This Sunday is the 40th anniversary of the Doctor Who weekend at Longleat House. It is every bit our Woodstock because apart from the music, it was ages ago, it was unique, and everybody claims they were there.

I was there. I just forgot that I was.

I would’ve missed the anniversary, too, except that by total chance, I have been rewatching Doctor Who from the start and this week reached the stories from around that time. The stories that were airing when I was 17 and queuing up to enter this April 3-4, 1983 festival. I’m also — slightly less by chance, more as a consequence of the rewatching — reading Richard Molesworth’s account of all of producer John Nathan-Turner’s tenure running the show, including this festival.

This festival where the BBC figured 10,000 to 13,000 people would attend if they were lucky. Instead, apparently 56,000 turned up – and very many were unlucky in that they just couldn’t be let in.

It’s peculiar what four decades worth of distance can do, though. I found a Vimeo video about the event and my heart jumped in recognition – of a sign. Really I think it was at the font the sign was in, but it’s highly possible this BBC banner was just in my face for an extremely long time because a clear memory is of queuing.

Well, it’s a clear memory now, it left my head for forty years. But now it’s come back, yes, I remember that the very last thing I did was to join the line for the autograph session. I want to say that it took four hours to get through the queue, but it may well have been longer. I just recall the line stretching around Longleat House’s garden, and the relief as we got to the end, entered what we thought was the house –

– and found we were in the back garden, with a queue ahead of us that was exactly as long as the one we’ve been in.

I know that I was really queuing because I’d seen everything else, but in as far as I’ve ever been fussed about autographs, I think I wanted to get Sarah Sutton’s. She played Nyssa in the show but by the time I got to her table, she’d left the series.

Okay, she really did leave Doctor Who but she was already out of the show by this time. Only, the event came around the time of The Five Doctors, the 20th anniversary special written by Terrence Dicks. One of the guest cast for that was Carole Ann Ford, who had left about 20 years earlier and was only back for one episode.

Consequently, in a panel discussion, one utter arse from the crowd asked Sarah Sutton whether, given all of this, there was any chance she could leave the show for just one episode and then come back for 20 years.

It got a big laugh, it got quoted in Doctor Who Monthly or Weekly or whatever that was then, and neither I nor anyone else can remember how Sutton managed to bat the question back.

Yes.

I haven’t told anyone it was me who asked, certainly I didn’t tell Sarah Sutton herself when I wrote a Big Finish Doctor Who script featuring her. And you are never going to tell anybody either. Promise me.

Watching that two-hour Vimeo video of the event now, though, I’m feeling better. My question was not filmed, but most of the panel was and at this distance, the producer in me thinks that at least I threw Sutton a bone. It’s a little curious how everyone else on that panel is asked many things yet, at least in the recording, there is almost nothing for Sutton to do or respond to.

No, it doesn’t help. At this distance, on reflection, the utter obviousness that I had a crush on both the character and the actor might be the most squirmingly embarrassing part of the event for me.

At the time, a cold April in 1983, I thought the laughter was with me, not about me, and besides, any way you get a good laugh makes it worthwhile. Plus, back then, I was sure that truly the most embarrassing part came later on when I was standing naked in a ice-cold metal toilet at 3am with the sound of lions roaring just outside.

But, frankly, we’ve all done that at some point.