I think that spark burns quietly inside so many of us. Smouldering since those days when everyone watched. A few weeks ago, I went to have my hair cut. The new barber glared at me, a tough, gnarly, squinting Scotsman. I was a bit terrified. Far too scared to turn round and walk out. He sat me down and asked me what I do. I said that I work on Doctor Who. “Never watch it,” he barked. OK.
But then he drifted. He smiled and got a faraway look in his eyes. He said he did watch it when he was a wee lad. Tea with mum and dad then the TV on a Saturday night. He remembered how scared he was, one week, when a woman simply walked into the sea. I said: ‘That’s Fury from the Deep! From 1968! That was Maggie Harris, possessed by a Weed Monster from under the North Sea, walking to her death.” I told him he could go and watch it again, on the iPlayer, 55 years later. He laughed and said he might, and then we talked about everything – TV and family and life and love and loss. All because of an old TV show.