Somerset TV museum celebrates Dr Who
And now…. straight from the sticks: one of the most unlikeliest TV stories you’re likely to read all year.
The TV Radio & Toy Museum, based in the ridiculously beautiful village of Montacute, Somerset is marking the 45th anniversary of the first broadcast of Dr Who with a celebratory weekend, according to last Thursday’s edition of our local paper in these parts, the Western Gazette.
The event takes place on 22 and 23 November featuring characters “from the show” including a Tardis, K9 and Daleks. Here’s the killer piece of information: “Dr Who gifts will be on sale.”
Now, I don’t know if there is a 45th anniversary looming for Dr Who. I found no mention of it during a cursory examination of the official BBC Dr Who website. But it seems to me this may be a way to sell Dr Who paraphernalia in the run-up to Christmas. And why not? Dr Who is big business and the good people of Montacute have just as much right as anyone else (the BBC) to cash in on the franchise.
The thing that amuses is just how bad this celebration might be. To give you some idea of the scale of the Montacute TV Radio & Toy Museum, imagine a 1950s village bakery with plate-glass shop window and you are getting a pretty good mental image. Big, it ain’t. To visualise the appalling nature of the dummies shown in this museum, peer if you will at the photo below. In the shop, sorry, museum window are of course TV/Somerset gems Worzel Gummidge and Aunt Sally.
