[5] In Newton Aycliffe, Magrs attended Woodham Comprehensive School, where Mark Gatiss was two years ahead of him and in the same drama group.
(1998), share characters, a magical realist tone and a setting: the fictional Phoenix Court council estate in Newton Aycliffe.
[9][10][11] Magrs' first children's book, Strange Boy (2002), prompted controversy due to homosexual content involving its 10-year-old protagonist and a 14-year-old neighbour.
[17] Magrs has written several novels, short stories and audio dramas relating to Doctor Who, many of which also feature his character Iris Wildthyme.
[18][19] Iris was initially portrayed as an eccentric and unreliable Time Lady, whose TARDIS takes the form of a London AEC Routemaster double-decker bus (the route 22 to Putney Common), though in a series of short story collections and novels not written for the BBC, the character has been repurposed to remove any copyrighted aspects.
[19] Magrs has also written licensed Doctor Who fiction without Wildthyme, including the 2007 novel, Sick Building, (which made the shortlist for the Doncaster Book Award),[22] a variety of audio plays for Big Finish and the BBC audio series, Hornets' Nest, which marked the first time Tom Baker had returned to play the Doctor in a full-length drama since he left the role in 1981.
A short story collection, A Treasury of Brenda and Effie (Obverse Books) and a seventh novel, Fellowship of Ink (snowbooks) were both released in 2017.
[3][32] With Julia Bell, Magrs edited several issues of the University of East Anglia's literary journal Pretext and The Creative Writing Coursebook (2001).