Southport stabbing suspect Axel Rudakubana has a bizarre connection to ‘Doctor Who’

Axel Rudakubana, accused of murdering three girls under age 10 and the attempted murder of eight children and two adults at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport in Merseyside, England, appeared as The Doctor from Doctor Who in a 2018 Children in Need campaign video.

Sky News reports that Rudakabana was picked for the 2018 video through a casting agency. In the clip, Rudakabana emerges from the Tardis dressed like former Doctor Who star David Tennant, in a trench coat and tie. “It’s that time of year again,” Rudakabana says, referring to the annual Children in Need fundraising drive.

Rudakubana was nearly 18 years old when the Southport stabbing attack happened in late July 2024, making him around 11 years old when the Children in Need video was made. Once discovered, the BBC removed the video from its website “out of respect” for the victims.

The BBC’s Children in Need helps fund charities benefitting children across the U.K., and Doctor Who, a popular family show, helps raise funds for Children in Need through short video clips produced annually.

The U.K. riots

In the aftermath of the tragic Southport stabbings, riots broke out all across the U.K. as far-right protestors blamed immigration — specifically non-white and Muslim immigrants — for the murders. Rudakabana was born in Wales to Rwandan immigrants, making him a British citizen. He was 17 when the attacks happened. Under U.K. law mandating suspect’s identities under 18 not be reported in the press, his identity was kept confidential.

However, a U.K. judge agreed to release Rudakabana’s name early since he was almost 18, and to contradict online misinformation misidentifying the Southport suspect, and alleging that the police wasn’t release his name because he was Islamic. Islam is a minority religion in Rwanda, and there’s no evidence to suggest that Rudakabana or his family follow the faith, and according to The Independent, regularly attend a Christian church. A motive for the knife attack has not yet been determined.

However, for rioters who claim the Southport assailant is foreign, and that immigration has diluted British culture, the irony would be lost on them that not only is Rudakabana U.K.-born, he appeared on TV as The Doctor, among the most British of all fictional characters.