WHO 50: 1970:
Inferno.



TV The raised eye brow which greets me from people who know I’m a huge Doctor Who fan, or devotee, or whatever I am, when I tell them I’ve never been to a convention in my life is always amusing.

“You’re never been to convention?” They say, as though being a Doctor Who fan and sitting a large room listening to anecdotes from actors before becoming terribly drunk with some old friends are mutually exclusive.

“No.” I say.

“Why?”

My reasons are well rehearsed.

The cost. Conventions tend to be quite expensive, between the travel, the entrance price and the train travel and since I’m a perennially poor person I’ve never really been able to afford it between the other fan trappings (the merchandise).

Geography. Conventions tend to be held well away from Liverpool, often in a hotel on some inconvenient A-road inaccessible for those of us who use public transport.

Time. Conventions usually happen at the weekends and in Winter months and since 2007 I’ve been working Saturdays and Sundays.

But the other reason is, I’m not really interested in meeting people related to the making of Doctor Who.

I should qualify that by saying I’m not generally interested in meeting celebrities in general.

The reason’s pretty straightforward but let me phrase it as a question.

What if they’re arseholes?

Thought Catalog has done a pretty good job of listing the reasons you shouldn’t meet your heroes.

You’ll be in awe, they’ll never be as impressive as you expect, and forever after that you won’t be able to enjoy their work without it impacting.

As infamous recent examples have indicated, such encounters are fraught with difficulty.

Of course if it was my job, please god, and I didn’t have a choice, I’d probably get over it. And myself.

But yes, that if not the whole reason, a large part of it.

I simply love Doctor Who too much to have it ruined by personal experience.

Which isn’t to say I don’t mourn not having the opportunity to hear the one about the eyepatch joke live when I had the chance.

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