Anyone who has been a part of any popular sporting or entertainment activity will acknowledge that most fans are just that – decent folk who for some reason are sufficiently impressed by what we do as to want to let us know that. However, within that mix there are the occasional incidents when the fan fails to grasp that we are in fact human beings, different only from them in terms of the job we do.

A female colleague told me recently that one fan asked for her autograph and then spent ten minutes telling her why her performance in a recent television programme had not been very good. Apparently she dissected it scene by scene, line by line before smiling, thanking her for the autograph and disappearing into the crowd.

Most employees in less high profile jobs are free of the constant danger of being told how rubbish you are, how they preferred most of the predecessors, how much weight you’ve put on and how your blond curly hair is no more. To be honest, I can’t really complain because the majority of fans I meet at conventions are enthusiastic, friendly and happy to meet you. But every now and then, as happened to me this last weekend in America, there will be the young man who comes up to me, looks at the photograph on the wall behind me – of me as Doctor Who – and says ‘What time will Mr Baker be here?’ What can one say? Do you shatter his youthful illusions and tell the awful truth? That the dribbling dotard standing before him is what happens to time lords 30 years after their Tardis has been taken away? Or do you do what I did – forlornly mutter ‘Soon... He’ll be here soon?’ Later that day I was asked for an autograph by a lady who was a little too eager to say that it was for her father. She told me that he was a great fan of ‘old Sixie’ as I refer to myself (being the sixth incarnation of Doctor Who). Before I could express my thanks and admiration of his good sense she added ‘I never liked your Doctor that much – I liked Jon Pertwee’. I resisted (just) the urge to compare her in like manner to the other fans standing around slack jawed at this slight to their idol. But hey – it goes with the territory – if you don’t want alien attacks, then stay out of the Tardis.