DOCTOR Who actor Peter Capaldi has revealed how important watching the series was to him as a child – and why he feels sad thinking about a future when he will no longer play the role.

Capaldi remembers watching Dr Who as a child growing up in a tenement block in Springburn, Glasgow, with his parents Gerry and Nancy, who ran an ice cream delivery business from a cafe on the ground floor.

“To me, it was like a fairytale. It had that quality of darkness that you find in a Grimm’s fairy tale,” he said.

“This strange creature of a man who takes you on all these adventures, but who always keeps you safe.

“That’s absolutely what I want the children who watch my version to feel.”

Capaldi revealed that his mother, who died earlier this year, sent him a Doctor Who annual every year, well into his adulthood and said the show would “always” be a part of him.

“All this will come to an end. It might just be my Scottish melancholia, but the very first day I found out I’d got the job, I started to feel sad that one day I would not have it; that there would come a day, in the not too distant future, that I wouldn’t be Doctor Who any more,” he added.

“And that is why I try really hard to get as much out of it as possible.

“Because one day I’ll just be an overweight has-been ...  being ejected from a Doctor Who convention in Bolton for being drunk and disorderly.

“I mean, this is surely my high point, isn’t it?”

Doctor Who returns to BBC One on September 19.