David Tennant was amongst the great and good brought together by the UK research councils to serve on the horizon-scanning committee. I guessed that he was qualified to join the academics and industry futurists thanks to his experience of time travel as Dr Who.

I couldn’t help being rather star-struck when I found myself allocated a seat to the immediate left of the famous actor. I had admired him for so long, and wondered whether it would be impolite to ask him for his autograph?

However, over the course of our discussions it became apparent that David Tennant was not in the best of mental health. By the end of the meeting he was hiding under the white IKEA table, refusing to speak to anyone. I crawled between the chairs to see whether I could coax him out to join the rest of us again, but he gruffly declined my invitation.