Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!
Last weekend, I attended the ‘Festival of the Time Lords’ convention at Newark Showground in Newark on Saturday 30th May 2026. I greatly enjoyed attending the convention and it was a very good warm weather throughout the day, which is incredible!
I got to see my favourite ‘Doctor Who’ stars including Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Janet Fielding (Tegan) and Sophie Aldred (Ace). I also saw Catrin Stewart (Jenny Flint) at the convention. There were other ‘Doctor Who’ stars, but sadly, I didn’t get a chance to see them.
This was due to delays with certain photoshoots as well as prioritising with who I wanted to see throughout the day – mainly Sarah Sutton, who is my favourite ‘Doctor Who’ companion. 🙂 Despite that, I managed to achieve everything I wanted throughout the day.
Peter Davison and Dan Starkey were supposed to attend ‘Festival of the Time Lords’, but sadly, they weren’t able to come, which is a shame. Hopefully, I’ll see them again soon as well as the other ‘Doctor Who’ stars that I didn’t get to meet at the convention on the day.
Other ‘Doctor Who’ guests included Sylvester McCoy (the Seventh Doctor), Paul McGann (the Eighth Doctor), Jo Martin (the Fugitive Doctor), Terry Molloy (Davros), Stewart Alexander (General Oscar Gunsberg from ‘The War Between the Land and the Sea’), Richard Price (Cyberman), Brian Herring (the Meep from ‘The Star Beast’), Paul Kasey (Ood Sigma) and three ‘Class’ stars – Greg Austin (Charlie Smith), Jordan Renzo (Matteusz Andrzejewski) and Sophie Hopkins (April MacLean). Hopefully, they all enjoyed the day. 🙂
My best friend from school, Stephen, also came along to attend the ‘Festival of the Time Lords’ convention in Newark. It was great to have him along and he helped me with filming a special video sketch featuring me and Sarah Sutton, which I’ll be sharing later this year. 🙂
Let me share with you the highlights of the convention day. As soon as we got into the convention venue, I had my first photoshoot with Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton. I later had individual photoshoots with Janet and Sarah, which I greatly enjoyed having that day.
With Sarah’s individual photoshoot, there was a delay, since many people went to have photoshoots with Paul McGann beforehand and that delayed photoshoots with Jo Martin before photoshoots with Sarah. Thankfully, I had my photoshoot with Sarah, but it was about half an hour later. 😐
I teased Sarah at her photoshoot by saying to her, “You’re late!”, which she laughed. We then had a photo taken of us where Sarah suggested we stood back-to-back. Unintentionally, I used a pun and said, “Is this your way of getting back at me for saying “You’re late!””. I believe Sarah realised the pun I’d used and she told me “Shoo!” three times before I left the photoshoot. 😀
There were various displays of ‘Doctor Who’ monsters at the convention. This included a Dalek from the stage play ‘The Ultimate Adventure’, a variety of TARDISes (one of which I had my photo with), and a row of various Cybermen from different ‘Doctor Who’ stories from ‘The Tenth Planet’ to ‘The Moonbase’ to ‘The Invasion’ to ‘Earthshock’ to ‘Attack of the Cybermen’ to ‘Silver Nemesis’ to ‘Rise of the Cybermen’ to ‘Nightmare in Silver’. Wow! 😀
There was an Ice Warrior on display too. 🙂 There was also a yellow Dalek from ‘Victory of the Daleks’, a Silent, a grey Dalek, another Cyberman from ‘Earthshock’, K-9, an Ood, a Red Dalek, a TARDIS that had an interior shifting from green to red, a Vervoid, a Sontaran, a Vanir, Mawdryn, the Robots of Death, and another TARDIS. There were so many displays of ‘Doctor Who’ monsters at the convention that I wasn’t able to take photos of them all.
It was lovely to meet up with Janet Fielding at the convention. I had quite a lengthy chat with Janet where she shared that she and Sarah had a nice meal somewhere in Newark the night before and the restaurant had a picturesque view. I also had my Season 21 Blu-ray box set booklet signed by Janet. I’m looking forward to checking out the Season 21 Blu-ray box set of ‘Doctor Who’ soon, especially now that Janet has signed the booklet. 🙂
I had my selfie with Janet at the convention, and I also purchased the ‘Doctor Who’ book ‘The Adventures Before’, which contains the story ‘Little Did She Know’ by Janet Fielding. I don’t know when I’ll be checking out and doing reviews on the stories featured in ‘The Adventures Before’ book, including ‘Little Did She Know’, but I hope it’ll be sooner than later.
Speaking of purchases, I also purchased a ‘Doctor Who’ cushion based on the CD box set cover of the first ‘Forty’ volume to celebrate 40 years of Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor in ‘Doctor Who’, including the stories ‘Secrets of Telos’ and ‘God of War’. I’ve already made good use of the cushion at home and I showed it to Sarah when I saw her at the convention. 🙂
It was great to see Sophie Aldred at the convention. We had a nice catch-up and chat, including talking about her upcoming role as the Narrator for the stage production of ‘A Christmas Carol’ with Colin Baker, which I’ve already reviewed on my blog. Essentially, she’s taking over Peter Purves’ role in the production, which must be very exciting indeed.
I don’t know if I’ll see Sophie and Colin on stage together for ‘A Christmas Carol’ (I know she’s doing a performance in Newark in November), but I wish her well with being the Narrator of that production. Sophie also signed my CD box set cover of the ‘Tenth Doctor, Classic Companions’ release, which includes Ace’s story with the Tenth Doctor called ‘Quantum of Axos’.
The stories were recorded during the lockdown period we had in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic was happening. Interestingly, Sophie still records audios at home, including audiobooks, compared to Sarah, who tends to record audios mostly at the Big Finish studios. I’m very pleased I’ve had a selfie with Sophie, as she’s a very nice lady to chat to at conventions.
And of course, it was lovely to see Sarah Sutton at the convention. I saw Sarah about five times throughout the day where we chatted about various things, including some Big Finish audios she’s done and a future TV appearance. I can’t share anymore about that since I don’t have the details, and, apparently, Sarah would ‘kill’ me if she shared the details. 😀
Not that I mind. 😀 I had a couple of selfies with Sarah, including one with me and her and one with me, Sarah and Cuddles, my cuddly toy dog. 😀 Sarah signed my CD box set cover of the ‘Tenth Doctor, Classic Companions’ release, which includes Nyssa’s story with the Tenth Doctor called ‘The Stuntman’. Sarah also signed a photo print of her, me and Peter Davison from the ‘Exeter Comic Con and Gaming Festival’ in October 2024 at ‘Festival of Time Lords’.
The photo print itself had me and Sarah teasing Peter about David Tennant (the Tenth and Fourteenth Doctors) being special. I’m very pleased Sarah found the photo funny when she signed it. 😀 I also gave a print of the Exeter photo to Sarah as a gift at ‘Festival of the Time Lords’. This was something she requested at the ‘Happy Who Year’ convention in Andover back in January 2026. I also showed the photo print to Janet Fielding at the event. which she was amused by, comparing it to a similar photo she did during the recording of the Big Finish audio story ‘The Waters of Amsterdam’.
There was a panel talk with Janet Fielding, conducted by Rob Brown who wrote ‘The Jarillion Mercy’. Sarah was meant to be on the panel talk with Janet, but she couldn’t due to the delay of her individual photoshoots with the fans. Thankfully, I met up with Sarah to check how she was. I told her a joke (her punchline for the joke was better than I one I gave her 😀 ), and we did a video sketch together. I’m looking forward to sharing the video sketch for a future ‘Doctor Who’ review. Stay tuned and watch this space!
It was great to see Catrin Stewart again at ‘Festival of the Time Lords’, having seen her previously at the ‘Film & Comic Con Cardiff’ event back in October 2025. My best friend Stephen and I chatted to Catrin about studying at the same sixth-form college – St. David’s Catholic College in Cardiff – from 2005 to 2007. She did ‘Les Misérables’ then. 🙂
I had a selfie with Catrin as well as having my Blu-ray cover of ‘The 10 Christmas Specials of ‘Doctor Who’, which contains ‘The Snowmen’. ‘The Snowmen’ is the only Christmas Special that Catrin’s been in and it was her first return to ‘Doctor Who’ following ‘A Good Man Goes to War’. 🙂 I’m amazed and pleased that I’ve seen Catrin three times at conventions.
My best mate Stephen took photos of the convention throughout the day, which I’m pleased to be sharing on my blog. This includes photos of Paul McGann signing at the convention as well as the Dalek from ‘The Ultimate Adventure’ stage show, the panel talk audience seats and the TARDIS. 🙂 It’s amazing there was plenty to do throughout the day.
The day concluded on a satisfying note for me where I said goodbye to Sarah as well as showed her photos of the jigsaw puzzles I had for my birthday this year. Sarah was very pleased to see the photos, as she enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles and she’s encouraged me to do a 1,000 pieces one. Hopefully, I’ll do a 1,000 pieces jigsaw when I go on holiday. 😀
There are currently no conventions for Sarah Sutton to attend for the rest of 2026. But she’s informed me she’s hoping to go to two conventions in Scarborough and Spalding in 2027. I’m looking forward to seeing Sarah at those conventions when the time comes, as it’s been great seeing her recently at ‘Festival of the Time Lords’ in Newark. I’m happy that I’ve been able to achieve everything I wanted to say and do with Sarah at the convention.
‘Festival of the Time Lords’ was a great and successful event for me. I came away very satisfied with seeing Sarah Sutton again at the convention. I know I didn’t get to see many ‘Doctor Who’ stars at the convention, but I’m pleased I saw Sarah as well as Janet Fielding, Sophie Aldred and Catrin Stewart who were very lovely to meet and chat to. 🙂
Will there be more conventions for me to look forward to for the rest of 2026? I’m looking forward to finding out. 🙂
Thanks for reading!
Bye for now!
Tim 🙂
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