We present the final results of our poll to find the Top 5 Fave stories of the Eleventh Doctor’s (Matt Smith’s) era. Along the way, our fearless exposé of financial doping identifies “the Manchester City of Doctor Who stories”.
A slight diversion from our usual subject matter here. As exciting as it can be to upgrade our libraries to the latest format, there’s always the danger of things getting left behind. How many of us still have an audio cassette player or VHS player these days? For many years, one of the favourite memories of Doc’s childhood has been languishing on two audio cassettes at the back of a drawer, unplayable. For fans of the late Kenneth Williams, his vocal gymnastics have always been a treat and they were rarely displayed to such good effect as in his reading of “The Wind in the Willows”, released in 1979.
Copies available online always seem to be quite bad recordings full of background noise but here is one of the clearest versions I’ve heard, split into the four roughly half-hour sides of each audio cassette. It’s well worth a listen for yourself and certainly for children who were always mesmerised by Kenneth Williams’s book readings on shows like Jackanory. There’s the very occasional very brief wobble in the sound for a coupe of seconds but nothing to detract from the performance.
The Diddly Dummers celebrate the podcast’s seventh birthday with a review of the New Year’s Day special “Revolution of the Daleks” and a look at our Christmas presents.
The Three Who Drool assemble in The Whoseum for their annual Christmas gameshow podcast (which is Pertwee-themed this year), playing “Carnival of Monsters”, “The Feast of Stevens”, “Play Your Gel Guards Right” and “Who Said What”. Along the way, they present their most Christmassy Pertwee stories, open their Secret Santa gifts and stock up on mince pies in preparation for that seasonal pillar of the Diddly Dum Podcast, the “Gold Run” quiz looking back on our last 12 months of podcasting. Our “Gold Run” game screen can be seen above if you’d like to follow along.
We reveal the results of the poll to find our listeners’ top five stories from the era of the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy. The Diddly Dummers felt that any occasion related to announcing votes merited an imposing location so we got an intern to hire a conference suite at the swankiest hotel in Mummerset.
The Three Who Drool travel to a local lighthouse to take a look at the Fourth Doctor story “The Horror of Fang Rock”. Along the way, we revisit Hayden’s childhood reading habits, Doc regales us with tales of cob-a-coaling, Hayden casts John Noakes and Roger Moore in Doctor Who, and Mark reveals which 1970s TV show was “a little like The One Show but even less interesting”.
(00:10:37) Hayden’s reading record books can be seen on our Tumbr page here and here and here.
(00:18:50) The original radio series of “The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy” was adapted for full-cast two vinyl albums, with incidental radiophonic music provided by Paddy Kingsland. These have now been re-released on vinyl and CD. The original cover art can be seen here and here. The book which Doc has been reading is “Don’t Panic” by Neil Gaiman.
(01:00:14) “Leela in a baggy jumper” – this audio clip is by former co-host The Rev and can be found at around 01:03:55 into our podcast #001. This podcast would normally be found here but, in early 2020, with a shock, we finally reached our blog storage limit. To give us time to mull over the practicalities and costs of upgrading or seeking another host, we started deleting our early podcasts from this blog in order to make space for new ones. However, they’re saved forever or our own hard drives so, if you’re yearning to listen to these early podcasts, email us at diddlydumpodcast@yahoo.co.uk and we’ll be happy to send them to you in some other way.
The Four Faces of Delusion present their long-delayed Fifth Doctor retrospective in which they take a look at the results of listeners’ votes for the Top 5 Fave stories.
(00:00:00) We open this podcast with a promo for our own Hayden’s spooky new horror novel “The Lurking”. Available at all surviving bookshops and online vendors such as these via these direct links: Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Booktopia and Waterstones.
Beginning with a four-issue limited series written by Eric Saward (Doctor Who) and featuring the mercenary Lytton (as portrayed by Gangster’s Maurice Colbourne), Cutaway Comics is also bringing you art from the UK’s hottest artists including Barry Renshaw (Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog).
Cutaway Comics is inspired by the so-called ‘backup’ stripes of Doctor Who Weekly, which delved deeper into the characters and cultures of the Doctor Who universe away from the Doctor. Stay tuned for some exciting and unprecedented explorations of the worlds of Doctor Who and beyond.
Simon Brett rejoins us for part two of our Comics and Strips special in which we continue looking at Doctor Who comic strips and other comics of our youth and later.
