Peter Capaldi: 'I gave up Doctor Who collection to drink lager and eat curries'

Die-hard fans of the cult sci-fi series may be mildly shocked by the new Doctor's most recent admission

Peter Capaldi plays the Time Lord in the eighth series of Doctor Who (Getty Images)

Peter Capaldi has always been proud to admit he’s a ‘Whovian’.

So taking on the role of the Doctor – one of British television’s most iconic characters – has been something of a dream come true for the Scottish actor.

The first time he actually got to play the Time Lord was when he was nine years old and bounding around the playground.

At the age of 15, he went on to reveal, he geekishly wrote to the Radio Times to herald their astute coverage of the series he so loved.

But die-hard fans of the cult sci-fi series may be mildly shocked by Capaldi’s most recent admission: that he outgrew his collection of memorabilia and discarded it in order to pursue a young adult life of “sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll”.

“I’m ashamed to say I had a kind of bonfire of the vanities,” he told The Independent. “I had a huge collection of Doctor Who books, autographs and pictures, but I threw them all away to go and drink lager and eat curries. That was silly, wasn’t it?”

“I wish I’d known that one day the geek would inherit the Earth,” he added.

Elsewhere in the interview, he described his career thus far as having gone “from an amiable geek in Bill Forsyth films to a ‘sinister’ butter salesman”.

“I was recently doing a voiceover for butter and they said, ‘Can you be a little less sinister?’ So that’s how far it’s gone,” he said.

Despite his late blooming high profile, however, he laughed off the idea of upping and moving to pursue the bright lights of Hollywood in the near future.

“Hollywood producers aren’t going to say, ‘Get me that swearing, grey-haired, headless chicken,” he added. “’We need him for our new High School Musical movie!’”

Read the full interview here.