. It’s a little bit of history, it is, a bit of our heritage. Come on, I can see you want it really, you got that look in your eyes. 

All right, don’t then. Don’t know what’s got into youngsters these days. Time was I could make a mint selling pics of Daleks. It’s all that political correctness, that’s what it is. Can’t get rid of nudey Daleks for love nor money these days. 

Oi! Anyone want to buy some postcards of Sea Devils in revealing fishnets? Naked as the day they was hatched! 

Girl Illustrated volume 8 number 10 was published in 1977 by some Dirty Mac Brigade outfit. It cost 55p and was not for sale to anyone under 18. By today’s standards (not that I’d know, of course!), it’s very tame. A fan reprint was produced in the noughties; originals go for a minimum of £250 on eBay and they’re very rare. As far as we know, Katy Manning was the only lead actor from Doctor Who to have appeared in this genre of literature.

I guess it ought to be said that this sort of stuff is ethically dodgy; it’s not very respectful to ogle people, especially when they pose for such things when they’re down on their luck: Katy said she was broke and did it for the money. That said, she later commented you’d need a magnifying glass to see anything, and she’s not expressed regret for doing the photoshoot. Girl Illustrated volume 8 number 10 wins the award for the dodgiest piece of Doctor Who merchandise produced so far.

Still, the Dalek looks nice. 

Good grief! It’s Jon Pertwee, BBC TV’s Doctor Who! 

In 1973, when Season 10 was on air and the Doctor battled giant maggots, Omega, Drashigs, and invisible Daleks (their ranks ably swelled by Louis Marx toy Daleks – that’s fabulous ’70s SFX for you); when the Doctor was a bit of a toff and declared he was a nobleman of Draconia; when Ted Heath had just taken us into the Common Market and we nearly missed some of Doctor Who because of power cuts; when Theresa May was in the sixth form and Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage were still at prep school; when I missed the first 10 minutes of Frontier in Space Part 4 because we were late back from the BBC Visual Effects Exhibition at the Science Museum (it was wizard and had a police box you walked through to get into a mock-up of the TARDIS set)…

Then it was that the Co-op did publish its mighty and immortal work, Baking Your Cake & Eating it.

This was a recipe book which showed you how to bake a cake and sundry other delicacies. No instructions were included on how to eat it. The publisher presumably assumed that the reader needed no briefing on this. 

But, who’s that on the back cover? Or should I say: WHO’s that on the back cover, hohoho?

Jehoshaphat! It’s Doctor Who himself, spouting some extraordinary and risible guff. Here is what the great man said: 

“Men* may go shooting off to outer space but it’s really their inner space that matters most. I’m sure I’m not the only one who likes to be adventurous at meal times. When the meal I’m eating is home cooked, but doesn’t cost the earth, then I know I’m getting the best of all worlds.”

*Note: “men”. No chicks. 

That’s it. That’s the Doctor Who connection. (And what the hell is he on about anyway?) Jon is not mentioned elsewhere in the book. Extensive research (i.e. at least 3 minutes with Google) does not reveal the fee Jon was paid, which would then have been in those new-fangled pounds and “new pence”, as we used to call them (yes, we did, and the abbreviation used to be “np” rather than “p”, too). Jon was a bit of a businessman and was not averse to making a few np out of his role as BBC TV’s Doctor Who, you see. (Why, he even made a record of him rapping a brilliant poem called “I cross the void beyond the mind”, over a piano-led version of the Doctor Who theme tune.)

I’m not sure whether that’s a cake or a jelly in front of Jon’s kipper tie… perhaps it’s an alien space monster that’s about to leap into his face and attack him for talking garbage. Yeah, that must be it. I’m sure that’s right. 

Baking Your Cake & Eating It is fairly widely available on eBay, and you can sometimes find it on the bottom shelves of secondhand bookshops. One place in Cromer had two for sale and I bought both of them. The eBay price for this tome is usually about a tenner. Hurry, hurry, hurry while stocks last!

What, I hear you ask, does this mysterious “Tohtori Kuka” have to do with that wanderer in space and time known only as Dr. Who, the Doctor, Theta Sigma, John Smith, and Doctor Von Wer? Well, put that chair down and let me tell you. “Tohtori Kuka” is “Doctor Who” in Finnish. Two of the Target books were translated into Finnish in the 1970s. Both were only available in hardback. Both were produced in a larger format than the Target books, so they are large and Scandinavian – “Big Finnish”, hahahaha.

Ahem. 

Alas, Tohtori Kuka only had two adventures: he saved the world from the Autonien Hyokkays and also from the deadly Luolahirviot. The Finnish books present the good Tohtori as a kind of superhero: he is said on the blurb to have “special powers” which enable him to zoosh through time and space. Tohtori Kuka, you will be pleased to hear, also puts his special powers to use to benefit mankind. I think. I don’t really know. You try typing Finnish into Google translate. It’s hard. And the English you get back is basically gibberish. Here’s an example: “a deported Doctor Who is one of the space-age states that can easily move from one age to the other.” I think this means: “The exiled Tohtori Kuka is one of the Space-Time Lords who can easily move from one age to another.” But then, Kuka knows? 

The covers are new and they are rubbish. The Autons are fat and have big muscles, as all shop window dummies do. They are scowling. Here they are: 

And here are the Luolahirviot. Yes, this is the Finnish for “Cave Monsters”, i.e. the Silurians. Note the third eye. Aren’t they nice? 

They do remind me of something. Can’t quite think.  

Ah, got it! 

Yes, it’s the soup dragon from The Clangers! Whether Morka, Okdel and K’to were purveyors of soup and suppliers of blue-string pudding to the rest of the hibernating Luolahirviot is unclear. Let us hope so. 

In these Who-lean times, when we are depressed by starvation from new episodes of our favourite programme (no, really: aren’t the Jodie Whittaker stories fabulous?), I offer you the image of the soup dragon as a panacea to gladden your hearts and see you through a year of Kuka-less Sundays. Here she is again. 

Bye-bye, Okdel! Please keep the soup simmering for us! Don’t let Tohtori Kuka scoff it all! Bye-bye!