The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter is a “free-wheeling, irksome email discourse”, according to Private Eye’s pseudonymous literary reviewer “Bookworm”. The latest issue of the fortnightly satirical and current-affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop, describes Russell and Benjamin’s “astonishingly long sequel” to 2008’s The Writer’s Tale (”the 512-page granite slab/occasional table”) as an “irritating experience” and, bizarrely, lacking in “self-doubt” - “an intergalactic love-in: a bring-your-own-extolment party in which readers are invited to bask in the outrageous genius of this bear-like TV demagogue”.

Yes, really.

Can you believe it?

WE’VE BEEN REVIEWED IN PRIVATE EYE!!! OMG!!!

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“I hope you’re not expecting modesty here,” booms Russell T Davies in The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter, a warning that looms out of the dry ice like a rogue Sontaran, laser-gun cocked and levelled at those who assume a reputation as redoubtable as Davies’ requires no further embellishment.

But this is no place for diffidence. Or subtlety. Or self-restraint. As readers familiar with the scriptwriter’s work will attest, his is not a retiring voice; his contributions to television - most notably his recently-departed role as Head Writer, Executive Producer and Chief Resuscitator of Doctor Who - bearing testament to an all-encompassing zeal that, while undoubtedly infectious, may be rather too scattershot for its own good.

The Final Chapter marks what one assumes to be the final chapter in the published correspondence between Davies and journalist/fan Benjamin Cook: a sprawling, unexpurgated electronic dialogue that began in 2007 as a proposed feature for Doctor Who Magazine and snowballed into the 512-page granite slab/occasional table that was 2008’s The Writer’s Tale.

Now, 16 months later, the book rematerialises with an additional 300 pages of email and text message-based conversation: a breathlessly self-congratulatory valediction that covers the writing of the 10th Doctor’s final TV specials, the production of a five-part Torchwood mini-series, press duties for the launch of The Writer’s Tale, the handing over of the executive Who baton to writer Stephen [sic] Moffat, an OBE (Davies’), a chicken stir fry (Cook’s), all manner of idle and invariably saucy pan-dimensional musing (”imagine kissing Davros”) and, ultimately, Davies’ temporary move to Los Angeles.

Though the book’s new, Christmas special-referencing cover - from which peers the 6ft 6ins Davies, squidged between David “the Doctor” Tennant and John “the Master” Simm like a mildly vexed space referee - suggests a cash-in, the existence of this astonishingly long sequel owes more to the gargantuan esteem in which the man behind one of the most successful regenerations in TV history is held.

As a consequence, The Final Chapter reads like an intergalactic love-in: a bring-your-own-extolment party in which readers are invited to bask in the outrageous genius of this bear-like TV demagogue. Here, everything is either “brilliant”, “bloody brilliant”, “awesome”, “lovely” or, should Timothy Dalton agree to a role in your Christmas special, “AMAZING!!!”

We learn why his laborious gags are, in fact, “vital to the whole tone of the show. They ARE flippant, but that flippancy is intrinsic to the Doctor.” We share in his love of his own scripts (”how can you not watch Doctor Who when it’s this good?”) and thrill at his undying appreciation of actor Russell Tovey’s arse. The duo’s free-wheeling, irksome email discourse is “live and unfiltered. We didn’t go back and tidy up”, boasts Davies, as if merely the act of pausing to reappraise a text is anathema to the creative process.

Although the relationship between the journalist and scriptwriter can be endearing - Cook as saucer-eyed pageboy to Davies’ flapping dandy prince - there is always a flash of steel beneath the Welshman’s candyfloss exterior. He discusses his belief that it is “outrageous” not to have a BBC Doctor Who ident - and is not remotely surprised when the BBC promptly gives him one for Christmas. It seems that what Davies wants, Davies gets. “Oh, I’ve become a monster”, he writes towards the end of his Doctor Who tenure, the implied tee-hee not quite erasing the suspicion that this is not a character to be trifled with.

You wonder how his extraordinary ego will serve him in Hollywood; how the hand-on-the-tiller-or-else approach and the breakneck multi-tasking Philip Pullman refers to in his foreword as “omnicompetence” will wash with an industry notorious for its dismissive treatment of scriptwriters.

We leave Davies in his new, temporary home in Venice Beach, waggling his toes in the sand and pondering his new circumstances. “Christ, LA!” he hoots. “What the hell am I doing? Maybe it’s my mid-life crisis…” Had slightly more of this self-doubt been applied to The Final Chapter, it might have been a less irritating experience.

“The Bookworm”