For those of you who don’t recognise this one, this little doodle of a man with a big nose peeking over a wall is a very famous doodle dating back to World War II. But we can’t say whether he was there without first starting with the question: Kilroy Who?

In the late ’40s and early ’50s, this image became globally present and known. In the US it was captioned ‘Kilroy was here’, in the UK he was known as Chad and down under in Australia they called him Foo. No-one can specify where and when it started but it has turned up in some mighty strange places – including inside sealed ship bulkheads, atop inaccessible heights and deep underground trenches. There are a few theories; maybe he was a double agent, maybe he was a shipwright, or maybe it was a memorial to a dead friend. However, none of these theories explain how the legend spanned such a wide scale in so little time.

The truth is, Kilroy (or Chad, or Foo, whichever name you prefer) was in fact really here. In all of those places, at whatever time they were. Kilroy was a time-lord from Gallifrey.

As you may know, time-lords are under strict instruction not to interfere with the natural sequence of things. However, our big-nosed friend saw the results of World War II and felt compelled to intervene. He was of course punished for this and banned from all space/time travel but managed to escape for one final trip on 30 April 1945 to Adolf’s Führerbunker in Berlin, after which neither himself nor Hitler were ever seen alive.

His incursions into our timeline amongst the allied forces boosted morale hugely during the war, and it seems the ‘Kilroy was here’ doodle is his legacy of faith and hope to Earth.