The Times
Toby Hadoke's show Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf looks like the kind of fans-only fiasco that the savvy Fringe punter only goes to see if all the good shows are sold out. In fact, it's a skilfully assembled Edinburgh hour that relates Hadoke's Time Lord fetish with broader issues of fatherhood and conformism, that argues - in the sort of overheated individualism that admirers of Fringe regular Will Smith will be familiar with - why the Doctor is a far healthier obsession than a mob hobby such as football. Stand-up and actor Hadoke is a confident performer, and, like the new generation of Who, his show has the capacity to wrong-foot you with its emotional kick.
(Subsequently Number One Pick Of The Week when the show transferred to Windsor Arts Centre: The Manchester stand-up on divided class loyalties, father figures and - most of all - being a Doctor Who fan, in this surprisingly effective one-man show.)
The Guardian
"I was born to be a Doctor Who fan," says Toby Hadoke, but Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf is about much more than Doctor Who, or fandom. Like all the best one-man shows it's actually a potted autobiography. Hadoke's obsession begins at the age of four, around the time his dad leaves home, and Doctor Who becomes a metaphor for his growing sense of alienation. "I feel a bit like Doctor Who," he writes in his adolescent diary. "All the pretty girls need him to get them out of scrapes, but if there's any snogging to do they go to someone else."
Naturally he loathes Star Trek ("American imperialism in a tin spaceship") and he grows to love the Time Lord for his amateurish British pluck. "That's what Britain is to me," he says. "Not being particularly good, but jolly well having a go anyway." Hadoke brings the same heroic amateurism to this heartfelt rites of passage memoir, which does for Daleks and Cybermen what Fever Pitch did for football.
British Theatre Guide *****
I was truly surprised at how much this show affected me. I went in expecting something jovial and lighthearted, much of which I probably wouldn't get - only having found my way to the Whoverse with the premiere of Russell T Davies' new series.
Instead, I found myself profoundly moved by Hadoke's tale of being a childhood geek obsessed with an imaginary universe which seemed to hold the answers to all life's problems. This expertly-constructed show begins when Hadoke's father leaves his family and follows through to Hadoke's own experience of bonding with his son over the new series of Who.
It is a warm, gentle, and utterly hysterical look into the life of someone for whom sci-fi has truly made the world a better place, and Hadoke does an expert job in spreading a bit of the doctor's positivity and joy to his audience. Along the way, he also gives neophytes a basic primer in the workings of the dedicated Dr Who fan.
Chortle ****
Geek pride continues to sweep comedy, and its latest recruit is Toby Hadoke, who has chosen to use his first Edinburgh show to come clean about his guilty obsession: Doctor Who.
Hadoke has run XS Malarkey, probably the best-loved comedy club in Manchester, for a decade. But it's taken the recent resurgence of the series for him to be able to step out of his Tardis-shaped closet and finally admit his unhealthy yearnings.
Despite the longevity of the series and its familiar iconography, it's surprising that the show hasn't featured as much of a stand-up reference before, especially compared to the ubiquity of Star Wars. Perhaps its low budgets mean it has, until now, been considered too low-rent to bother about.
Hadoke would have no truck with that. To him Star Wars is all brash spectacle, expensive but soulless, while Doctor Who is an inventive, intelligent, educational show pushing a tolerant, liberal agenda. Oh yes, he sees the subtext, is eloquent about expressing his opinions and especially forthright when it comes to defending his beloved show against his detractors. Just don't get him started on the notorious reputation for wobbly sets.
It's these passionate emotions that make the show, not Hadoke's infallible knowledge of every bit-part actor in every episode ever made. He can conjure up indignant rage with the best of them, getting swept away with his arguments of why this cheap British sci-fi is an inspiring analogy for life.
Appropriately enough, there's a lot more inside Hadoke's show than appears on the outside. It's not just one 32-year-old man's fixation on something he really ought to have grown out of. Instead he uses the programme to draw analogies with his own life, from unrequited teenage passion to bonding with his own son his life unfolds with every regeneration of the Doctor.
There are weaknesses in some of the material. Some bits, especially towards the start, sound too much like contrived stand-up that sit uneasily with the genuine feelings expressed in the rest of the show; some of his assertions don't bear up to much scrutiny; and he is occasionally content with cliché, whether it be the BBC's 'gravel pits off the M25' location work or the dismissive description of football as '22 muscular, sweaty man running around'.
But these are easily forgiven, as Hadoke's a charming, self-aware guide with a witty touch. And crucially, this is an object lesson in how to structure a show, using the nerdish obsession to explore the man within, subtly spinning threads of ideas though the show that culminate in a neat, touching pay-off. It makes for one of the most entertaining hours this side of Gallifrey.
The List
Toby Hadoke is a self-confessed Timelord anorak. He can name every single actor that ever graced the series, and even knitted his own endless Tom Baker scarf as a teenager. At one point his fanaticism led his mother to worry that he might start drawing very detailed sketches of buildings. Hadoke goes beyond his 30-year obsession to reveal how the escapism of this very British sci-fi helped him through his troubled adolescence in a wittily nostalgic journey.
Metro
Floppy, wide-brimmed hats should be removed in tribute to Toby Hadoke, whose consideration of his own relationship with the programme often wanders perilously close to abject geekdom, but ultimately establishes a winning wider context. His observations are sharp: he discusses the tautology in The Deadly Assassin, and his comparison between the peaceful philosophy of Doctor Who's sofa-dwelling admirers and the violent undercurrent on football terraces is spot on. Hadoke's keen sense of his own ridiculousness gives his humour an enjoyable double edge.
Dr Who Magazine
I'd gone along to Toby Hadoke's one-man show, Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf very much hoping that it would either be a well-observed piece about Doctor Who fandom or very, very funny. To my delight, the performance met both criteria with ease, being warmly received by both the sectors of the audience who were acquainted with the trivia of the Time Lord, and those who simply wanted to see a mighty fine stand-up show. He uses the liberal lessons of the series itself to attack the scare-mongering of the right wing press, and employs the show's educational content as a weapon with which to beat the dumbing-down of television in general. But the wonderfully wordy diatribes work on different levels; although the Doctor teaches open-mindedness in is fictional adventures, how often do fans actually realise that they too shouldn't be prone to ill-informed judgments?
Hadoke reveals that he too has been hilariously guilty of this at times.... There was only one tiny slip into erroneous myth, and since this is necessary for a blindingly good gag which follows I would happily chose hilarity over accuracy any day. The comments on the series and its following are precisely observed and amusingly explained to a lay audience. While deeply atmospheric, the environs of the Baby Belly in Edinburgh are too small to contain this man and his hilarious routine. I earnestly hope that he bursts into a bigger venue near you soon with this wonderfully witty production.
Steven Moffat (Dr Who writer)
Great show, genuinely funny, cleverly put together, and even moving at times. Non-fans will laugh their heads off (my wife did) and fans will shout "Yes, that's it exactly, yes, yes, YES, YES!!!" and then go and beat up a random Star Trek fan. I know I did.
Richard Herring blog
I finally got to see Toby Hadoke's show Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf. I meant to go and see it last year and while it was on tour, but never managed to, so I am glad that Toby has done another run for a week this year, because this is a cracker of a show.
It actually has some parallels with the Beatles fan above. It's a true story of his obsession with the sci-fi series and how it has affected his life. It's not a nerd fest though - there's plenty in there for Dr Who fans, but it works even if you don't really know anything about the show - and is actually much more about Toby, his childhood geekiness, his failure with girls, his absent father and subsequent relationship with his own son.
Toby experiences a similar sorrow when the Dr Who that he loved through the years in the wilderness, when everyone thought it was a joke, suddenly becomes cool. It's his show! How can these other idiots who know so little about it still like it? Though ultimately, in a very moving finale to the show Dr Who brings him and his son together. I am only slightly ashamed to admit that the denouement made me weep, the first show that has done that to me this year. And it was about Dr Who. Except that it wasn't.
It's also a very, very funny show - Toby is a sharp stand-up and there's some lovely gags in there - but it's much more than that. I am not sure what the plans for the future of the show are, but it is on for one more day in Edinburgh, so catch it if you can (though it's on in about three hours so I doubt too many of you will make it).
I also really enjoyed Toby's anger at the commonly held misapprehension that the original Dr Who shows were encumbered with wobbly sets. Having watched the whole canon 80 times, Toby has worked out that the sets only wobbled twice (he of course knows the exact shows) lasting for a total of seven and a half seconds. When you realise how many hours of Dr Who was made this is an insignificant amount of time and not something that the whole programme (and as it happens Jon Pertwee's obituary of the news) should be judged by (especially as he wasn't even in one of the episodes). It is a telling indictment of lazy journalism.
What a rich and wonderful show this is. For all the idiot journalists who also write about how the Fringe is boring and unadventurous and all about comedy, you know that if they actually came and watched some of the shows that are here in tiny caverns and old storage rooms, which are more than about jokes, then they wouldn't be able to make their bland and inaccurate observations, which are made every single year.
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