The new Doctor Who on her love for Filey

The new Doctor grew up in the village of Skelmanthorpe, near Huddersfield.

But her first Yorkshire memory was "happily playing in the North Sea as a child, on holiday in Filey and obviously not noticing how freezing cold it was," she told the Yorkshire Post.

"And afterwards, losing a couple of quid of my hard-won pocket money on the 2p pushers in the penny arcade. Very disheartening."

When Jodie watched TV shows as she was growing up, the people saving the day didn’t look like her. They were “white guys, running around, doing really cool stuff”, while the women on screen were so often on the sidelines, helping the heroic moment happen.

But now, aged 36, the star is taking centre stage – the first woman to play The Doctor, in BBC One’s famed Doctor Who.

“It’s 2018, women are not a genre, we are just the other half of the population, so to see us doing things shouldn’t be such a surprise,” suggests Jodie during a break from filming.

"But I know it is, because I watch TV and film and we are often less active in things. Or we’re the emotional point of view of a story line, rather than the active one.” She continues avidly: “There’s lots of different actors in this show rather than different sexes, we’re all just actors. And that’s what we feel like this show represents.

“It’s a moment and I’m a part of it and I’m proud of it. But I can’t wait for it not to be a moment as well, so that someone going to drama school at 18 doesn’t need to think, ‘There aren’t any jobs for me’.”

With Doctor Who, she adds, the sense of responsibility she feels to be honest and truthful was “weighted with 55 years of history”.