Who’s funny

HAVE I pronounced Toby Hadoke's surname correctly I inquire? "No, but you're not the first and you won't be the last. It's Hay-doke although there's no logical rhyme or reason why that should be the case. I used to joke that my ancestors were fisherfolk who got ideas above their station and then my mum researched into our family tree and it did turn out that in the last century a Mr Haddock married a woman who didn't want to be saddled with a fishy surname so they dropped two letters and added an e. It's purely a precursor to Hyacinth Bouquet' Bucket,"

reveals the stand-up booked for appearances at Stockton Riverside Fringe Festival and York's The Other Side on August 5.

On his far-sighted decision to create the Edinburgh Fringe Festival comedy routine Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf, just as Doctor Who Mania gripped the nation again, he says: "I'd like to think even if Doctor Who hadn't come back I'd have done a show like that but the timing was just great.

When I first started writing it, it was very much a party political broadcast for the Doctor Who party if you like. I realised that the audience was responding to the more personal stuff based on me growing up without a dad watching Doctor Who until he was taken away and when he came back I was a dad myself. So there are interesting parallels of how something that you really like can reflect your life. So that's why I think it's worked."

Hadoke's been invited to record a BBC Radio 7 series based on the comedy act and reveals that the producer involved had never seen Doctor Who until the stand-up comic came along. The series is due to be broadcast in July and will be released as a CD.

Originally the idea was for a recording of the live show but it regenerated into a script involving other actors which pleases Hadoke because it means that the stage and radio projects are completely different.

He reveals that it's 90 per cent certain that an original Doctor Who TV companion will feature in the radio cast, playing his mum. When I suggest it might be Leila (Susan Jamieson) who warmed many a young boy's heart in her short leather costume, the comic utters the reaction "well, ah-huh, watch this space".

Hadoke's been invited back to Edinburgh for a week of shows this year before calling a halt to his personal pilgrimage regarding his childhood hero.

The stand-up made his name and reputation on the Manchester circuit where he's best known as the compere of the XS Malarkey Comedy Club.

"I set it up because I thought alternative comedy was getting too expensive and losing its radical edge because the alternative was becoming the mainstream. If you're performing in front of stag and hen do groups then the art goes out of it. I didn't know what I was doing at the start and I think that really helps because I think if you had a piece of paper with all the pitfalls on then I don't think anybody would do it," explains Hadoke who was living off a waiter's salary ten years ago.

His act won the Les Dawson award for comedy in 2003 and he comments: "They say that Les Dawson was mainstream but he has that thing where he looks like he's going to be your typical gruff working class comedian but if you look at his material he was an incredible wordsmith and his verbal dexterity is at odds with that grumpy demeanour. The line between alternative and mainstream is not easily defined any more. I was very proud to win the first award and its since been won by Johnny Vegas and Caroline Aherne."

H E'S less pleased about the treatment of Doctor Who since the plug was pulled on it back in 1989.

Hadoke says: "It never was a cult, this was where a lot of the frustration comes from because Doctor Who wasn't on telly. When I was growing up it was second nature that kids watched Doctor Who and everyone knew what a Dalek was, he was a cultural icon.

You don't say Police Boxes you call them a Tardis. The fact it lasted 26 years doesn't happen by accident."

The scarf he wears really is a replacement for the one that got eaten by moths. "That actually did happen and that was a sign to me; a metaphor for so much, that lost innocence and the fact that Doctor Who wasn't going to come back as far as we were concerned".

"I grew up with Tom Baker, but I must say he's equal for me to Patrick Troughton who was by far the best actor to play the role who could do serious or silly with the movement of one facial muscle. He was a brilliant, superb and underrated actor," he says.

Hadoke is feted over his Doctor Who knowledge but claims that he doesn't pore over statistics. "I know football fans who can tell you who won the FA Cup in 1972 and people think that's normal. Before the days of video, when I was a kid, I had the books so when I watched telly I'd read the credits so I could picture which actor played the character in the book. So I can tell the name the any actor that's played in Doctor Who and it just seems to be how my brain is programmed to work because most of the time I couldn't tell you what day of the week it is."

I test him out with the question on the actors who have played the Doctor's arch Timelord enemy The Master. He quickly reels off that Roger Delgardo was first "but he died in a car accident, and than an opera singer called Peter Pratt did it for The Deadly Assassin and then Geoffrey Beevers took over for one story before turning into Anthony Ainley who was in it through Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy days".

So will he need a time machine to make the two dates he's got booked in the North-East? "I think it'll be my friend's Vauxhall," he jokes.

* Toby Hadoke: Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf will feature on the last day of the Stockton Riverside Fringe Festival, August 3-5, in the site's Worthington Comedy Tent. He'll also appear at The Other Side, York, on August 5