Doctor Who superfan's homemade Daleks bring joy and support to UK charities

South Wales Guardian

29-05-2025

Mark Casto is 67 and retired, but has had an eclectic mix of jobs including as a cartoonist, chef, graphic designer and Baptist minister.
Inspired by his daughter Amy who made a gingerbread version of the popular Doctor Who villain, Mr Casto now spends his days creating life-sized Dalek replicas to bring joy and publicity to charities supporting disabled and homeless people.
'A lot of people around here know me as the Dalek man,' Mr Casto, who lives in Ditchingham, Norfolk, told the PA news agency.
'I use them to raise money for a charity or help support a good cause.
'It's good to be able to take something that hates the whole human race and wants to destroy planet Earth, and turn it into a cause for something good.'
He made his first Dalek roughly around the time the Covid pandemic began, which he called Dalek DL to pay homage to its head being made from a dustbin lid, which has since been deconstructed and revamped as Dalek Ernie.
Since then, he has constructed five more, the majority of which stay in a room in his house when not entertaining people, and have been given names including Dalek Rad, Dalek Bert and Dalek Blisteron.
They have taken Mr Casto between six to seven months to piece together and are roughly six feet high and four feet wide.
He has used recycled timber and other items like Christmas baubles to create the sensor globes and knitting needles for the weapons, with materials including fibreglass, plywood and metal being welded together to create the support frames for the Daleks.
Mr Casto has cited the website Project Dalek as being his go-to source for information on how to build the Doctor Who villains.
So far, the Daleks have helped generate publicity for the work done by charities including Emmaus, which aims to end homelessness, and Waveney Enterprises, which provides a space for people with learning disabilities to express themselves through crafting and life skills, and is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.
'I work with a lot of people at Waveney Enterprises that have Down's syndrome and are very big Dr Who fans, and I started working there right after Covid struck,' Mr Casto said.
'I suggested we have a project where we create a Dalek of our own and it involved carpentry and electronics, and we recently completed that.
'It was a pleasure making Dalek Doom with them and they were really excited and all had a go using the voice modulator to do the Dalek voice, and it now lives in (the charity's) craft workshop in Beccles.'
Two of the Daleks have mobility scooters inside them, so Mr Casto can often be seen whizzing around his local area disguised as his villainous alter-ego, which has led to some amusing interactions.
'I often get people walking their dogs past me and stay still like I'm a prop, and I wait until they come a bit closer and if the dog seems okay, one of my favourite lines to say in the Dalek voice is 'what is this creature on the lead?'' he said.
'If they say that's their dog, I then say: 'I was not talking to you'.'
He also met Barbara Loft, who starred in Doctor Who television story The Mind Robber in her youth.
'One day, when I was in Dalek Rad, this lady came out of her cottage and looked at me and said: 'oh, a Dalek how random' and I told her: 'Daleks are not random, you will be exterminated',' Mr Casto explained.
'She came over and told me she acted alongside Patrick Troughton in Doctor Who in 1968.
'What were the chances of that? That was a highlight.'
Despite thinking the Daleks were 'creepy' when he first saw them on his TV as a child in the 1960s, he said they had the biggest influence on him.
'When the Daleks first appeared on TV, they were so strange – we'd never really seen anything quite like them before,' he said.
'I was obsessed with them and when I got older, I wanted to build them and eventually had the skills and time to do it.
'They've changed a lot during the years as well and they're still so popular after so long, and it just goes to show that, like Spiderman and Batman, they've just got something special about them.'
The former graphic designer said he has no plans to make any further Daleks – instead those he already has will be put to good use at events and organisations across the country.
Mr Casto's Daleks are preparing for a busy summer, as two of them will be at a children's event at Latitude Festival in Suffolk in July.