My favourite Dalek voice is Peter Hawkins, who was the main guy on those first Dalek stories. Working alongside him was David Graham. Both of them have great vocal pedigrees. Peter was 'the' voice of the 60s; he was Captain Pugwash, he was Tony the Tiger and on just about every public information film or TV commercial, it seemed. David Graham was, of course, the voice of Brains and Parker - m'lady - in Thunderbirds (1965). Peter had that wonderful, insistent quality to his voice. David brought a kind of disturbing edge to it. Then the lovely Roy Skelton came along with his uniquely gravelly voice. Those are the three who have influenced me the most. I feel I've kind of absorbed their work by endlessly watching it and listening to it, then I've taken it in my own direction; but much of what I do owes an awful lot to those chaps.

My favourite Doctor was and is Patrick Troughton. He epitomises for me what I think the strength of the show is. He looks a bit scary, but is massively kind and reassuring. That's what the programme is. He was such a great actor and so funny too, but with the weight to be able to do the dramatic stuff.

I loved the Daleks. They did scare me when I was a tiddler... But I was mostly fascinated by them. I think the Cybermen did scare me more, largely because they were very quiet in those days. They said very little and you couldn't hear them coming.

Doctor Who (2005) is deceptively difficult to write. I think people think it's easy. It's not. It's very difficult to get right.