A REPLICA TARDIS, built in Yorkshire, has been drawing customers to a cafe at the other end of the country.

The TARDIS - short for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space - is one of the stars of long-running BBC show Doctor Who, and The Doctor's vehicle through time and space, but the £1,800 replica has been refitted as a working toilet for a Bristol cafe.

The Doctor's blue box, which is famously bigger on the inside, has turned up in a number of surprising places in recent years, from York Maze last summer, to this allotment in Starbeck in the run up to the new series, which started on Saturday, when about 6.8 million viewers tuning in to see Peter Capaldi take on the role from Matt Smith in an 80-minute episode.

John Starkey, of Woody's Timber in Hessle, East Yorkshire, said the 5x5x10 foot model was much bigger than the usual 4x4x8 replicas he usually made.

I've built more than 100 over the last few years. Someone asked about one and it just snowballed. I'm not even a fan of the show!.

"That was a special one which in our madness we decided to build but we didn't know what to do with it. It's the most elaborate one we've built, we really went to town on it with the best quality timber and all that."

Claire and Justin Hoggans run the Warmley Waiting Room close to a Bristol cycle path, and the cafe made national headlines this weekend after they unveiled their new WC, labelled by fans as the Who Loo, which includes lights, a toilet, sink with hot and cold water, a hand dryer, and plays the TARDIS sound effect at the push of a button.

Claire said: "It's brilliant, we've seen a lot of new faces because of it.

"We didn't realise it would be that popular it appeals to a lot of people but over this weekend we had a lot of new faces and many said they came because of the media coverage. Last night we had someone tweet us from Japan, it's actually gone worldwide, it's crazy!"