I made several attempts at watching Who when smaller than I am now. I remember seeing Jon Pertwee being menaced by giant spiders, which would have been when I was five, and which freaked me out horribly. The next step was catching the end of one episode of The Deadly Assassin where Tom Baker is strapped to an operating table and menaced by a Time Lord in surgeon's garb with a syringe: he's not going to get an enema, either. That was quite enough for a while and after that I stuck to the books. I read The Abominable Snowmen and was very worried by the image of the fluid which marks the presence of the Great Intelligence oozing unstoppably from a shrine in a Tibetan monastery. I had to have the books of The Deadly Assassin and Genesis of the Daleks covered with brown paper because the images of the decayed Master and Davros scared me too much. Finally aged 9 I steeled myself to watch Robots of Death. The first episode ends, as far as I remember, in a close-up of a robot's arm with blood trickling below its sleeve and over its hand. I stumble back into the kitchen where my parents are eating and my tea awaits.

Dad: How was it?
Me, in high-pitched squeak: All right.
Dad: Will you watch it again?
Me, in higher squeak: Might do.

Somehow I couldn't eat many of the peas, and didn't fancy the tomato sauce much either.

James