Interlude: Sharing a flat

In 1993 Andrew and I decided that we would rent a flat together for a while, as he was desperate to move out of his parental home and I was unhappy with my current accommodation sharing a rented house. We ended up with a two-bedroom flat in Mitcham, a location which was mutually convenient as it was near both our families and not far from Morden Tube Station for Andrew to get to work in Central London.

We immediately arranged for cable television to be installed so that we could watch Doctor Who on UK Gold, and during this period Andrew recorded every single story that was broadcast, all of which I believe he still has to this day. I was happy for it to be he who recorded the series onto his own tapes simply because I knew that I was at liberty to watch any one of them whenever I wanted, in the same way that he was free to listen to any of my CD’s whenever he wished. It didn’t occur to me at the time that when we eventually went our separate ways I would be left only with my own modest BBC Video collection, but of course that was far from my mind at this stage.

I can’t say we were your typical twentysomethings sharing a flat; there was no constant partying and loud music every night. We weren’t really into that, but it was still liberating for us to be able to do what we wanted when we wanted. It was at this flat that we recorded many of our silly Doctor Who audio stories, usually helped by copious amounts of alcohol, and whilst this wasn’t the average Friday or Saturday night pastime for blokes of our age, it was what made us happy at the time.

The reason for our lack of ‘normal’ socialising with the opposite sex was simple; my own personal circumstance was obvious, though I didn’t ‘come out’ to Andrew until a year or so after we’d been at the flat, and Andrew was just very shy at the time when it came to girls, though I’m happy to say that he’s recently proposed to his girlfriend and she said yes! I remember the night I revealed to Andrew that I was gay as if it were yesterday; we sat up

until about 4.30 in the morning chatting about it and the problems I had encountered, and this lead to us talking about his lack of confidence with the opposite sex. It was actually getting light by the time we went to bed, and as this was a Thursday night we were absolutely shattered at work the next day, but all-in-all it was quite a bonding experience for us because we’d never really discussed matters of the heart before. He wasn’t really bothered about my revelation, most probably because he told me that he’d already guessed anyway. I suppose the odd message left on our answer phone by a couple of very camp sounding acquaintances of mine didn’t exactly help with my cover.

During the three years we lived at the flat, Andrew wrote a Doctor Who computer game, though that probably sounds a lot more of an achievement than it really was as it was actually written on a ZX Spectrum computer which even by the mid-nineties was already considered an antique. The only thing I remember about the game all these years later is that the representation of the TARDIS was rather amusing as it was incredibly ‘blocky’- it was about as detailed and sophisticated as Ceefax - but thankfully we took a photo of it at the time to allow it to be preserved for posterity, though I’ve included the photo here more to embarrass Andrew than anything else.

Our three years in Mitcham were very happy times for us; we certainly both recall the period with great affection, whether it be the numerous occasions when we were pissed, the time when we purposely burned Andrew’s horrible work shoes on the fire or the thrill of us seeing Peter Andre when we were out shopping at the local supermarket. Well, it was a thrill for me, anyway.

One of our most prolific Who-related activities whilst we lived at the flat was to create alternative soundtracks to existing stories from the series. I’m sure this sounds bizarre – and indeed it was – but all will be explained in the next exciting instalment…..!

Next Episode: Alternative Doctor Who soundtracks – The Edge of Destruction!