BBC Antiques Roadshow expert stuns guest as he drops unexpected bombshell about iconic script’s history
BBC Antiques Roadshow expert Chris Yeo revealed a guest’s gift from his grandfather was an incredibly valuable piece of British television history.
The classic entertainment themed show was held on EastEnders’s iconic Albert Square, in the shadow of the Queen Vic pub.
The guest brought in an original Doctor Who script written for the show’s first ever star, William Hartnell.
It was a collection of yellowed sheets marked with blue pencil for the episode Doctor Who and the Tribe of Gum.
“It was given to me by my grandfather. I suppose I was about eight,” the guest explained.
“Grandad worked for a building company, and William Hartnell had just moved out of his cottage in Mayfield, and [the script] was in the detritus that was being thrown out during the refurbishment of the cottage.
“Grandad gave it to me because I was and still am an avid Doctor Who viewer,” he said with a warm smile.
At that age, the guest revealed he didn’t full understand some of the “technical stuff” in the script.
Even still, he added the pages “stayed with me when I moved round the country as I grew up. It’s always something to know a little bit more about.”
With a grin, Yeo revealed the script was in fact “quite a rare thing”.
He began: “This script has got this blue pencil which shows the lines that The Doctor speaks.
“It makes you wonder when William Hartnell, the first Doctor Who, was going through this with his pencil, probably sitting at home with his wife, what he was thinking.”
“It’s a new programme, no one has seen this before, no one’s really done sci-fi on the BBC before let alone at teatime on a Saturday,” Yeo added wistfully.
The expert went on to say it had been a “privilege” to see the script before revealing it wasn’t “any old Doctor Who story.”
“This is a script for the very first Doctor Who story, in 1963. He (Hartnell) was in 30 stories, there could have been 30 scripts in that house,” he revealed.
“It just so happened that he left the script for the first Doctor Who”
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Yeo enthused: “This is the DNA of Doctor Who. It’s the genesis of the programme.”
He noted that the show had “an enormous fan following” and that some fans would “give their eyeteeth” to get hold of the script.
In the end, Yeo valued the relic of British TV history as between £5,000 to £7,000.