Ben Bailey Smith ducks away from our Zoom chat for a few seconds. He returns holding a photograph of his six-year-old self at Christmas 1983, dressed as Darth Vader with a toy AT-AT at his feet. “The Darth Vader outfit was like a bin bag,” he laughs, “but I was just over the moon. Return Of The Jedi was the first movie I ever saw in the cinema, and my relationship with Star Wars has been obsessive basically for as long as I can remember.”
It’s no exaggeration, then, to report TV show is something of a dream come true for the actor, author, comedian and rapper who sometimes goes by the -friendly pseudonym of Doc Brown. “Every day on set I wore the socks that my wife bought me for Christmas,” Smith admits. “They’re black and on the ankles they’ve got an embroidered face of Vader or a little TIE Fighter. No one would ever know I was wearing them, but it meant a lot to me.”
