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A. L. Kennedy (The Blue Book) announced she was vey pleased with the casting of Peter Capaldi as the new Doctor on Doctor Who during her session at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this morning (Monday 12 August). Kennedy is writing a 10,000 word Doctor Who e-novella and is a huge fan of the show.

She told of her brief encounter with Capaldi when he was reading a work of hers on radio. ‘I wasn’t there when he was doing it, but he got the director/producer to phone up and ask me what the difference was between me doing a dot-dot-dot at the end of a sentence, instead of a full stop or a dash at the end. At which point you know that he’s fantastic, as he cares, and that is an important thing. Obviously the only response is to say “You know exactly what you are doing because you’ve ask that, and as you’re in it and doing it and I’m not there, I will go with whatever your opinion will be.” He did it really, really well.’

Of Capaldi and Doctor Who, she said: ‘He’s a great performer. I hate that the press keep doing ‘foulmouthedmalcolmtucker’… That was a part that he played—he was really good at it. He’ll be really good as the Doctor. He’s not going to swear and nut people fresh out of the TARDIS. He’s clearly worried by the fact that people might think that he would. He was very good on the telly thing (Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor), I was sitting there literally on the edge of my sofa going “Yes!”. I thought he gave a very good talk and hit the right note.’

‘I saw him on stage doing The Ladykillers: he can be funny, he can be physical, he can be silly. He can be all the necessary things, and very warm and charismatic. He was having a ball with however many thousand people were in the audience, not swearing at anybody. I’m happy, and happy that they keep getting very good actors. Unlike a lot of other telly Doctor Who likes the viewer. It’s got drama that doesn’t involve there always being a corpse on the beach as the opening shot.’

Writing a novella for the Doctor Who range was, admitted Kennedy, as close as she could get to being the Doctor herself. ‘I don’t know what I’m allowed to say, but the Doctor that I chose was the one I knew when I was little, so I’ve grown up with him. All of my research was sitting for about three weeks watching DVDs of old episodes of Doctor Who. I had a ball! It’s so nice to be able to inhabit that character, and to have the joy that I have as a writer writing and the joy that it could be to be with him. I don’t know what would be more fun, to be him (in the sense of acting him), in which case you’re rather busy. If you’re standing next to him, acting with him, then technically you’re busy too as you’re also acting… If you’re in a crowd, a zombie, or taken over by a Cyberman, that’s probably the closest you could get to being with the Doctor and appreciating it. But if you are writing him… That’s partly why I went into writing, it’s the one thing that’s more intense than acting.’

The Edinburgh International Book Festival continues until 26 August.