Surly actor Christopher Eccleston has claimed he was the star of Doctor Who.
Eccleston insists he played the Doctor from March to October 2005 but then stopped because he did not want to become typecast as the sort of actor that isn't in one grim northern drama after another.
But Stephen Malley, a grade five Whovianist from Peterborough, said: "Well he certainly hasn't become typecast because I've no idea who he is.
"Occasionally you do get actors, desperate for publicity, suddenly popping up and claiming they were Doctor Who at some point. The last time it was John Sessions."
Eccleston, who is about to squeeze all the joy out of John Lennon in a new BBC drama, told the Radio Times that he 'did not enjoy the environment and the culture' of the show, adding: "I thought if I stay in this job, I'm going to have to blind myself to certain things that I thought were wrong."
But Professor Henry Brubaker of the Institute for Studies said: "By 'wrong' he probably meant working past six o'clock at night in contravention of EU working directives, or doing episodes that were not about how Thatcherism destroyed Bolton.
"Unless of course he is claiming that Doctor Who is actually a front for heroin smuggling and under-age goat sex."
Eccleston has carved out a sort of career for himself after appearing in the landmark 37-part BBC drama London is Fucking Shit, before going on to star in a series of miserable Jimmy McGovern classics including Bastards and Why Won't it Stop Raining?.
The pair later teamed up for a dismally unsuccessful reworking of the children's adventure series Monkey where Eccleston played a disillusioned trade union activist who could magically transform himself into a library for working class children.
