WWW

The Internet is a mixed blessing I think. On the one hand it is an amazing resource tool, as I have discovered many times. Years and years ago I picked up a book at a jumble sale, called "Roger Moore and the Crimefighters". The 'hook' for me was not, with all due reference to our resident Bond girl, the excitement of the then-current 007 indulging in extra-curricular children's adventures; but rather that the book was written by one Malcolm Hulke.

Rather sadly, that name probably means nothing to anybody EXCEPT to we Doctor Who fans. During the 1970s and 80s Hulke was generally credited in learned fan magazines as having written many of the most exceptional Doctor Who stories of the Jon Pertwee era; during the 1990s and beyond, as said stories began to see the light of day again on video, the general opinion tended to be that he was responsible for several worthy but really rather dull and ploddy Doctor Who stories. On seeing part one of Malcolm Hulke's "The Sea Devils" in 1992 my brother very acutely pointed out that almost nothing happens in it, and with a modern eye it has to be said that a great many of Hulke's episodes could be accused of the same thing. On the other hand (since I like to try and give some kind of balance) his "Colony of Space" does have a cult following all its own...

More to the point, though, during the late-1970s (having spent the early 70s knocking out said worthy but ploddy Doctor Who stories) Malcolm Hulke adapted several of his scripts into books, and these have thankfully not dated in the same way that the early 1970s TV shows have. Terrance Dicks is of course justifiably praised for all his excellent work on the Target range, but the one downside to this is that a lot of other deserving names tend to be overlooked. Doctor Who And The Cave Monsters/The Sea Devils/The Doomsday Weapon/The Others I Can't Be Bothered To List, are all well-written, unpatronising, in their own way quite adult, books for children, and as a child I lapped them up. Certainly, wrenching myself forcibly back to the point at which I began, the name of the author was enough (and yes, OK, possibly the 10p price tag helped clinch the deal) to make me pick up "Roger Moore and the Crimefighters".

Without turning this into a Doctor Who column, I would nevertheless be negligent if I didn't tell you about the book itself which, for a fan like myself turned out to be an intriguing cocktail. The juvenile Crimefighters of the title (a kind of modern-day Famous Five, except there's only three of them) have a dog called Dalek, and at one point the villain of the piece obtains a policeman's uniform from the BBC costume department by claiming that he is appearing in that evening's recording of Doctor Who!!! Anyway, such references were enough, back in the days of the BBC's Message Boards (and of course I like to think of my time on there as being very much the golden years) for me to ask whether anybody else had ever come across this book, or indeed any others in the series.

So, imagine my surprise when I found that there was not only someone 'out there' who had read the books, but that he had also joined the Crimefighters Club! This, incidentally, did not, as you might have expected, involve a rigorous training program, learning espionage skills, practicing martial arts, being trained in anti-interrogation techniques; but rather the simple completion of an application form on the back page of the book. Where else but on the Internet could I possibly have learned this, or indeed found a webpage devoted to the series? (By the way, the Crimefighting individual in question is well known to anybody who populates the Planet Skaro message board, or even to avid followers of Jonno's That Was The DWM That Was columns. I could tell you his name, but then I'd have to kill you...)

But it's not just bizarre Movie crossovers/spin-offs/cash-ins that make the Internet such a valuable research tool. In the good old days people would sit around in their front rooms or in pubs half-remembering old TV shows that they could no longer recall the names of, but which featured so-and-so, who was a sort of something or other, and he used to do this or that... Well, it was really good anyway, whatever and whoever it was!!

Nowadays we can just look it up on the net! I've already talked at length about the glory that is the IMDB, but it goes much further than that (although just today that wondrous site has rewarded me with the news that the old bus driver from the latest "Harry Potter" film also played Chenchu in an episode of "Doctor Who" back in 1964). Remember "The Mysterious Cities of Gold" from Philip Schofield's era of Children's BBC? There's a site about it here. Curious as to the mysteriously unrepeated black & white episodes of "Upstairs Downstairs"? Wonder no more, but rather click here.

However, and recalling now my opening claim about the mixed blessing, there are perhaps some things that are best left alone. Like the lamb to the slaughter that I am, I registered on my old primary school's website  a few years ago, or at least I did once I'd got over the shock of it actually having one. It wasn't, and isn't, anything very fancy - I logged my name, when I left the school, where I am now, and my email address. That was about it, although I did find to my surprise that I could name every single member of my class at Primary School, even 20 years after leaving. I don't think I could make such a bold claim about Secondary School, which may (or more likely may not) be significant.

Anyway, a few months later I received an email out of the blue, from a Trevor Norris. Being somewhat virus-paranoid I didn't immediately open it, but rather scratched my head (metaphorically speaking, please don't picture me as some kind of Stan Laurel impersonator) over who it could be from. After a while I realised that I did know one person by that name, namely from my class at Primary School - and upon opening the email I found that it was indeed this self-same person who had sent the email, having seen my name on the old school website!

It should perhaps be pointed out that the time I left Primary School (July 1982) coincided with us moving from Carlisle, which is 10 miles south of Scotland, to Holsworthy, which is 10 miles east of the Cornish coast, and so I haven't seen anybody from my Primary School days in more than two decades. Up until the moment I received that email every other member of my Primary School class was still, as far as I was concerned, eleven years old, many of them still wearing short trousers. But once I had opened the email I knew that Trevor Norris was now the same age as me, I knew that he had apparently gone past the "Girls - Yuch!" stage at which I'd left him and was now settled, and I knew that he had a job considerably more full-time and high-flying than a paper-round.

More uncomfortably I also knew that we no longer had anything in common at all, other than those few years at Primary School. We traded a few emails, but other than the most cursory facts about our current lives, they were simply exchanges of memories - Do you remember the school trip to Edinburgh Zoo? Do you remember the day the space shuttle launched? Do you remember them knocking down the old canteen? Do you remember... Other than those relatively few, and indisputably minor, events we were little more than strangers.

The Primary School website played another role in puncturing the bubble that I had effectively wrapped around that time. In my mind, the school now is still as it was then, the staff not a day older, unchanged, forever the same. Of course rationally speaking I realise that isn't the case - even at a flattering estimate my old Headmaster was in his 50s, my 4th year form teacher at least that age, so both would be retired quite some time ago now. But in my mind, and with no information to the contrary, they were still there, like characters in a book who are always the same each time you read it.

But browsing on the website I found a passing reference to "the tragic death" of one of the teachers. It was my 2nd year form teacher in fact, a wonderful teacher who used to delight us all with his readings of stories at the end of the school day. I asked the question on the site's forum, and eventually learned that he had indeed died. Apparently he lived in a first floor flat and his neighbour had locked herself out. He offered to go along the window ledge from his flat into hers (I presume her window was partly open) and thus let her in, but in so doing he slipped off the ledge and fell.

It's very hard to describe how I felt when I first read that. On the one hand it had happened something like 12 years before - but to me it was an event that had only just happened. It was not unlike picking up a favourite book and suddenly finding that one of the characters is no longer there. Too late to do anything about it, and inappropriately late to be mourning, I nevertheless took a few days to fully take this 'old news' in.

Maybe there are some things better left in the past rather than dug up and looked at. On the other hand, maybe knowledge can never be a bad thing. I'm still not sure whether I am better off knowing that the people and the world of 1982 have moved on, or if I would be happier just imagining them all exactly as they were when I left them.

The Internet also, of course, allows this column to be broadcast to the nation on a more or less weekly basis. Whether that is an example of the 'net as blessing or curse I will leave you, dear reader, to decide...