ALEC GUINNESS has apparently revealed the reason behind his early exit from the original Star Wars trilogy. In a forthcoming interview in Talk magazine, Guinness says it was he who suggested to George Lucas that Obi-Wan Kenobi should take an early bath in the series, persuading the director that it would be "poignant" if Kenobi returned as a ghost in the later films.

"What I didn't tell him was that I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful lines," the actor added. "I'd had enough of the mumbo-jumbo." Elsewhere in the interview, Guinness was said to have admitted that obsessive Star Wars fans frighten him.

WHO'LL BE the new Dr Who? That anxious enquiry of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties is to be heard in production circles once more. On the one hand, there's the rumour that Russell T Davies the creator of the gay drama series Queer As Folk and the author of a Doctor Who novel, was asked by the BBC to write a new series of the show, to be called Doctor Who 2000, with Linus Roach pencilled in as the time-travelling physician.

It's believed, though, that the BBC backed off from the project when they realised the speed with which the proposed Doctor Who feature film is said to be moving through pre-production.

Even Horizon director Paul Anderson has been touted as a director for the feature, though speculation that Will Smith or Denzel Washington would take the lead as African-American Doctors is fading fast.

Mike Higgins