Doctor Who and me — Russell T Davies on his life in TV The Times Ben Dowell, Deputy TV Editor memoir Doctor Who and me — Russell T Davies on his life in TV In The Queerest of Folk, the screenwriter looks back on his trailblazing career (and sorts the people he met along the way into goodies and baddies) new Russell T Davies, centre, with Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Ben Dowell , Deputy TV Editor Tuesday October 20 2026, 5.00am BST , The Times Listen 0:00 / · 7:48 min Share Share this article Email Twitter Facebook Link Save Today's Quizle Q: Test your knowledge There aren't many TV scriptwriters as famous as the ebullient Welshman Russell T Davies. And there aren't many known by just three initials — he is RTD to Doctor Who fans, whether they see him as the show's saviour or its woke destroyer. But there is much more to him and his work, as this sprightly if slightly exhausting memoir proves. Born in 1963 to two teachers, Barbara and Vivian, he grew up in Swansea alongside two older sisters. As a child, he was mainly glued to the box or fantasising that a Tardis was waiting round the corner to take him far away into time and space. The reality was more mundane: school, Oxford, then a slow climb up the TV ladder, working as a pioneering producer on the fondly remembered children's show Why Don't You? and turning down an offer to present Play School before perfecting his scriptwriting trade with Granada in Manchester on a range of shows — some good, some (like the Leslie Phillips-fronted 1994 Buckingham Palace sitcom The House of Windsor) not so good. Top stories 1 Clodagh McKenna: I always get up at 6am on holiday. I love the calm Inspiration 2 16 of the best safaris in Africa Africa Written with his friend and cheerleader, the journalist Boyd Hilton, the book retreads his many successes, including his triumphant first revival of Doctor Who in 2005 (he admits that his second recent stint in charge — a cash-guzzling two-series deal with the US streamer Disney+ that was abruptly terminated last year, leaving the show in limbo — didn't go so well). There was also his moving 2018 BBC adaptation of A Very English Scandal about the Jeremy Thorpe/Norman Scott scandal and Queer as Folk , the groundbreaking, sexually explicit late-Nineties Channel 4 drama about gay life, which gives his book its title. Books newsletter News, reviews, author interviews and suggested reads from our literary editors. Sign up with one click You've successfully signed up to the Books newsletter Explore our newsletters An error occurred. Please use the link below. Books newsletter Explore our newsletters Davies emerges from these pages as a man of firm conviction, boundless enthusiasm and a suitably Whovian view of the world as a Manichean battle between goodies and baddies. On the good side: Guardian readers, gay rights campaigners, Time Lords, people who have supported Davies' work. Baddies: anyone who disagrees with Davies, Gwyneth Paltrow (she spoke out against intimacy coordinators) and Elon Musk, among many, many others. The goodies are lovely — or sometimes “lovely, lovely” and he uses the word hoot 36 times across just 263 pages. Advertisement A charitable reader would say that this is unfiltered Davies, not written so much as splurged into a dictaphone and dutifully transcribed. But it feels odd that a writer doesn't seem overly inclined to directly craft and shape his own life story. Still, Hilton is a trusted goodie (and no doubt a hoot) and, Davies adds, the only journalist to say nice things about Queer as Folk at the programme's press launch 27 years ago. “Two hundred people out for blood,” he writes of the event, which is not how I remember it. Yes it's his story, but his memory feels selective, almost as if he's itching for a grievance. “I bet you if there's an article tomorrow about British shows that have been successfully transplanted to America, Queer as Folk won't be mentioned,” he writes. I bet 100 Dalek figurines it would. Charlie Hunnam, Aidan Gillen and Craig Kelly in Queer as Folk Channel 4 Russell T Davies: 'Anti-queer thinking is on the rise' As the subtitle suggests, it is also not so much a life story as a life-in-TV story and a celebration of the medium he loves. On page one he admits that he has “had to skip some great yarns”, not words you want to read in a memoir. It means he doesn't elaborate on, say, the visits of famous people to the Doctor Who set in the heady Noughties. “Cherie Blair brought her children along,” we are told, and that's it. “Joan Collins came along wearing a cowboy hat and got shown around.” Then nothing. Top stories 1 Prepare now for the inheritance tax mess coming for your pension Tax He says he was offered a James Bond writing gig by Sam Mendes and a chance to be on the Succession writing team by Jesse Armstrong, but turned both opportunities down. (“What an idiot. Kieran Culkin wanking off on the window — it's very me!”) More amusingly, he reveals that when he offered It's a Sin , his superb drama about the toll of the 1980s HIV/Aids epidemic, to the BBC (it later went to Channel 4), someone there wanted him to work with Elton John and make it as a musical. Olly Alexander in It's a Sin Ben Blackall 2019 There are few duller subjects than a TV commissioning meeting, especially when the subjects are his more forgettable shows like ITV's period soap The Grand or his weird BBC1 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (he claims to have “improved a bit of Shakespeare” by changing the ending). Inevitably, he's better on Doctor Who , his great love, honestly acknowledging its recent failures but seeming to admit only partial responsibility. He says that constant leaking sapped his energies and spoilt the show and that the BBC was always victimised by “vast press barons and right wing media”. Advertisement Rightly or wrongly, many people thought he preached far too much about progressive social concerns and that the Doctor, always a well-meaning goodie, didn't need to be used as a vehicle for trans rights. Why did he do it? What did it achieve? These questions are unanswered because they are never really asked. For Davies, his critics are just wrong. Fans will, however, take bittersweet enjoyment from some of the gossipy nuggets, including accounts of all the unproduced scripts now left over, including one adventure set during the Great Fire of London by the Adolescence writer Jack Thorne. Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List As for his actual life, there is frustratingly little colour. I'd love to learn more about his blind dad, who could never see how explicit the sex in Queer as Folk was. He touches on family tensions in Wales — people boycotted his mum's 70th because, after Queer as Folk , they thought he was a pornographer — but his failure to elaborate is irksome. This is also a book with far too many exclamation marks. Most commented 1 Russian strikes 'leave half a million Ukrainian homes without power' Russia-Ukraine war 390 comments He is more affecting — and detailed — on the death of his partner, Andrew Smith, in 2018 from a brain tumour. Davies was at the airport ready to fly to America to start a new creative life when Smith was diagnosed; Smith was supposed to follow him. Davies abandoned everything to care for him for several years. He has since found new love with a new (much younger) man, who is written about fondly but very briefly. With his partner, Oliver Cole, earlier this year Simon Ackerman/WireImage But if you want a flavour of a bear-like, stubbornly opinionated whirlwind of a man who sees the world (ironically given his views on gender) in harsh binary, there are moments when this can be a rich reading experience. He is also kind. A few years ago, he granted me an interview behind the back of a show's PR gatekeepers when I was freelance and needed the money. Few TV writers would be that generous. The world would be worse without RTD. I just wish he'd taken more care with his life story. It's some life. He's some guy. Maybe there will be a second series? Advertisement The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television by Russell T Davies (Bantam ￡25 pp263). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk . Free UK standard P&P on orders over ￡25. Special discount available for Times+ members Culture Books Share Share this article Email Twitter Facebook Link Save