“THE Gary Russell?” I asked warily. Mr Russell and I have crossed swords on a number of occasions after he spent the early part of the last decade refusing to review my books in his ‘Doctor Who’ Magazine column.

“Well, a Gary Russell impersonator” admitted the man. “But he’s very good – he does 2006 Gary Russell, 1998 Gary Russell and, for a bit extra, 1989 Gary Russell with the Hugh Grant hair.”

“He’ll do it” said my employee before I had a chance to object. “Subject to a few terms and conditions…”

With yet more cash in my pocket I waited nervously in the wings for the Gary Russell impersonator to stop banging on about himself and introduce me.

“But enough about me – no really – the man you’ve all come here to see is a legend in his own lifetime. A historian who would’ve graced any academic institution but instead chose to bring his historical skills to the people. Choosing television as his period, he has enriched and enlivened the subject of telehistory with his unique blend of charm, wit, attention to detail and his uncanny ability to surprise even the most jaded of colleagues. I could go on about this man all night but why not hear it from the horse’s mouth. Ladies and gentlemen – the Dennis Brent impersonator.”

The real Gary Russell would never have been as complimentary about the real Dennis Brent. Oh to live in a world of fakes, phoneys and falsehoods.

I walked onto the stage and, in spite of myself, gave a little wave. It felt alien and a bit effeminate so I won’t be doing it again. When asked about it later I said I was working off some masturbatory cramp prior to a prolonged stint holding a microphone.

“I suppose the obvious first question is when you knew that you would be a telehistorian?” asked the Gary Russell impersonator.

“Like all small children I was imaginative and enjoyed flights of fancy where a single thought would take me on a journey to all sorts of fantastical and magical worlds. I quickly realised that such behaviour was utterly bootless and that I should start making lots of lists. Soon I was listing everything I could find and my collection of lists became thoroughly unmanageable. That was when I began to catalogue my lists. Soon cataloguing became even more enjoyable than listing things and the only lists I made were of things I wanted to catalogue. At some point around my seventh birthday my mother became so exasperated with me going about the house cataloguing everything that moved (and most things that didn’t)” I paused for a well deserved laugh, “that she persuaded her live-in life-partner to buy me a television. This opened up a whole new world of possibilities and I was hooked. At first I rationed myself to one hour of viewing per day as I was still relatively new to cataloguing in those days and one hour of television was enough to fill a whole evening’s cataloguing. Eventually I was able to catalogue while I watched and do it in real time. This massively increased the amount of cataloguing I was doing and it dawned on me that I would have to learn an entirely new skill – archiving. That was one of the greatest days of my young life I can tell you.” I paused for another well deserved laugh. The audience was eating out of my hand. “I spent a few months archiving my collection of catalogues and that indirectly brought me into contact with indexing. For a while I was splitting my time between cataloguing, archiving and indexing but eventually I learned to catalogue, archive and index in more or less one smooth motion.”

“When did the big leap come?”

“You mean the defining moment when the boy Dennis Brent became the man Dennis Brent?”

“Exactly.”

“I forget the exact day – it’ll be listed in my personal archive no doubt” pause for a huge laugh, “but I remember it clearly. We were on a school trip to a water balloon factory and our teacher asked if we wanted to stop for fizzy pop and jam sandwiches. I protested because some of the rough boys had committed various misdemeanours at the back of the bus and so I felt they hadn’t earned the privilege of stopping for fizzy pop and jam sandwiches. I was about half way through my list of their rule transgressions when one of them grabbed me and threw me out of the coach window. I landed in a roadside bush and watched my schoolmates disappear down the motorway. At first I thought I would die in this barren wilderness but once the dust cleared I saw I had been dumped outside something called a ‘written records archive’. The words appealed to me far more than either ‘fizzy pop’ or ‘water balloons’ and I wandered inside. The lady on the desk took pity on me and said she’d show me around the records room until the bus came back for me.”

“Was it a good written records archive?”

“Having been back recently I was surprised at how small and pathetic it was. I suppose for a local written records archive it is acceptable – a decent enough place to take the family for a day out – but having worked in all of the world’s biggest and most expansive written records archives it was rather like going back to ones corner shop after years shopping at Bargainsave.” This time the laugh wasn’t as loud as I’d hoped. I was afraid I might’ve peaked too early.

“What particularly do you remember about that first trip to a written records archive?”

“The single piece of factual information which most sticks in my mind you mean?”

“If you like.”

“It was a simple list of Pathfinders to Mars transmission dates but to my pre-pubescent eyes it was a taste of paradise.”

“I’m sure we can all relate to that. Before we take our first question from the audience I wonder, Dennis Brent impersonator, if you recognise the voice of our special mystery guest from your past?”