The Who-mour Mill

I feel like starting some more rumours. There's nothing quite so satisfying as starting off a rumour only to have it repeated back to you as fact a few weeks later. With Dr Who back on the air the time is surely ripe for me to manufacture some disinformation on the subject. How about this, for starters: Stephen Hawking is to appear in the series finale as Davros, evil creator of the Daleks. It's almost credible. After all, fellow celebrity scientist Richard Dawkins is to appear in an episode playing himself, so it is entirely credible that Hawking might want to go one better. After all, playing Davros would not only show the power of science to master the world, but would also provide an opportunity to demonstrate that serious disability is no bar to galactic domination. Davros surely has to be the most successful wheelchair-user in fiction - he created an evil master race that terrorised the galaxy and destroyed Gallifrey, home of the Timelords, not once, but twice. (He created a second army of Daleks after the first lot rebelled against under the Dalek Supreme).

For good measure, I could also claim that, at the series' climax, David Tennant will be forced to regenerate (actually, you have my brother to thank for this one). Having seen off the threat of Davros and the Daleks and saved the galaxy once more, the Doctor decides to celebrate at a Cardiff curry house. Reckless as ever, he engages in a bit of hubris and orders the hottest curry on the menu. Despite downing several pints of Tiger lager, the Doctor finds himself seriously over heating and is forced to regenerate into Sanjeev Bashkhar or Jimi Mistry. Actually, the latter would be slightly more credible - he isn't doing much at the moment but still has a bit of an international profile. An Anglo-Asian Doctor would fit neatly with the BBC's policies on representing cultural diversity on screen. It would be great to get that one running - you could just see the likes of the Daily Mail picking it up and bellowing about 'political correctness gone mad!'. Brilliant!