[Warning: This post is about grief, so if you’d rather not read it, please just delete this from your inbox. I know this is a tough topic.]
This week, we said our farewells to Alex Guttridge. I know a lot of you won’t know who I mean, but that’s what this post is about - at his ‘Celebration of Life’ this week, as we said our final farewells, the subject of keeping his memory alive came up multiple times. And, if you know me, or the stuff I’ve worked on, you probably know a little of Alex just by association. So this is me, spreading the word of Alex Guttridge.
I met Alex when I started my day-job in retail working at The Television and Movie Store in Norwich. It was the location of the former BBC Shop, and the owner of a company that supplied the BBC Shop with Daleks saw the empty unit as an opportunity to open a shop mostly dedicated to Doctor Who.
This business owner advertised on the well-known Doctor Who message boards, Gallifrey Base, and that’s where I heard of the opportunity. We had interviews, and the core team of the shop was defined. My boss, Si. Me as assistant manager, and two employees who would go on to become great friends and collaborators on many projects - Will Brooks, who did the covers for the Second Edition Doctor Who Roleplaying Game books, and Alex Guttridge.
With our regular ‘consultant’ Andrew, we set up the shop, painted the walls, worked out the stock control system, and filled the shelves with as much cool and nerdy stuff as we could get our hands on. Working long hours to get the shop ready, we’d chat about everything - Doctor Who (of course), Star Wars, Star Trek, Gerry Anderson, BBC comedies, Ghostbusters, Muppets, you name it, we talked about it for days and days.
We worked together at the shop for many years – some of my fondest memories of working there was when Alex and I had to do the late night opening shift on Thursdays. Being the old BBC shop, we had a couple of screens behind the counter left over from when the BBC used to screen the news all day when they were open. We had this hooked up to a DVD player to promote some stuff we were selling, and hardly had any customers on those late shifts, so ended up sitting behind the counter watching DVDs of the 70s ‘Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries’. (Love that series).
Of course, both Alex and Will knew their Doctor Who. Hooo boy, do they know their Doctor Who. The very first boxed set for the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game (or Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space as it was then) had come out, and I was starting work on the first couple of supplements. Obviously, Alex and Will were the first people I turned to for help. Their knowledge poured into the Aliens and Creatures supplement, and they were instrumental to the writing of Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook, working out a solution to the UNIT dating controversy and defining how the book would work.
But it wasn’t the limit to our friendship. Alex joined us for video game nights, LAN parties for Halo, and becoming suitably addicted to Rock Band just as we were. When I foolishly joined with like-minded gaming nerds and started recording short comedy videos and a web series, Alex was there in one of the most dramatic and serious roles. He joined us for our 8-hour charity fundraising Rockathon playing Rock Band 2 non-stop for 100 songs to get the ‘Bladder of Steel’ achievement, bashing the heck out of that Rock Band drum kit. I remember him constantly complaining that there wasn’t any Boney M on Rock Band, and how he wanted to do the drum parts for the Nightflight to Venus/Rasputin tracks off of the album.
He left the shop for another retailer, but didn’t stay away for long, returning to TVM – I guess we all just got along so well, it was difficult to capture that relationship in another store. Everyone in TVM got on really well, and we’re all there for each other.
Never has this been more apparent than this week.
My wife and I were on a train crossing the border into Scotland when we heard the news that Alex had died on his way in to work. He was only in his early 40s, and it just didn’t feel real. Hell, it doesn’t feel real now. This week saw Alex’s funeral and celebration of life, and I’ve not seen such a large turnout at a funeral before – a testament to not only how young he was, but also how loved he was by his family, friends, and work colleagues. It was tough – there have been far too many funerals recently, and this one was a real punch in guts at times.
It still doesn’t feel real, but as I said before, the take away message from the funeral was to keep talking about Alex, so he is never forgotten. Alex had teamed up with fellow former TVM employees on a couple of podcasts which I highly recommend.
The first is the Talk Toy To Me Podcast he was working on with Ben Allen, where Alex and Ben would talk about collecting toys and action figures.
Highly recommended if you want to find out about all kinds of toys, from Ninja Turtles to Transformers.
The other podcast is the Oh Rabbits! podcast he was working on with Nick Mellish, and the aforementioned Will Brooks.
Three friends working their way through the entirety of Doctor Who, a couple of episodes at a time. As I said before, Alex and Will, and Nick, certainly know their Doctor Who, and you can hear in both of these podcasts just how passionate Alex was about his interests.
Thank you Alex, for being a great friend, a valuable source of nerdy information, and be sure we’ll keep talking about you (in a good way, of course).
Just a little housekeeping side-note. There has been a bit about Substack in the press recently, but rest assured, I’m not going to activate paid subscriptions on there. Not giving them any money, and these posts will always be available on my blog - www.autocratik.com - if you prefer.
