Wouldn’t it be great to be able to travel back through time? It’d be expensive at first, but soon Michael O’Leary would set up Ryantime and offer cheap trips to all periods of history.

History teachers could visit Rome or Atlantis. Celebrities could go and meet all the famous characters from the past. And mums and dads could go back to the ’80s and sell their old clothes as new.

But eventually it would become competitive. If British Timeways could send someone to the Big Bang, then Virgin Timelines would send them just before. And sadly, it would all become the norm...

But not if you drove ‘Bessie’.

Bessie, if you remember, was Doctor Who’s car back in the 1970s, driven predominantly by Jon Pertwee’s flamboyant incarnation of the evergreen Timelord, above.

At this time, around Season Seven, the Who stories were predominantly set on Earth, so the Tardis became effectively redundant and the show’s producer was keen to introduce a new and instantly recognisable prop.

As such, Bessie was born. But as you might expect, she was no ordinary car.

She was yellow and looked like she’d been styled on a Henry Ford Model T from the 1920s.

In fact, the Ford connection was very apt since her chassis was used by the automobile giant through the late 1940s to the 1950s for their Popular, Prefect and Anglia models.

This meant spares were available from any Ford stockist, together with various manuals for servicing, and explains why the car was embraced by the Who production crew.

Unfortunately, the number plate WHO1 was not available when the BBC took possession of her. Instead, and in order to avoid the obvious legalities, a special WHO1 plate was commissioned and used when the car was being filmed on private grounds – that is, as was often case with Who shooting schedules, when the crew was filming in quarries or in the grounds of large houses.

However, when filming necessitated the use of public highways, the registration plate MTR5 was slapped in its place, with the crew going to great lengths to disguise this fact, using long shots so the plate couldn’t be read.

Throughout the series, various extras were added by the special effects department, including a few fictional options such as the ‘Superdrive’ which debuted in The Time Monster episode, and an ‘Anti-Theft Device’ which was featured in the Ambassadors of Death.

In addition, her bonnet was extended to house a 10hpengine rather than its original 8hp one.

But that’s all technical jargon. What the public loved was the fact she had style.

And even today, her demise is mourned by dedicated Who fans.