"THE AMAZING LOLLIPOP MAN": A TOOBWORLD ESSENTIAL

Receptionist:
Hold on, don't I know you? You're Jon Pertwee!
Graham Capelli:
The difference between myself and Mr. Pertwee
Is that Jon, sadly, is dead.
'Doctors'

While hanging out with the M&M Boys for a Wednesday overnight, I finally got to see the October episode of 'Doctors' in which Sylvester McCoy guest-starred as an actor who once was known as "The Amazing Lollipop Man". (For my American readers, 'Doctors' is an afternoon soap opera on BBC1.)

McCoy, whose greatest claim to Toobworld fame is as the Seventh Doctor in 'Doctor Who', appeared as the reluctantly retired Graham Capelli, star of 'The Amazing Lollipop Man' on the Toobworld version of ITV back in the late 1980's. His character was a time-traveling school crossing guard who would help people by taking them back in Time. The show would have been something of a mixture of 'Doctor Who' and 'Touched By An Angel'. In fact, there was a similar series here in the real world a decade earlier: 'Time Express', which starred Vincent Price and his wife Coral Browne.

This episode of 'Doctors' becomes a Toobworld essential because of Graham Capelli. Now, should any other TV show create a Zonk by showing a clip from 'Doctor Who' with Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor, we can say that it's the televersion of the program with Capelli in the role.

The Toobworld 'Doctor Who', as our splainin goes, was secretly sponsored by UNIT to throw off any audience suspicion that such a man actually existed. Graham Capelli was just one of the actors hired to play the role (as was David Tennant - seen as the Doctor on 'Extras' - but in the role of Rob Harker, a character he played in an episode of 'People Like Us'. (For more about Rob Harker, check out this Inner Toob post.)

Capelli never mentions his participation in 'Doctor Who', but that's an easy splainin - the role was never really his; he may not even have been in the show for very long. But 'The Amazing Lollipop Man' was totally his and no one else's.
At one point, Capelli does mention that he hopes to portray the next Davros (a classic villain from 'Doctor Who' and recently seen in the fourth season finale of the show's latest incarnation), as it would be a nice sitting role for his bad back. There's no harm in this - in the real world, Colin Baker, the Sixth Doctor, earlier played a villain on 'Doctor Who'. And Tom Baker has expressed an interest in playing returning to the show - but as a villain, not as the Fourth Doctor.

Besides, the way Capelli pronounced the name, it sounded like "Davrosh", (played it twice to make sure), so we can always claim he was describing some other TV character.
By the end of this 'Doctors' episode, Graham Capelli finally came to grips with the realization the he shouldn't try to drum up interest in reviving the "Amazing Lollipop Man" series, and perhaps cheapen the memory.

It was only a one-shot appearance; no reason to assume there'll ever be a reason to bring back the character of Graham Capelli or the fictional TV show 'The Amazing Lollipop Man' on 'Doctors' or on any other TV program. But as we saw with Archibald Beechcroft from 'The Twilight Zone', who was the Birthday Honors inductee this year into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame, once is enough to have an impact on Toobworld!

"People can come into your life for a moment,
And last a lifetime."
Judge Henry T. Bone
'Picket Fences'

BCnU!
Toby O'B