For answer, Anne merely smiled and graciously inclined her head, like a Dowager agreeing that we shall have fog by teatime.

At last, Piccolo sighed and handed back the paper to the Doctor. ‘If you would care to wait here, signor, I shall pass word to Signor Mortlock.’

‘Thank you.’

Whilst he waited, the Doctor could see, through the half-open door, various acts, going through their elaborate routines, readying for the second half. There was a ventriloquist with a rather ghastly ginger-polled doll. A unicyclist with big red circles painted on his cheeks. And a woman dressed as a man in evening clothes who was belting the hell out of ‘Who Were You With Last Night?’

And then, unnoticed by any, a very large man with a head like a baby’s came inside, a crate of stuff with a stencil on the side, carried on one shoulder. With a furtive look round, Arthur went in.

At last, Piccolo returned and, with a wave from the lanky old Italian, the Doctor passed through, smiling pleasantly at the acts, and found himself, almost at once, in the wings of the theatre – a dark and sacred place, dense with scenery and fly ropes where generations of actors and performers had stood, guts flipping over, wondering why the devil they had agreed to do this silly thing in the first place.

On the stage, ringed in a great spot of yellow light, a big young girl with knickerbockers like concertinas and ribbons in her hair was struggling to spin a tin top. The huge audience – even bigger than the previous night – was giving her hell. Braying and booing and hurling food at her like sumfink from the last days of Rome.

‘I understand you wish to see me?’

The Doctor turned to be confronted by the saturnine figure of Gideon Mortlock, dressed top to toe in black, his dark eyes flashing in the limelight.

‘If that’s quite convenient,’ said the Doctor.

‘I rarely speak to representatives of Grub Street. But I can spare you … ’ He took out his watch. ‘… four minutes.’

He began to move off but the Doctor hung back a moment, looking at the girl on the stage and the distorted faces of the crowd who yelled at her. ‘The Mob in full cry,’ he murmured. ‘Never an edifying spectacle.’

Mortlock shrugged. ‘Bread and circuses, my friend.’

He led the Doctor into a small back room where the other two judges were grouped around a table, photographs spread before them.

Mortlock bent down and prodded one photograph with his finger, ‘Elimination,’ he said, stroking his moustaches.

‘You’re kidding! cried O’Kane. ‘I’d back him a billion per cent, a trillion per cent—’

‘You’re doing it again, Pat,’ said Polly Wallydoodle through tight lips.

‘Sorry.’

Mortlock rolled his eyes. ‘This gentleman is from the Pall Mall Gazette. If you’d excuse us?’