Is that a Sonic Screwdriver in your pocket...?

Diddly-dum, diddly-dum, diddly-dum, dumba-dee-dum, diddly-dum, diddly-dum, diddly-dum, dumba-dee-dum, diddly-dum, diddly-dum, diddly-dum, dumba-dee-dum, diddly-dum, diddly-dum, diddly-dum, woooooo-eeeeeeee-oooooooooo!!!!!!!!!

If you are one of the poor souls working at Olympia right now this is something you hear on average about 48 times an hour for 8 hours a day. Personally I think I could cope with that even if it meant that I could still hear it rattling around my skull in the middle of the night. In fact I have to confess that I hear it most of the time anyway. The drumming, the incessant drumming…!!!

The point I’m badly getting to is that last Wednesday I reverted back to being a seven year old when I visited the Doctor Who Experience with the present Mrs Hayward.

I tried to play it cool to start with and I approached Olympia casually, not once breaking out into a run. Once at the entrance though the inner child started to emerge and I was prepared to trample small children to get in. Thankfully there were none in my path on this Wednesday lunchtime, just other ‘old enough to know better’ men, some with their long suffering wives and girlfriends in tow.

I don’t intend to spoil it for those who may go, or bore those who couldn’t give a toss, but it’s awesome. I have been to some fairly half arsed Doctor Who exhibitions in the past displaying obscure tatty props and flea bitten costumes while eerie generic space music plays quietly in the background. This however was something else.

First you are ushered into a room where you are bombarded with clips from the last series but before you know it you are walking through a crack in time and the TARDIS has materialised in front of your eyes. Seriously, one minute it wasn’t there and the next there’s a wheezing sound and there it is. Better still, you get to go through the actual doors of the old blue Police Box and…..it’s bigger on the inside.

If you’re thinking this is all happening on a screen you’d be wrong, this all happens right in front of you. I physically walked through the Police Box doors and there I was, inside the TARDIS.

Well, all I can say is after that I got to help to land the thing (I was in charge of the navigation lever), run up a corridor, be menaced by a Dalek or three, and then we had to be careful not to blink. Blink and we’d be dead. We couldn’t turn our backs, we couldn’t look away and we certainly couldn’t blink. You know why.

After this and a scary moment when we were harassed by all manner of creatures whirling through the time vortex at us, we were ushered out into the main exhibition where I got to sit in the Pandorica chair and display my most Doctor-like pose, Mrs Hayward took on the Cyber Leader, and strange creatures in school uniforms ran shrieking past us. OK, so these were proper school kids on the coolest school trip ever. I mean it, we only got the boring old British Museum or the tedious New Forest when I was at school (“oh look, a pony, oh look, another pony, on a tumulus”).

I have to confess that the inner fan in me was well chuffed when the young whippersnappers identified monsters from Doctors gone by. “It’s a Zygon”, shouted one enthusiastically. Let’s be honest, the Zygon’s not been menacing anyone since Tom Baker ran into them in 1976 so I guess someone had been watching their Dad’s DVDs. Well the ones they could reach.

Like all good museums you end up in the shop. I was reasonably restrained (I put the lifesize Amy Pond cardboard cut-out down and just bought a t-shirt) but Mrs Hayward went mad for the funky Dalek pen and is now using it at work. Have I mentioned that she’s a solicitor?

Most people who know me are aware that I am a Doctor Who fan. I look like one for a start, which meant that my clones were in full force at this little event. I have been excited about this little TV show ever since I opened a Christmas present back in 1978 that contained a little red Dalek that shouted "EXTERMINATE". OK, so I nearly soiled myself I was so scared of it but that didn’t matter.

I loved it when Tom Baker seemed like the coolest person on the planet back in the 70s. I loved it even when it stopped being cool and all my friends were watching 'The A Team'. I booed at the screen when the BBC took it off in 1989 and cheered when it came back, properly, in 2005.

Some boys dreamt of walking through the tunnel and out on to the pitch at Wembley, some dreamt of being Action Man and shooting at the enemy, some dreamt of doing stunts on a motorcycle like Evel Knievel. This little boy dreamt of walking through those TARDIS doors and flying away to another time. Last Wednesday it felt like I did.

You know what? You could too. There’s nothing stopping you. It’s running until at least September. Oh, and don’t tell Mrs Hayward, but I really want to go again.

Diddly-dum, diddly-dum, diddly-dum, wooooo-eeeeee-ooooooo!!!!!!!!!