All sorts of insects come out in summer, don’t they, and one day we were absolutely tormented by this one bluebottle. You don’t realise how loud those creatures are until you’re in a silent studio, waiting to deliver your lines, and suddenly you hear this buzzing somewhere up near the lights. How can something so tiny cause so much chaos? Take after take had to be halted every time the noise started up again. There’s one scene that we had to keep where you can actually see the fly walking, cool as you like, across Glyn’s brow!
It turned out, Glyn got off lightly. I was repeating ‘Eldrad must live!’ for the hundredth time when I felt this tickle in my throat. I had to cough – and the bloody fly shot out! Still, it stopped it buzzing …
When my last recorded scene came I was really happy with it. Not happy with my performance or the writing or anything like that; it’s just we had such fun doing it. That’s how I wanted to remember Who.
Not everyone saw the joke, however.
We were filming a scene set on the planet Kastria. Tom and I had to climb up this craggy surface. He was carrying Eldrad, played by Judith Paris, who was covered in an unwieldy rock costume. All I had to do was get myself up, but I slipped.
I don’t know if it was the tension releasing, but as soon as my foot slid from under me I couldn’t help laughing. Then Tom slipped and we both started giggling.
‘OK, quiet everyone, we’re going again.’
So we did it again – and slipped again. Poor old Judith, she was being thrown around like a sack of potatoes and I think she got pretty pissed off.
‘Look, can we just do this so I can go and have a fag?’
But we just kept on slipping and that made us laugh even more. You know when you don’t know what you’re laughing at but you can’t stop? That was us.
Meanwhile Marion was losing her patience and Lennie was tearing his hair out.
‘Look, would you stop messing about!’
But we couldn’t help it. It was quite uncontrollable. And, you know what? I’m glad we couldn’t. If I have to remember anything of my time on Who, it would be just having a blast with Tom. Me and him, Doctor and companion – us against the universe.
* * *
At least my farewell came at the end of recording. (David Tennant’s took place a while before he left Cardiff.) We all piled down to the Kensington Hilton to let our hair down and party. Brian was there, and so many faces from the last few years. Usually there’s a whipround when someone leaves, so I’d been asked if I wanted anything in particular. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘I’d love some silver picture frames to put people’s pictures in.’ Just as well, because I posed for so many photos that night – I didn’t want to forget anyone. I remember a little boy turning up and taking loads of snaps as well. Years later he sent them to me on a disc. He’s not so little any more!
The frames were just what I wanted but there was something quite special still to come. George Gallaccio handed me a small box and said, ‘It’s in case you ever want to come back.’
Inside was a key to the TARDIS!
‘Oh, George, that’s so sweet.’
‘Everyone should have access to the TARDIS, Lis.’
After the Hilton the party carried on at Tom’s house. He was with gorgeous Marianne Ford at the time – they were such a brilliant couple. Whenever we had to go to functions for the BBC he liked her to come along and look after him. He really loved that. So, I’d met her many times, although this was the first time I’d ever seen their house. When we arrived I gasped. The garden was absolutely festooned with fairy lights. It was quite magical.
‘What do you think?’ Tom asked proudly.
I said, ‘Tom, it’s beautiful. Do you always have these lights on?’
‘Of course I bloody don’t,’ he scowled. ‘I put them up for you!’
* * *
So that was that. Three years, eighteen serials, eighty half-hour episodes. Without trying, I’d accidentally become the longest-serving companion – just pipping Katy’s record. (I think Frazer Hines had appeared in more episodes, but over a shorter period.) These stats matter to some people but I was oblivious. The only statistic I cared about was the number of empty days that lay ahead of me.
Tangiers, here I come …
Chapter Twelve
Bippetyboo, Bippetyboo
WAKING UP that first day as a free woman was sensational. Not because I was released from the shackles of a three-year job; it was just amazing to have the whole day ahead of me and absolutely no plans. There were no calls for costume fittings; no one phoning to say a new script was in the post – I had nothing to learn and nowhere to be.
Absolute bliss.
Once I’d been on Nationwide and the Daily Mail had plastered me across their cover – and Clive James wrote in the Observer that I was one of the ‘five best things’ on television! – offers of work really did start to flood in. Some of them had nice pay cheques attached as well; they put the BBC to shame. Nothing really leapt out at me, though. Most were looking for ‘another Sarah Jane Smith’. Some of them were established sci-fi projects, others were launches. The one thing they had in common, though, was that they didn’t float my boat. I’ve done Sarah Jane, I’ve put her to bed, I thought.
You hear people say they need to put some distance between themselves and their past. Most don’t mean it literally. But I did – I put two thousand miles between us.
Brian and I had been hankering for a holiday to Tangiers for what seemed like forever. Not only was it exotic and otherworldly to Europeans (especially back in 1976 when different cultures were still defined by geographical boundaries) – and not only would we enjoy weather Brits can only dream of, there was another factor, even more important: it was accessible by road. Post-Toronto, that was important.
I know bus journeys are anathema to some people but Brian and I love them. You get a completely different view of the world. It’s also cheap and you’re pitched in close proximity to your partner for hours at a time. When you lead the lifestyles we do, that chance to be with one another is priceless.
* * *
No one would leave something as powerful as Who today without an exit plan. You’d have offers lined up. Before David Tennant said goodbye to me on Bannerman Road for the final time, his forthcoming schedule was packed. But did I have a plan? Of course not, no strategy! No twelve-step programme to world domination, which is pathetic, I admit. Career suicide, really. My agent has to take a share of that blame as well – sorry, Todd! He should have been steering me a bit more. I wouldn’t have appreciated it at the time, but you might have thought he’d be shaking me to accept some of those offers. After all, if you can’t rely on an agent to exploit a situation, what’s the world coming to?
But there you go. We can’t go back, and if I had been a little bit more switched-on perhaps I wouldn’t still be enjoying Sarah Jane so much now. So, as the song goes, no regrets – life’s too short.
By the time we returned from Africa I was raring to go. Right, I thought, what offers have we got?
And that’s how I ended up on a train to Liverpool.
Looking back it was almost certainly the wrong call. If I’d wanted to do theatre there were probably better roles from a ‘career’ perspective than Mooney and His Caravans. I only agreed because it was at the Playhouse and Brian was going to be in it as well. That was enough for me. I didn’t think ‘progression’, I just thought, That would be nice.
In other words, it wasn’t David Tennant’s Hamlet. This certainly wasn’t a ‘vehicle’ for me. If anything, I was hiding from my past.
But it was great to get back to my roots. Mum and Dad put us up, of course, and they were prouder than ever when there was a bit of interest from the Liverpool Echo, who ran a nice piece along the lines of ‘Local Girl Makes Good’. You know the sort of thing. I think they were even more impressed when they heard about the queue of autograph hunters waiting outside the theatre for me each night.
And there were other bits o
f work in my other old stomping ground, Manchester. Brian and I recorded A Bitter Almond for BBC Radio’s Afternoon Theatre segment over there. We also did Post Mortem for Thirty-Minute Theatre. They were both great parts but for me, the thrill was working once again with my husband.
Speaking of Brian, I have been asked how he felt being the less famous and, probably, less well-paid half of our relationship. I don’t know if it ever bothered him that to the wider public I was doing better than he was for those three years – I never gave it a thought. I was probably bringing home more money than him during my Who years, but then he’d been the breadwinner all the time I was out of work and he was in the West End. And it’s always been like that – you just pray one of you is working. Ideally both, ideally together, but one will do so long as someone is paying the bills. Remember, we had barely fifty pence between us when he bought my engagement ring in Manchester. It was always, ‘Thank God one of us has got a job’.
It’s true that Brian wasn’t as recognisable in the street as I was – he’s never been so readily associated with a single character or show. On the other hand, he never got the snide ‘it’s only kids’ telly’ comments that occasionally came my way. Yes, you knew you were popular; yes, you were in the Radio Times a lot, but even then, just looking at how they wrote about the show you weren’t allowed to forget it was ‘only a children’s programme’. Even the BBC never let us forget.
More radio followed. Laura and the Angel and The Hilton Boy were both for BBC Radio. After Mooney at Liverpool we did Saturday, Sunday, Monday and The Lion in Winter. I have to say, I loved being back in rehearsals, working towards that opening night, learning the new play by day, performing the old one by night, and changing every three weeks. And knowing that no bugger was going to ask me to go on the book was an incredible release.
Before any of that, though, in October 1976 I had some unfinished business. The fourteenth season of Doctor Who – starring yours truly – exploded onto screens on 4 September and of course my swansong was just around the corner. Annoyingly I had to break off rehearsals in Liverpool and hightail it back to London for a round of promotional stunts. Contractual obligations, as they say. I managed to fit in quite a few interviews while I was down there. I’m glad my leaving wasn’t a secret or it would have been horrible. Chris Eccleston must have been biting his tongue every time he was interviewed for his first series because his exit was kept secret for so long. David Tennant had the best idea, announcing it live at the Television Awards. He and Russell T Davies were so proud of pulling that one off without the press discovering it first.
My favourite event, I don’t know why, was an appearance on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop on 2 October, the morning of Hand of Fear’s debut. I don’t think Noel Edmonds showed himself to be the most informed Who fan but I had a ball. Catching up with Tom backstage and then sharing that sofa with him on-air was a genuine pleasure. Answering viewers’ questions was always an honour, not a chore. And when you’re not on a show anymore, you can view it from the outside. And, do you know what? I was bloody proud of what we’d achieved. Jon, Barry, Terry, Robert and Tom – I owed so much to so many. I was glad to have left but at the same time I was genuinely choked whenever I thought of Who’s contribution to television history. You knew it was special; even I could see that!
I managed to catch my Mandragora performances as they went out. By the time The Hand of Fear hit the screens, however, I was on stage in Mooney. Younger readers won’t be able to comprehend this, but if you didn’t catch a programme on broadcast, that was it. There were no video players, no Sky+ and certainly no YouTube or BBC iPlayer. So, while the nation was mourning my departure – so I’m told – I was none the wiser. For all I knew, Lennie Mayne could have edited me out of all my favourite scenes.
So there I was, on stage at the Playhouse in a Saturday matinee on 23 October, knowing that the nation – well, a young proportion of it – was engrossed in my sorrowful farewell. I still spoke to my folks afterwards as usual, except this time I listened more intently to their comments. Was I any good? Did they like it? These things are more important when you don’t catch it yourself.
I did see the show eventually. Do you know when? When the BBC released The Hand of Fear on VHS in the 90s.
It transpired that I was free to watch the debut of my successor in 1977 but – sorry about this – I didn’t want to. Tom was my Doctor. What pleasure was there to be gained from seeing him with someone else? It would feel like watching my husband with another woman.
Bizarrely, before we set off on our African trek, Brian had been finishing up at the Orange Tree in Richmond. With time on my hands I went down to join him. Afterwards, I was sitting at the bar when this pretty young thing came up to me.
‘Hello,’ she said, ‘You don’t know me but my name is Louise.’
‘Hello, Louise,’ I said.
‘And I’m going to be the new companion in Doctor Who.’
‘Oh.’ I was speechless. What were the odds of that meeting without a real-life TARDIS?
‘So,’ she continued, ‘I wondered if you could give me any pointers. I mean, what’s Tom like?’
We had a proper chat. I told her she was about to have the best years of her life. Well, I had, anyway.
* * *
In theatre you can be whoever you like. Audiences are very open-minded about casts, which is how I’ve played pensioners, teens, foreigners and sometimes even men. Television is a lot more restrictive. Producers see you doing well in one area and so they hire you to do the same thing again and again. I’d already turned down a lot of sci-fi offers but being viewed as a ‘children’s star’ was harder to get away from. Perhaps if I’d been slightly cannier immediately my ‘retirement’ was announced I’d have had more choice. However, when the offer came a year later to present a show called Merry-Go-Round for BBC Schools, I said yes.
After all, at least I knew I could play the character!
Merry-Go-Round had actually started at the same time as Doctor Who and it would run for twenty years. It was essentially an educational resource for junior school teachers covering all sorts of things like science, history, geography and even the odd sex education programme. I said I’d be happy to present on any subject they threw at me.
And then they mentioned the helicopter!
The episode was called The Fuel Fishers and I’d have to whizz around different oil rigs. And how do you get to those? I came so close to pulling out when I heard about it but Brian and Todd kept saying helicopters were so much safer than aeroplanes – basically, anything to calm me down. But they hadn’t been in Planet of the Spiders.
We were flying out to the Shetland Isles and from there to an operating rig. You don’t need me to tell you that the weather in the Highlands in winter is not going to be great. Oblivious to the conditions, our director led us out to an airfield in the windiest, wettest conditions I could remember. Waiting for us was the largest helicopter I’ve ever seen in my life. It was a Sikorsky.
‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘this thing will never get off the ground!’
The pilot laughed. ‘Safer than cars, these things.’
Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you? But I climbed on.
We took off with such a lurch I thought I’d left my stomach behind.
The director must have seen my face. ‘It’s not so bad is it?’ he said cheerily.
Then the Sikorsky plummeted about a hundred feet in a second.
‘He’s just flying beneath the clouds,’ my companion advised. ‘It’s safer nearer the water.’
There was a curtain between us and the pilot but I couldn’t resist taking a peep through. Now, I’m no expert on flying, but watching that pilot stamp repeatedly on the floor, as though he were desperately willing the chopper back into the sky, didn’t look textbook to me.
The director had noticed too. ‘Perfectly normal,’ he said quickly, but he wasn’t smiling now.
Somehow we made it down into the middle of nowhere an
d went out to eat in the one available pub. I was still trying to warm up when the pilot wandered over, grinning from ear to ear.
‘Well, that was a lucky escape,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
I wished I hadn’t asked. There are three tanks of fuel on a Sikorsky and when one is empty, the second and third kick in; that’s the theory. On our one the first tank had finished but there was a blockage in the second and third and the fuel couldn’t get through. That’s why he’d been stamping on the floor – he was trying to unblock it.
‘Yeah,’ the pilot admitted, ‘I was actually preparing to land on the water!’
After that, I couldn’t eat a thing. And I was still feeling sick when I heard this familiar voice.
‘Hello, Lis. It’s been a while.’
I stared at the man in front of me.
‘Dave?’
I couldn’t believe it. Dave Owen, my first boyfriend, was standing in front of me! We hadn’t seen each other for fifteen years and there he was, in army gear. I always knew he’d join the forces – although what they were up to in that particular outpost I had no idea. Dave knew plenty about me, though, from interviews and newspapers. You never quite get used to strangers or people you haven’t seen for ages having an endless supply of facts about your life. I always presume no one’s reading anything I say!
The next morning we had to fly over to the actual oil rig. The Sikorsky was being checked over so we took another helicopter. If the other one had looked too big, this thing was so small it looked like it would be blown down by the first big gust. Somehow I was persuaded on and we made it out to the rig, safe and sound.
Or so I thought.
The moment I stepped out onto that platform in the middle of the North Sea the director announced, ‘Congratulations, Lis. You are officially the first woman in history to set foot on one of these!’
I also discovered that according to old seafaring lore, it was considered bad luck if a woman boarded a vessel. I’m not one for superstitions but when I heard the helicopter we’d arrived in had somehow damaged its rotor on landing, I began to think there might be something in it. There was no way to fix it there, so we were stuck unless another one came out for us. When that chopper arrived, our bird was hogging the single landing spot so, for ten frightening minutes, our pilot had to take off with his damaged rotors and hover just long enough for the other one to put down and deliver the replacement parts. It was terrifying to watch.
Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography Page 25