Picture the scene: Asda, the very early 1980s. A mum is paying for her shopping as her daughter stares ahead, scanning the shelves of the newspaper/books/magazine section beyond the tills, hoping to spot a familiar logo. Would today be the day? There hadn’t been one there last week, or the week before, but maybe… perhaps… if the shopping trip somehow coincided with the publication date and no-one else had had time to grab the lone copy they stocked… Was there any chance I (yes! I was indeed the girl in question!) might be heading home with a new copy of Doctor Who Monthly?
Most of the time, sadly, the answer was no. On a few wonderful occasions, the answer was yes. Oh, they were glorious days! Back home I’d read it from cover to cover. The thrill of seeing photos from stories you’d never watched. The excitement of discovering the storylines of adventures that hadn’t yet been made into Target books. The amazement of discovering that the Gary Russell you had had posters of on your walls was the same Gary Russell who wrote for DWM (and no, I wasn’t the reader who wrote in to ask).
ILLUSTRATION: BEN MORRIS