Er... Exterminate? Photograph: PA
For reasons that will become apparent when Observer Review hits the shops on Sunday, this afternoon we needed a Dalek, and we needed it now. (The re-launched Dr Who is coming to our screens over Easter, so expect quite a lot of old school sci-fi nostalgia in forthcoming weeks.)
But it turns out that getting your hands on a mutant in a well-armed knobbly case on a Friday afternoon isn't as easy as it sounds. Ok, it is exactly as easy - or otherwise - as it sounds.
Agent Carl, a trusted member of the Review team, was despatched to score the retro-baddie.
Carl emailed the blog from deep undercover:
"Forget breaking Watergate-style revelations, this is why I got into journalism. Rachel Cooke needed a Dalek and who was I to say 'impossible'? My first call was to the Vintage Magazine store in Soho. 'Um, odd request, but do you have a, err, Dalek?' The French girl on the other end of the phone paused only momentarily before saying, 'how big?' I'd struck gold on my first attempt. She put me through to the manager and after a couple of minutes of excited conversation it transpired that the dalek he was talking about was on a rather different scale to that I had in mind. 'Our largest one,' he said, 'is about a foot tall.' They sell tiny remote controlled ones, hardly the stuff of world domination.
Next stop was the Propstore of London. There I was told that most of the full-sized Daleks had been sold off years ago for between 2500 and 5000 quid and were now in the hands of private collectors. What do these people do with them? Wheel their kids up and down the garden path inside them while shouting 'exterminate!'?
Propstore put me on to Weird and Wonderful in Potters Bar: 'Dalek? Yeah, I'm looking at it right now.' Problem solved. Just the small matter of getting it into town for the shoot. We hired a van which deposited the goods on the streets of Islington."
The one thing that everyone knows about Daleks is that they don't handle stairs too well. We think Carl is still recovering.
Dr Who theme tune kicks in. Next week: sourcing a Cyberman costume 5 minutes before the first edition goes.
Updated Monday 7 March: You can now read Rachel's big Dr Who feature on the main Observer site.
