Fans snap up Doctor Who costumes at auction

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Phil Newman gives a fan's-eye view of the auction's highlights

By Tim Masters
Entertainment correspondent, BBC News

Hundreds of Doctor Who fans crammed into a London auction room on Wednesday to bid on classic costumes and props from the BBC sci-fi show.

The most expensive item of the day was a Dalek from the 1985 story Revelation of the Daleks - which sold for £20,400, including the auctioneer's fee.

Kylie Minogue's waitress costume, worn in the 2007 Christmas special Voyage of the Damned, fetched £3,120.

The auction of more than 160 lots took place at Bonhams in Knightsbridge.

Kylie Minogue's waitress costume fetched more than £3,000

From the same Christmas special, David Tennant's two-piece Paul Smith dinner suit sold for £5,040.

More than 300 fans - many of them standing - packed into the auction room to bid for monster costumes from many eras of the show.

These included a Magma Beast from 1984 (sold for £1,560), a Kroll from 1978 (£780), a Vervoid from 1986 (£1,920) and a Sea Devil from 1984 (£2,040).

Some other props up for auction were fire-damaged from a blaze at the Doctor Who exhibition at Longleat in the 1990s.

'Hideous mask'

Paul Burrows, from near Cambridge, spent £9,600 on a Cyberman costume that appeared in both The Five Doctors (1983) and Silver Nemesis (1988).

This was one of five Cybermen sold at the auction

"If you think of Doctor Who, you either think of Daleks or Cybermen and everyone wants to own a Cyberman, don't they?" he said. "It was either that or a new car!"

He also splashed out £3,000 on a massive mask of a monster called The Malus.

"It's a hideous huge mask which came from a story called The Awakening with Peter Davison - one of my favourite episodes so I'm very pleased to get that," Mr Burrows said.

"I shall display them somewhere at home, I don't think they're going to lose value."

The first item to sell was Captain Jack's Torchwood Range Rover which went for £18,000. A black cab from The Runaway Bride episode starring Catherine Tate, aired in 2006, sold for £1,920.

Two double decker buses seen in the 2009 episode Planet of the Dead were withdrawn before the sale.