We are NOT Racist — we just can’t accept that a shapeshifting, time-travelling alien with a magic screwdriver could be black!

It’s like Worzel Gummidge all over again. A few years ago, Mackenzie Crook brought the walking, talking, cake-guzzling scarecrow, first seen in the 1970s, back to TV. Many of those who saw the original series as children would have been in their fifties by the time the first of the new episodes screened. Had the passing decades caused the cynicism to set in, their suspension of disbelief to fade and the original viewers struggle to accept the premise of a scarecrow who only talks to a couple of kids and a few human-shaped non-human entities? No, but some struggled with the idea that two children in an English village could have dark skin.

Frankly, it was embarrassing to be British. Men — and it was mainly men — of a certain age ranted across social media about the apparent ludicrousness of children in 21st century England not being white. Nothing about where cake goes after Worzel swallows it or how he speaks with no lungs or vocal cords — just the whole: ‘I’M NOT RACIST BUT WHY ARE THERE BLACK CHILDREN IN IT — IT’S RUINED FOREVER NOW’ bile-spewing online tantrums.

Now Doctor Who, a fictional interdimensional alien entity who travels time and space in a magical blue phone box, has a magic screwdriver and who…