DON’T CALL YOURSELF A FAN IF YOU’VE NEVER EATEN EXTRA WEETABIX FOR THE CAUSE

Ever since ARMY OF GHOSTS, I’ve been negotiating with that intergalactic Noel Edmunds, Dorium Maldovar, to swap a pristine Weetabix packet from 1975 for a Void Sphere.

I cunningly fed my baby blue dupe rumours that this packet contained the fabled “Tom Baker 2 (alternative disco pose)” character card.

The Weetabix themselves after nearly 40 years were now just dried up and withered husks so the resemblance to the original was perfect.

Just like the Second and Third Doctors inching towards the safety of the TARDIS as Omega reached mesmerised for that fatal recorder, I sidled nonchalantly towards the door as Dorium slipped that first nervous finger under the flap and reached into the packet. As he withdrew the precious contents, I scarpered with my Void Sphere, cackling in triumph: “I have the Roycastil. Nothing can stop me now.” Yet still they return to me in my worst nightmares – Dorium’s screams of disappointment: “Four identical White Robots! Again!”

Now, armed with the only vehicle capable of shattering the impenetrable cultural barriers between alternate universes, tomorrow I plan to smash through from London to The North and return home to the bosom of my family in Manchester for Christmas.

London

Yes, there’s a danger that I could become trapped forever in the Void between worlds (the Watford Gap) but the promise of again scenting that sweet Northern air, of feeling the dagger of ice to the bone which is the kiss of a Mancunian raindrop, of hearing the honeyed breath of those vowels, all these give me hope that I will soon tread once more those cobbled lanes of my youth.

When I walk through Market Street in the dark, I can touch with my hands the green on the walls and underneath where the piss has puddled.

 Manchester

As the year draws towards its close, could we ever have expected that the anniversary month would prove so multiply orgasmic? Happy memories! Until the New Year then, as we say in the UK “Merry Christmas”, as they say in the USA “Happy Holidays”, as they say in Canada “We like hockey” and as William Hartnell said in that famous, fourth-wall-breaking toast: “A Happy Christmas to all of you white people at home.”