As he prepares to step down from the post of Doctor Who showrunner, Steven Moffat has revealed the words of wisdom he had for his successor.

Moffat will bow out of the show with the 2017 Christmas special – at the same time as Peter Capaldi also makes his exit – and is handing over the reins to Broadchurch’s Chris Chibnall for the next series.

And speaking to the Radio Times, he explained just what he’d told Chris about the role – saying it wasn’t so much about how to run Doctor Who but how to keep control of everything else.
‘First of all, he’s a very, very experience showrunner himself, so he doesn’t need advice,’ Moffat pointed out.

‘The advice I gave him, which I won’t share, was not about how to run Doctor Who but how to have a life while you’re running Doctor Who. The things you must make sure of.
He added: ‘He’s a family man, like myself. You’ve got to make sure that you survive it!
‘And the support you’re going to need and what it’s going to be like at 4 in the morning when you’re rewriting some other b*****d’s script and not even putting your name on it. What that’s going to feel like. That is what I talked to him about.’

Moffat – who described the job as a ‘monstrous workload’ – also shed light on why he’d decided to step down, saying that after years of running both Doctor Who and Sherlock he missed the job of simply being a writer.

‘I sort of miss my own job of making up television shows and doing the new things, which is the real job of a writer,’ he admitted.
‘I miss being, as it were, a proper writer. I’d like to go and find a new thing to fail at!’
Moffat’s – not to mention Peter Capaldi’s – final series of Doctor Who kicks off on BBC One on Saturday April 15.