My favourite letter in Ariel recently was asking if there was some sort of supply problem with the Free Alan Johnston we were all promised last year, as the writer had yet to receive his.

One of my enduring memories of my early days at the BBC in the 80s was walking around the ‘ring round’ behind the studios and coming face to face with half a dozen Daleks. Having grown up with these things and spent many a Saturday night behind the sofa in fear, it came as quite a shock I can tell you!

My favourite ever letter in Aerial was… oh… hang on… I’ve never read a letter in Aerial. Nor, indeed have I ever even seen a copy of Aerial. It’s not on bbc.co.uk either is it (at least the external bit)?

While I know it’s an internal staff newspaper, there are often pretty interesting pieces in it (I know, because people talk about them, and reprint bits of them online), and yet it’s not as though state secrets are published in it. With 26,000 (or fewer) employees, there’s plenty of opportunity to get a copy one would think. So why not be done with it, and put it online? Obviously it could include “the views represented here may not reflect those of the BBC” etc.

and I’ve just sent this blog entry to everyone at Ariel ;-)

I used to take the long route along TVC to get to the Design Building specifically so I could at least walk past the TARDIS. Of course, this was in the days when a liking of Doctor Who was to be hidden, not to be embraced.

btw, of all the photos of a TARDIS on Flickr, you plucked one from a friend of mine’s account. Talk about similarity.

I’m glad you found that picture of the TARDIS. It’s quite awesome to see it and on your blog, it looks so much more impressive than on my Flickr page. =)

And a shout-out to Andrew Wong!

Even though I’ve never really watched Doctor Who (yes I know, I expect I’ll get it on DVD one day) I rather enjoyed this BBC Online feature when it was first published:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/1444067.stm