Marshall Julius meets his favourite Doctor Who and voice of Little Britain, the irrepressible Tom Baker.

Tom Baker is everything you'd expect him to be. Endearingly eccentric, infectiously enthusiastic and staggeringly honest, he's funny, engaging and really quite mad. Meeting him is, appropriately enough, like traveling back in time. As a kid I loved his Doctor Who, and today, sitting before him as a thirtysomething man I feel equally charmed and disarmed by television's largest larger-than-life hero.

I'm asking questions but I don't think Baker can hear me. He's on an oblivious roll, talking a mile a minute about life, death, fame, sport, art, literature, TV and the stage. Frankly, who would want it any other way?

Within a minute of our meeting he flashes a familiar mischievous glance, smiles broadly and exclaims, "When old ladies see me their bosoms tingle at the emotional memory of hugging their children in front of Doctor Who." And we're off.

Baker has a powerful effect on people, and he knows it. "A man stopped me last year and said, 'Tom Baker?' I said, 'Yes'. He said, 'Look, I just want to tell you. you don't mind do you?' I said, 'No.' He said, 'When I was young I was brought up in care in North Wales. It was terrible, and, er.'" Baker lowers his voice to a hushed, choked tone. "And, er. you helped on Saturday nights.' He couldn't say any more and quickly vanished. He'd made a pretty speech and couldn't go a step further or he would have broken down. He just wanted to thank me. It was deeply, deeply touching."

Some fans still believe that Baker has a touch of magic about him. "This young homeless man asked me for some spare change - I was wondering whether perhaps he was a producer - so I pulled out a pound. He looked at me and said, 'Christ, Doctor Who!' I was terribly thrilled even though he smelled a bit, so I took another pound out of my pocket. Then he said, 'You were my hero.' By now I had £3 ready to give him, even though there was no one around to witness it. So there I was, money in hand, waiting for him to take it, but he didn't. He kept looking from the money to my face, and eventually said, 'It's not the money - can you get me out of here?' Wasn't that sad? There I was, his great hero, and all I was doing was offering him three quid. I then had the fantasy of saying, 'Meet me in half an hour in St Peter's Square and bring all the other inadequates and I'll take you somewhere better.' That was the idea. But really all I could do was give him my spare change."

As Baker mouths the words "spare change" a tangent presents itself for him to veer along. "What's so boring about beggars is they have such lousy scriptwriters. They don't have agents and they copy each other as well. They all say, 'Got any small change?' I've tried to improve the standards of begging but they won't listen."

Shifting mental gears again, Baker reveals how to best avoid reality, a subject he's clearly well versed on. "Whether you read terrible shite like Jeffrey Archer or marvelous comic stuff by Charles Dickens, you're moving into other worlds. TV is also very good for taking your mind off things. But what is the ultimate escape from reality? Dying. And we escape from dying through the fantasy of religion, which denies death. I read the bible a lot, especially the Old Testament, and it really does make me laugh. I adore it."

I have no idea what to say at this stage, but it doesn't matter. Baker carries on regardless, insisting that playing the Doctor was the easiest gig he ever had. "It was entirely me. There was no acting involved. I was just Tom saying those lines." On his stage career he is equally self-deprecating. "I've never been in many good productions really, a bit like my life, which is a bit of shambles." Would he like to revisit the role that made him famous, then, when the BBC brings the Doctor back to life? "I'd like to be a part of it, but I wouldn't be interested in playing Doctor Who again. I'd like to come back as The Master. Don't you think that would be a master stroke?" Though not as young as he used to be, Baker has the age issue covered. "The BBC will say I'm no longer agile and can't run up stairs, but I'll reply, 'Davros couldn't run up stairs. Nor could the Daleks. The whole thing about television is someone else can do the running for you.'"

With or without Doctor Who, Baker's role as the King of Voiceovers keeps him as busy as he wants to be. All that's really left for him to do now is a soap. "I'd like to be in Coronation Street as a Tom Baker character who spends most of his time in the bar drinking large gin and tonics. He's some kind of therapist. The men don't know what he does while the women will only say, 'He's very helpful'. These women go his office looking stressed and depressed, and when the camera pans up to his window you see the curtains closing. Later they open up and the women leave his office looking happy and relaxed."