Growing up in eighties Britain, at a time when Tom Baker was giving way to Peter Davison, young David must navigate the troubled waters of burgeoning adolescence, flowing sexuality and deciding what Bowie sings is still cool. His only constant is what he labels ‘the show’...

The Diary of a Dr Who Addict is, I presume, an autobiographical, or at least semiautobiographical, account written, and in this case, read by Paul Magrs. The audio CD takes him through a period of his life when his closest friend moved away from their shared obsession with Doctor Who. The whole story is presented across four CDs with a running time of five hours. It is a obsession which paid dividends as Magrs has written a number of Doctor Who books.

Although it is set ten years after I was a similar age, Magrs descriptions and pop culture references put me straight back in that age. His observations of the detritus of everyday life is sharp and accurate, including the problems of deciding just what is cool in a life which seems always to be in flux.

The story is really about a boy whose own sense of identity is challenged when his love of a single television program brings him in conflict with his peer group who are all trying to be individuals, by joining groups and dressing alike, especially his best friend Robert, who takes a different path through adolescence than David.

The coming of age story has a nice balance to it from David’s first realisation that he was becoming out of step with his friends and increasing his solitary pursuit of writing, to an end which offers not only hope for the future but also acceptance for who he is and what he likes.

For Who fans of a certain age, possibly any age where the teenage years raise their ugly head, this will seem a very familiar story. What makes Magrs account stand out from the crowd is the sensitivity with which he approaches his subject and his eye for detail.

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Charles Packer