With the new series of Doctor Who just a month away, the new Time Lord, Matt Smith, has given an interview to Esquire magazine, in which he reveals that he may have been destined to play the character.

In the interview, Smith reveals that "At university I had a big coloured scarf and people would often say, 'All right, Doctor Who?' And I thought, I rather liked that notion.” He also recalled that the week before David Tennant quit as The Doctor, his mother had sent him a text message suggesting that he’d be perfect for the role. An audition was ultimately arranged, and the rest is, of course, history.

On playing the Doctor, Smith said, "It's a bit like playing Hamlet. It has to be your version. The Doctor is so committed, whoever plays him. So I tried to be creative and artistic and silly and crazy, and also the cleverest man in the world, and part of that is there's a rapidity to the way he speaks.

He's an intergalactic genius, a superhero-ish, mad, fumbling, bumbling science geek. He's everything you can pluck from any universe and put into him.”

The full interview is in the new issue of Esquire magazine, which goes on sale in the UK this Thursday. And Doctor Who returns in April...