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The backstory to the “David Tenner” – the currency created for Doctor Who’s The Runaway Bride – features in the Curator’s Corner Christmas Special from the British Museum, which can be seen below.

Curator’s Corner is a regular series of short films on the British Museum YouTube channel. Various curators from across the Museum choose objects that they find particularly interesting, and share their stories with the public via these specially-filmed videos.

In the 2006 Doctor Who Christmas special The Runaway Bride a lot of money was need to billow out of a cash machine. Normally, an art department would just knock up a relatively simple set of one-sided prop notes and be done with it… not the case with the Doctor Who Art Department. In 2009, the British Museum’s Department of Coins and Medals acquired some examples of these screen-used prop banknotes, which were kindly donated by BBC Wales.

In the 2020 Curator’s Corner Christmas Special a curator was needed to talk about a Christmas object. Normally, an in-house museum production team would just sit a curator down, and get them to talk about a Christmas object… not the case with the British Museum production team (or curator Henry Flynn for that matter).

For this special episode of Curator’s Corner, ‘The David Tenner: a Doctor Who Banknote,’ we had hoped to ask the Curator to discuss the notes (one of which of course depicts what may or may not be one of his former selves), but since he has spent lockdown studying the ancient painting ‘Gallifrey Falls No More’ while self-isolating in the Black Archive, Henry Flynn was more than happy to step in. The video tells the story of why the banknotes were created, how they were used in the show, and contains a surprise or two…