Behind The Sofa - Origin in Doctor Who

Origin in Doctor Who

The expression originated from popular media commentary on young children being frightened by episodes of the BBC science-fiction television series Doctor Who, particularly during the 1970s. The idea that young children would hide behind furniture when especially frightening scenes were being shown, as they were unwilling to miss the programme altogether, was also popularized in the media. The phrase is strongly associated with Doctor Who in the United Kingdom, so much so that in 1991 the Museum of the Moving Image in London named their exhibition celebrating the programme "Behind the Sofa".

"Everyone remembers hiding behind the sofa," journalist Sinclair McKay wrote of the programme during its thirtieth anniversary year of 1993. "Remember hiding behind the sofa every time Dr Who came on the television?" the Daily Mirror newspaper asked its readers in a feature article two years later. In a 2006 interview with Sky News, Prince Andrew, Duke of York said that he hid from Daleks behind a Windsor Castle settee while watching Doctor Who as a child. The Economist has presented "hiding behind the sofa whenever the Daleks appear" as a British cultural institution on par with Bovril and tea-time.

Paul Parsons, author of The Science of Doctor Who, explains the appeal of hiding behind the sofa as the activation of the fear response in the amygdala in conjunction with reassurances of safety from the brain's frontal lobe.