Matt Smith had never watched Doctor Who before he was approached to play the lead role in the long-running BBC series.

“During my audition they asked me for my favourite episode,” Smith explains on today’s Desert Island Discs on Radio 4. “But I hadn’t even seen one. I confessed that at around 7pm, when it goes out, I was in the boozer.”

The actor, who replaced David Tennant as the Time Lord in 2009, also admits that two months after he got the part he “had a wobble — it did in fact turn out to be the hardest work you have to do in your life”.

Smith, 35, reveals how he persuaded the BBC to tell him in advance about Jodie Whittaker becoming the