Fans of Doctor Who last night quizzed exec producer Julie Gardner and designer Edward Thomas, who had perhaps unwisely agreed to appear before the unwashed masses at the opening night of the Celtic Media Festival in Caernarfon.

Among the pressing questions fired at the panel were why wasn't the Time Lord available in Lego and, critically, would the next Doc, Matt Smith (pictured), "cut his fringe before taking over from David Tennant".

The answers to these posers were, respectively, that Doctor Who needs to be bigger in the US to merit a Lego roll-out and "your comment will be passed on" - the latter a pretty feeble response to the ongoing "just how big will Smith's fringe be?" polemic.

The audience was treated to a few snippets of Who trivia, including just why the Tardis is a police box. Edward Thomas explained that when the first Doctor Who outing was in development back in the 1960s, the designer was instructed to "go into the props department and look for something commonplace in which to disguise the Tardis".

The BBC elaborates: "He returned with a police box, which was a common sight on the streets of Britain at the time, and as they say... the rest is history."

Interestingly, Russell T Davies was scheduled to put in an appearance, but pulled out "because of his workload". This, we believe, is an Auntie euphemism for "because he was afraid of being asked why his Who scripts were such complete cobblers".

The BBC has more on the event here ®.

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