The Depository is a vast store of the literary remains of Earth’s cultural greats: Charles Darwin, Martin Luther, Wilkie Collins, Barbara Cartland. Benny’s heard there’s a job going, and thinks it might offer just the kind of stable environment that her son requires. It has friendly bars, a reliable atmosphere shield, a fantastic patisserie run by a robot called Mrs Tishpishti - and no history of alien invasion. But you know where you are with an alien invasion. Or at least you do if you’re Bernice Summerfield. But even she has never encountered a monster whose objective is to tell her that she doesn’t look good in trousers...

The Diet of Worms is a jolly little story with which to round off the ninth season of Benny’s adventures, which has proven to be a nice change from the increasingly wriggly can of worms that was life on the Braxiatel Collection.

This time around, Bernice (Lisa Bowerman) thinks she may have found a new home for herself and her son Peter (Thomas Grant), a storehouse of relics almost as remarkable as the Collection - and perhaps even more peculiar in terms of its eccentric staff members. These include an unscrupulous and libidinous administrator, Myrtle Bunnage, and the cheery Mrs Tishpishti, a sort of robotic Mrs Miggins (both of them voiced by the versatile Beth Chalmers). Other strange voices include those of Charles Darwin, Martin Luther and Barbara Cartland (played by unidentified members of the cast), but I would be giving things away if I were to tell you how they fit into the plot.

As to how the worms fit in, that too would be telling.

As I say, The Diet of Worms is a jolly little story, but Benny’s frivolous and flighty lifestyle may be about to end...

7

Richard McGinlay