Ian McMillan: Who and why... my mission in a faraway land

But now the tape is off and I can announce to Yorkshire and The World (they’re the same thing, of course) that I’m going to be the new Dr Who.

Yes, amazing, isn’t it? I remember watching the early episodes of Dr Who from behind my Auntie’s settee as she tried to reassure me by telling me that the Daleks were ‘just dustbins with brushes on’ and over the years although I’ve not been a regular fan I’ve sort of kept in touch with the good Doctor by osmosis, by catching glimpses on the TV and in the papers, and I know that the identity of the new Dr is a big deal. Well (I’m pointing at myself now) it’s me.

The producers approached me by email a few weeks ago and asked for a meeting to, in their words, ‘discuss something of major importance’ which normally means I’ve won some timeshare in Ingoldmells but after a back-and-forth of emails they convinced me they were bona fide and I agreed to meet up with them.

They wanted to come to my house but I always discourage that sort of thing because people might catch a glimpse of my slippers so we met in a café. We sat at a table in the corner and our espresso cups gleamed in the Yorkshire sun and they came straight to the point and asked me the Dr Who question. Would I like the role? And would I like the next series to begin in Yorkshire?

Initially I was flattered, but then loads of questions tumbled into my mind like junk mail through a letterbox. In the end I boiled my questions down to two. Why Me? And why here? To their credit, they answered them both.

They explained that the Doctor had come from a place far, far away at the edge of the known universe but he was able to zip backwards and forwards in time and space and that’s why I fitted the bill exactly, and that’s why this part of Yorkshire was just right. I must have looked confused and they smiled and pointed out of the café window in an attempt to enlighten me.

Outside, on the street, an old miner was making his steady way to the betting shop; his breath was coming in great heaving and wheezing gulps caused by many years at the coal face and he had to keep pausing for breath. He wore a flat cap at an angle that was just the miserable side of jaunty. A gaggle of kids ran past him on their way to college; their hair was piled high and swept across as though they’d not been to the hairdressers but the cake decorators. Across the road some whistling chaps were boarding up a closed-down shop that was next door to a closed down pub. Everywhere you looked, people were texting and sending tweets but if you looked more carefully you’d see that nobody was talking.

The TV types turned to me and smiled. I looked blank. “A place far, far away at the edge of the known universe,” they said, and I suddenly realised from their voices that they weren’t from These Parts, they weren’t Local. They were, and I could tell this from the size of their Blackberries and the cuts of their suits, from The South. And to them The North really was a place at the edge of the known universe inhabited by strange creatures. And to them The North exists in a strange cocktail of past, present and future and, as a representative of this part of the world, I inhabit that same Vortex of Time and Space (which I believe was once the preferred name for Rotherham Bus Station). “We’ve read your columns and you often seem to be a bit of a Time Lord, writing about the olden days one week, and then about something that’s just happened to you, and then sometimes about things that may happen in years to come,” they said.

I nodded, vaguely comprehending what they were on about. One of the leaned forward with a look of triumph in his eyes. He said: “You’re a Time Lord of Print and that’s why we want you to be the new Dr Who.”

And of course I’m making this up but it often seems to me that, to people from The South, we must seem like odd time travellers. We talk about the past a lot, and our present is being crumpled in our hands like paper and the future is uncertain. And I’d like to fast forward a few decades in a time machine and then come back and tell you it’s all okay, that the North-South divide didn’t grow into a vast and yawning chasm.

Such a shame I’m not really the next Dr Who.