The interest a few years ago in reviving K-9 for a new audience was sudden and short-lived. Within a few brief months the stories had come and gone, and it was assumed that the project had never got off the ground.

These assumptions, however, are wrong; some time had in fact been spent developing the new series and it may come as a surprise to learn that it was the intention of the producers to go back and fully revive the series K-9 and Company, even going so far as to return Elisabeth “Stepping Stones” Sladen to the role of Sarah-Jane Smith.

Aside from updating K-9, the format was to remain essentially the same; although the content of the series was to be more gritty and adult, it would still be set in the same rural middle England as the original. It was intended that a feature length pilot episode, essentially the same as A Girl’s Best Friend (“the script was up for grabs” – Jeremiah Chechnik, producer), would have been followed by a six-part series for the British home market.

Following extensive access to the producer’s archive – two cardboard boxes containing burnt roaches, scribbled notes and some pornography – we can now present the exclusive episode plan to a series that almost was.

Episode 1: A Nasty Habit.

Gradually getting pissed on cheap chardonnay in a bus shelter, Sarah-Jane is surprised to discover a coach-load of old men in suspicious brown robes and tonsured hair-do’s. Her investigations take her to the set of a medieval drama, but when she overhears the ritual chanting “Equity, Equity” she knows it isn’t water and food colouring in the Abbot’s bedpan.

Meanwhile, who is the mysterious stranger determined to turn K-9 into a novelty barbecue? What is the phenomenon having such an adhesive effect on Brendan’s fitness magazines? And why is Aunt Lavinia so obsessed with fish?

Episode 2: Eau de Humanity.

Whilst helping Aunt Lavinia shop for dungarees and comfortable shoes, Sarah-Jane decides to help her writer friend Terrance Dudley by popping into the library for “The Junior Book of Covens and Sects”.

But whom is that raven-haired librarian taking an unhealthy interest in Aunt Lavinia? Who are those hooded men lurking between “Weather” and “Wombles”? And who is that strange man Brendan discovers lurking around the public convenience? Sarah-Jane smells a rat, and it isn’t Brendan’s new perfume…

Episode 3: A Man’s Best Friend.

Running down the road in a pink tracksuit and leg warmers, Brendan is surprised by a group of men who force him to take part in rituals hailing from Ancient Greece. Meanwhile, K-9 looks to be in danger as a tall man with ginger hair and a C5 tries tracking him down.

After two pints of vodka, Sarah-Jane, fresh from taking Aunt Lavinia to her annual Bra-burning, realises this “Sir Clive” is an impostor. How will she break his sinister hold over the home computer market? Why is K-9 rubbing himself against the furniture? And why is Sarah-Jane unable to see straight?

Episode 4: Summer Solstice of Love.

A night spent formation-vomiting in the local Student Union catches up with Sarah-Jane who determines to find out just what happened after the bar had closed. Meanwhile Brendan joins an all-male wrestling group and comes under the influence of a charismatic figure known only as “Julian”.

What is the supernatural force that has turned Brendan’s hair so white? Who were those suspicious figures dancing at the union chanting “Advocat, Advocat”? And why did Sarah-Jane wake up wearing nothing but a fur coat and no knickers?

Episode 5: Not on the Begonias!

As Sarah-Jane recovers from her latest breakdown, she discovers it’s summer fair time in the village of Little Chomping. The weather is unseasonably warm and as flowers start to wilt and tempers fray, Sarah-Jane thinks that someone is using witchcraft to increase their chances of cleaning up at the produce competition. Just as she is getting close to the truth, Brendan is kidnapped by ruthless group of cultists who take him to Manchester – for the weekend of the summer fair!

If nothing is going on then why is Lily Gregson so interested in the size of Aunt Lavinia’s courgettes? What is the medication Sarah-Jane’s doctor prescribed really for? And why does Brendan still have that sacrificial stole from the pilot episode?

Episode 6: Murder, She Hoped.

It’s a particularly slack time for witchcraft so Sarah-Jane is splitting her time between perfecting her Angela Lansbury impression and setting fire to her neighbours’ curtains. When Aunt Lavinia calls from her “conference” in Brighton with tales of strange people entering her bedroom and emptying the mini-bar, Brendan encourages her to investigate. A night-time escapade ensues, and Sarah-Jane discovers Brendan wandering the streets in a seriously dishevelled state.

What is the meaning of his mysterious chant “big fish, little fish, cardboard box”? Why does he profess to love everybody? And why is Aunt Lavinia so keen to visit Allied Carpets?

I have now joined the illustrious ranks of Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Douglas Adams and Ben Elton amongst others in being utterly addicted (well, okay, it’s probably just the live ones who still are) to the works of P.G. Wodehouse.

Admittedly I’m only ploughing my way through the Jeeves and Wooster novels at the moment (coindientally ITV3 – Independent Television’s “When We Were Good” channel – is showing the Fry and Laurie adaptations too) but they are frankly the written equivalent of spun gold. Wodehouse is one of the finest writers ever to put pen – or inked metal – to paper. A wordsmith who manages to be both staggeringly clever, uproarisouly funny and yet completely aposite with his every choice.

His genius should not be understated.

Any man who can come up with lines like the following should be universally adored.

• Many a man may look respectable, and yet be able to hide at will behind a spiral staircase.
• It isn’t often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.
• He caught the eye and arrested it. It was as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla and had changed its mind at the last moment.
• It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.
• Before my eyes he wilted like a wet sock.
• I?��Ǩ�Ѣd always thought her half-baked, but now I think they didn?��Ǩ�Ѣt even put her in the oven.

And so on and so on. The pages are full of them!

I think, though, one of the things that endears me to Bertie Wooster though is his victimisation at the hands of his aunts. They always seem to be pushing or dragging him into some ill-advised venture that even his limited common sense warns him against, but finds them unstoppable.

And I kind of know how he feels.

Anyway. Buy one. Or more. You won’t regret it.

Featuring an obviously depresssive tenth Doctor I find I’m enjoying it enormously.

Favourite panels so far include:

• On the TARDIS
• On the Universe
• On Gallifrey
• On the End of the Universe
• On Time Travel
• On Humans
• On Rose
• On Donna
• On Jack (and again)
• On Torchwood

It’s sort of how I’d play the Doctor if I were, through some freak accident of supremely stupid casting, I were ever given the role.

This site is so added to my favourites list.

Just realised that the Fiction page wasn’t working properly so went to go and get it sorted (’tis done!), only to click on one of the links there to a Doctor Who short story I wrote for the Eighth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith called “Lost and Found“.

The prose needs a bit of tidying up here and there, but I’m actually struck by what a nice little piece it is. It’s not, even if I do say so myself, too bad at all.

The idea is relatively simple, to write 50,000 words of a novel between 1st and 30th November. Today I stand at X words which isn’t admittedly a major amount over, but I’m just impressed I even managed to get as far as 50% of the way this early – I was convinced I’d make it to 30,000 only.

It’s an interesting process though. The idea is to write, obviously, but that’s just write. No editing is allowed – that’s what you do in December, apparently, or more likely (in my case) January. During November you just literally have to fill the pages with words. It means that, if the mood takes you, you can just do the fun bits and sort it all out later, but I’m trying to work in a slightly more linear fashion at the moment – not that it has entirely worked out that way given the jumps back and forwards in time.

So far in those words I’ve had one murder (and one attempted), one extra-marital affair, one mugging that isn’t really, a missing boyfriend and a suicide. And that’s without tying the events at two different ends of a decade together or getting to the militant Christians or blowing anything up.

All of that, of course, looks vaguely promising, but I’m also aware of its major failings already. Thankfully the plot is sort of straightening out in my head as I type and kind of works as a whole which is good, but it’s been hard to write some of the more functional “getting A to B” type stuff done, and some of the prose seems horribly clunky (although some of it I really like), and there have been moments when at the end of a long day my brain just didn’t want to do it and the words had to be almost literally wrenched from me.

But it is proving quite a positive experience all told. I thought 50,000 was a lot of words for a novel, but I strongly suspect that the final first draft when I complete it in the future may be nearer 100,000 before I begin to wield a scalpel over it (and boy will I be trimming away).

But yeah, even though I may still miss the target by the end of the month, I’m still feeling quite a sense of achievement. It’s an idea I’ve been mulling over for about two years now so it’s nice to finally start seeing it work its way down onto the page. And it also means that my claim on the front page of this very site to have started a novel doesn’t now have to have the whispered qualifier “in my head” on it.

So ultimately it’s made less of a liar of me. And hurrah for that.

Certainly made up for book five in the end (the only time so far that I have preferred the film to the novel).

Lets just say it was very satisfying and tied it all up nicely.

Wooo!