Well, nice to see that some of you have come back for more. Well done. Give yourselves a gold star. Or a Blue Peter badge even.

We’re onto Episode Two now – which introduces the majority of the rest of our human cast (but still not really the Silurians... ooohh).

Not really a great deal to note though, but here goes. The Glasshouse was borrowed (or nicked) from Dave Bishop’s Virgin novel Who Killed Kennedy, but I clearly moved it. I imagine there are probably quite a few Glasshouses dotted around the UK. The exterior is all lovely thirties art-deco. This has mostly been pillaged from both the marvellous Hoover Factory down the A40 (the route you’d take out of London to where the Brig lives and UNIT will one day end up being based) – Elvis Costello wrote a song about it, you know. It’s also partly swiped from a similar but smaller white art deco building in Lewisham, opposite Ladywell mainline station. I’m a big fan of thirties architecture, as you may have guessed.

The Irish Twins – my most fav characters of anything I’ve ever created. Evil personified by beauty. The best evil always is. They’re actually cribbed from real people, or at least the male one is. I worked in a PR office once and we had a temp in. He was tall, lean, jet black hair and blue eyes, came from Eire and was called Cellian. I never asked if I could nick him as a villain but I did, and gave him a sister. That started my lifelong love of the Irish accent, a lilt that can still melt me today.

Peter Morely plays a pivotal role in Scales but you know, I have no idea where the name comes from. This is unusual - names or characters are usually from someone I know, but neither the name nor the description reminds me of anyone I know/knew. How odd. How unusual. And, cynics might say, how nice and original of me! I do know someone who was nicknamed, rather unfairly I feel, the Skull, and the toilets are certainly based on the scary ones in the King’s Head in a North London suburb I’d best not name for fear of libel suites! I suspect they’re very nice toilets nowadays, but back then, brrrr....

Dear old Marmaduke – the name rolled off the typewriter, but the no-nonsense approach and dismissal of anyone else’s opinion was certainly based on the MD of a company I once worked for. He got kicked out eventually, and Sir Marmaduke is just a cruel caricature of him.

The Brig’s house and street is based on a real one in Gerrard’s Cross where my old schoolfriend Dave Hall lived. I haven’t seen sight nor sound of him since we were 17, so I doubt he knows I tried to make his home famous!

The Brig’s neighbours are all probably based on real people – but only the Prys’s are ones I can remember (although Prys isn’t their name). They too boasted of having the Welsh rugger team on their patio once and I always thought that was an odd thing to be proud of.