Sue discovered that I was a functioning Doctor Who fan the day I moved in with her and Nicol. Up until then, I’d managed to keep it under wraps.

I didn’t bring that many possessions with me when I moved into Christopher Street in July 1993. All I had was a suitcase, two carrier bags and a small collection of cardboard boxes. When I asked Sue if I could store them in her attic, she demanded to know what was inside them. I think she suspected they might be full of pornography.

Before I could explain, Nicol had already tipped the contents of the nearest box onto the floor.

Nicol: What’s this?

She was waving a VHS cassette in her hand.

Me: That, Nicol, is a Dalek.

She was holding ‘Day of the Daleks’ to be precise. (Infuriatingly, the BBC had edited out all the cliffhangers, but there was no need to burden her with that right now.)

Sue: So, how many tapes like this have you got?

Me: Oh, about six boxes.

Sue: But you’ve only brought six boxes with you.

Given the look on Sue’s face as Nicol systematically unpacked my boxes, I wish they had contained pornography. It would have been easier to explain and marginally less embarrassing. So again I asked Sue if I could store these tapes in her attic. Her reply surprised me:

I stared at my tapes, which Nicol was stacking into neat piles on the carpet. I didn’t think Sue’s shelving suggestion was a trap, but I wasn’t sure. Her home was gorgeous, and it was obvious that a lot of time and effort had gone into making it look just so. You didn’t need to be an interior designer to know that my distended tape collection would create quite the wrong impression.

Nicol was now arranging my tapes into a single quivering tower of plastic. As I watched her play, I thought about putting away childish things again. If I was going to be a father figure to Nicol, maybe this was an opportunity to make a fresh start. Maybe now was the time to stop worrying about continuity errors in ‘Mawdryn Undead’. Maybe the moment had come to grow up.

Wait a minute, this felt like an increasingly momentous decision. How damp was her attic? I didn’t want my tapes to go mouldy up there. And what happened if I decided to buy more? Would I have to hide them in the attic after I’d watched them? That would be a bit weird. Or did it mean that I wouldn’t be buying any more tapes? I wasn’t thrilled about that, either. And then there was my plan to become a fully formed adult in the near future to consider.

Then it hit me: maybe I could watch these tapes with Nicol while we bonded as stepfather and stepdaughter! I started watching Doctor Who when I was Nicol’s age and it had never done me any harm, possibly. The Doctor had been a wonderful role model. He taught me to oppose violence (when he wasn’t committing genocide) and to embrace justice, equality, curiosity and compassion. In fact, I decided, I would be neglecting my duties as a responsible parent if I didn’t show these stories to Nicol. When I met her, Nicol was destined to grow up without a Doctor to call her own. But I could fix that. With my help, Nicol would grow up with seven Doctors to call her own – and I would just grow up.

Sue put up some shelves.

Although I didn’t bring that many possessions with me when I moved into Christopher Street, I did have plenty of baggage, the sort of baggage that made it difficult for me to adjust to my new role as a responsible stepfather.

I was too strict with Nicol, for a start. My own parents weren’t exactly draconian, but they did have some very clear ideas when it came to boundaries and discipline. As far as I could tell, Nicol was allowed to do anything she liked, whenever she liked. I’m not saying she was spoiled – she wasn’t demanding as such – but she did have a ridiculous amount of freedom when it came to what she ate for dinner, what time she went to bed, and, most importantly of all, what she watched on TV.

One night Nicol and I had an argument about something or other – I forget the details now but it probably had something to do with her not eating her vegetables – and in a spectacularly childish move I removed the plug from her television set to teach her a lesson. Sue wasn’t very happy with me when she came home to find her daughter in tears because she couldn’t watch her favourite movies all night. Sorry, Nic.

However, let’s take a look at Nicol’s videos when I moved in, shall we? The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty in Pink and Weird Science. Yes, Nicol was a John Hughes junkie – and there’s nothing wrong with that – I just didn’t think these movies were suitable for a four-year-old child.

(This isn’t strictly true. In ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’ one of the story’s villains chases the dragon in an opium den; in ‘Nightmare of Eden’, the aliens turn out to be an addictive narcotic; and in ‘Snakedance’, the Fifth Doctor enjoys a hallucinatory trip after being bitten on the wrist by a snake. Also, the Sixth Doctor’s hideous multicoloured frock coat can only have been dreamed up by someone on drugs. Ketamine, probably.)

While Sue was busy rewiring Nicol’s television, I studied my VHS tape collection for the perfect story to show her daughter. With Sue calling me upstairs, I instinctively grabbed ‘Day of the Daleks’. This was the tape that Nicol waved at me the day I moved in with her. I took this for a sign and hoped for the best.

Sue and her daughter were cuddling each other on Nicol’s bed when I joined them. Simple Minds were belting out ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’.

I dropped the VHS tape into Nicol’s lap.

I headed for the bedroom door.

The next day, Nicol sidled up to me while I was chopping potatoes in the kitchen. When she tugged at my sleeve, I almost sliced my index finger off.

I pressed Play on her top-loading VCR and Nicol crossed her arms and waited for ‘Day of the Daleks’ to impress her.

She shouted with laughter.

The episode begins with a terrorist from the future attempting to assassinate a political figure from the past.

Three minutes in and she’s already beginning to fidget.

I quickly change the subject:

I knew it was hopeless when Nicol started to kick the covers off her bed, a sure sign she was restless. Another sign was she had stopped asking questions. She didn’t even ask me if the ape-like Ogrons were gorillas.

Maybe Nicol was too young to appreciate Doctor Who after all. And it was very late; she was probably tired. I told myself that it wouldn’t have mattered what we were watching that night, she would have reacted exactly the same way. She just needed a good night’s sleep. And besides, Nicol shouldn’t be watching television at this hour anyway.

I’d really hoped to see Nicol’s eyes light up with wonder and joy that night – the same wonder and joy I experienced when I encountered Doctor Who for the first time. What I wasn’t expecting was she’d have that joyful look on her face when I offered to switch Doctor Who off. We were only ten minutes into the first episode; she didn’t even get to see a Dalek.

I offered to read The Little Mermaid to her but Nicol declined. As I headed downstairs again to join Sue, I heard The Breakfast Club rewinding in her VCR. She was still watching it when I went to bed an hour later.

Once the shelves were up, my video cassettes became part of the furniture, but my girlfriend proved as adept as her daughter at ignoring Doctor Who and my clumsy attempts to insinuate it into our unmarried life. Whenever I’d suggest it might be fun to watch, say, ‘The Seeds of Death’ or ‘The Ambassadors of Death’ or ‘The Robots of Death’ or even the comparatively light-hearted ‘City of Death’ together, the answer was always ‘no’.

Occasionally I would ask her for her memories of the programme.

Seriously, what was the point in going out with an older woman if she couldn’t remember ‘The Web of Fear’ – and even if she did remember it, thought the lead actor battling Yeti on the London Underground was Charlie Drake?

Eventually, Sue gave in and agreed to watch one of the all-time classic Doctor Who adventures with me, the gritty and intelligent ‘Genesis of the Daleks’.

It would be another eighteen years before she found out. In the meantime, my new female housemates and I soon settled into a domestic routine which suited all of us. I kept watching, reading about and obsessing over every tiny detail of Doctor Who. And they left me to it.