Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

by Sladen, Elisabeth

  With the Who team tied up we were despatched to Birmingham’s Pebble Mill to record there. If I’d felt sidelined on location, I was positively isolated now. Normally my closest allies on a shoot are the costume and makeup girls. Not this time. First chance they got, they disappeared to their rooms to have a Southern Comfort. I think they’d had problems in the past with London teams thinking they were superior. Whatever the reason, it just added to my mounting worry.

  With the costume people ignoring me I found a new place to hide in the studio. John Leeson had the tiniest space with a curtain cutting it off from the melee. Every chance I got, I popped over.

  ‘All right, John?’

  ‘Oh, Lis, do come in!’

  I was surprised by another friendly face while we were there. One afternoon I was waiting to go on when I got a tap on one shoulder and a familiar voice said, ‘How’s my favourite assistant?’

  It was Chris Barry.

  Favourite? I thought. I wish I’d known that when I was working with you!

  He was recording in another studio, so we caught up as often as possible to mull over old times or catch up on gossip about mutual acquaintances.

  It’s probably quite clear by now that I was no fan of the finished show, but there were positives. I really liked the way the whole thing centred round Aunt Lavinia – who, of course, I had impersonated to gain access to UNIT back in The Time Warrior. So that was nice. The line that came after I unpacked K-9 gave even better continuity.

  ‘Oh, you didn’t forget!’

  It meant nothing to me at the time but I now know this was a direct reference to my closing conversation with the Doctor back in The Hand of Fear.

  Hiccoughs and hitches besieged the show right up to broadcast. It had been scheduled to go out on 23 December 1981 to the highest possible audience. Two weeks earlier it was mysteriously bumped back to 28 December – traditionally a veritable viewing wasteland. It didn’t stop there. On the evening of 28 December, a failing of the Winter Hill transmitter meant the entire northwest of England was without coverage. In the event, the 8.4 million viewers scored was an incredible achievement. Despite my misgivings, it augured extremely well for a future series.

  JNT rang me a few weeks later with the news. There had been a change of faces at the top of the Beeb – the new suits wanted to distance themselves from Who. Despite the spectacular viewing figures, the answer was therefore negative: we would not be getting a series.

  It was a body blow, if I’m honest. I don’t think I turned in the best performance but in the face of the problems, we did all right. The series would only have got better but the decision had been made.

  So that was that, I thought. I’d brought Sarah back and it hadn’t worked. Back to the mothballs for her …

  On the plus side: at least I’d never have to set eyes on that bloody dog again!

  Chapter Fourteen

  Think Of The Fans

  THE FIRST time I walked away from Doctor Who it was with a spring in my step. Now I was dragging my heels. I hadn’t had the best time on K-9 and Company. On the other hand, if the show had gone to series we could have achieved some spectacular things, I was sure of it. Despite my own misgivings, I could tell from my fan mail that K-9 was a massive hit with kids. No one could explain why we weren’t being commissioned for more.

  I’m not one to dwell. The only way to cope with disappointment is to put your head down and work – but where? The answer, I realised, was Bristol. Brian had been there quite a lot recently under the direction of Little Theatre boss David Neilson. ‘Come down,’ he enthused. ‘You won’t be disappointed.’

  If David’s name seems familiar, you’ll probably recognise him as Roy Cropper from Coronation Street. Roy’s one of the comedy staples in Corrie and David’s hysterical in real life – but in a completely different way to Roy. There’s none of the pushover about him. He’s utterly in control; a really, really great director and a terrific actor.

  As well as being with Brian, the big draw for me in Bristol was the chance to do Twelfth Night again. That was the play in which we’d met. What a perfect play in which to share the stage again?

  Then Brian’s agent rang and said, ‘You’ve got a part in a TV series’, and all that romanticism flew out the window.

  ‘You’ve got to take the telly – it’s four times the money and half the work,’ I conceded.

  So that was the end of our little commemoration.

  Brian had been slated to play Feste while I was offered Olivia or Viola. I have always wanted to play Viola. If I’ve got any dreams in acting, that would be one. Then I looked at the rest of the cast. If I was being honest, there was another girl in the company who was born to play her. The idea of her playing Olivia was laughable, really, whereas I could get away with either. So that was the end of another dream. I took one for the team and donned my Olivia frock. Thirty years later my chance of playing Viola has probably sailed.

  I faced another casting conundrum with the next play. It was a new piece, called Comic Cuts, by Steven Mallatrat (who as a Corrie writer would go on to recommend David Neilson for the show). The advantage of being in a company is you get the pick of the parts. I would never be cast as June in an open casting and by the time Comic Cuts reached the West End I’d been replaced by Janine Duvitski, Angus Deayton’s wife in One Foot in the Grave. I can’t have any complaints – if she walked through the door now you’d think, Yes, she’s June.

  Then it was time for panto. Steven had written a modern-day Robin Hood update that was genuinely hysterical. I played Mrs Ross, a podgy thing with twenty children, so I was padded up to the eyeballs. It was just as well because I had to learn a fight sequence with Tim Stern, who played my husband. We rolled all over the stage in a proper slapstick wrestling match. Each night I got up covered in dirt and dust, sweating from the padding. I loved it!

  Despite the high calibre of production, the Little Theatre was in financial difficulties – there was actually talk of Robin Hood not making it on to the stage. Then David and his backers came to us with a proposal: if we could all work unpaid for a month, that would provide enough cash to fund their next production, an adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ When the Wind Blows. No guarantees but they were confident the show would be snapped up for the West End – and the money would start flowing in then.

  So that’s what happened. We worked for nothing so that the money could go into sets for When the Wind Blows. How many other professions are asked to do these things? Sure enough, it was quickly chosen for a London run and our cheques arrived within weeks. When you know the people involved it makes gambles like that less scary.

  * * *

  Occasionally, of course, knowing the people involved can evoke quite different emotions. I nearly froze when I got a message that John Nathan-Turner was trying to contact me. Haven’t you banged enough nails into Sarah Jane’s coffin?

  Of course if I’d paid attention to the letters I’d been receiving, then I would have known what he wanted. For months, fans had been writing to me to ask, ‘Is there going to be anything to mark the twentieth anniversary of Doctor Who?’ and I had duly replied, ‘Nothing that I’m involved with.’ But I forgot how rapidly the BBC works. Almost knee-jerky, you might say! It was as though they woke up one morning and thought, Christ, we need to do something!

  So that was what Nathan-Turner wanted to speak to me about. They were doing a Special called The Five Doctors – featuring all incarnations of the Doctor, with their companions, being plucked out of time to compete in the deadly game of Rassilon in the spookily named Death Zone on Gallifrey. In order to make it work they were trying to reunite as many of the main men and their sidekicks as possible. The late William Hartnell was to be replaced by Richard Hurndall, but otherwise we were all on board. Tom Baker’s companion would be Lalla Ward – whom he’d recently married – and so I would tag team with Jon Pertwee.

  Now that, I would be excited to do: me, Tom and Jon – my two Doctors and me onscreen at
the same time – that could be special! Even so, K-9 and Company had left a sour taste in my mouth.

  ‘Come on, Lis,’ John urged in his usual enthusiastic manner. ‘Everyone else is doing it! You don’t want to be the one who said “no”, do you? Think of the fans.’

  That was so typical of John, playing the guilt card. ‘Think of the fans’ might have been his catchphrase. I thought of everything that went wrong with our shoot in the Cotswolds, but then I remembered some of the good times I’d had with Jon and Tom.

  ‘OK, you’ve got me,’ I said. ‘When can I see a script?’

  Ah, now there’s a question. One of these days I’ll learn to ask for a script before I give my answer! In the end I think that’s what Tom did because by the time shooting commenced he was nowhere to be seen. They had to use clips from an unbroadcast serial instead. It didn’t help, I suppose, that by then he and Lalla had separated.

  Terry Dicks was given the task of writing a script that incorporated all these changing elements: myriad Doctors, companions and villains. His only stipulations were that there were to be no Daleks – and no K-9. I knew exactly how he felt.

  Poor Terry got neither of his wishes. A solo Dalek does appear inside the tower, in a Benny Hill-style chase with the First Doctor and Susan. It was a welcome return for my old friend Roy Skelton as its voice. Then, to tie in with K-9 and Company, my part in The Five Doctors began with the dog warning me of danger. Obviously I then ignored him and got spirited off to Gallifrey. At least he didn’t have to come as well, although it was nice to see John Leeson again so soon. There’s a certain supermarket near my house where I often hear this cry of ‘Mistress!’ Honestly, jumping out of your skin in the frozen meats aisle isn’t all that becoming.

  Despite my misgivings, by the time shooting started in March 1983 I was thrilled to be part of such an illustrious cast. Only people who’ve been in Who can really know what it’s like – and here they were by the TARDIS-load. Quite a few of them I’d met at the US conventions. Poor Peter Moffat, the director, really had his work cut out keeping us in check.

  ‘Would you please stop talking!’ he shouted more than once. ‘I’m trying to rehearse a scene.’

  It was a waste of time. As soon as they had a bunch of us in a room the gossip would start and before we knew it, lunchtime was just around the corner.

  Meeting old friends was one thing, but I also made new ones. I’d never met Pat Troughton, the Second Doctor, before and what a wonder he was. I think it’s fair to say we were a bit wary of each other at first, I don’t know why. We would eye each other up a lot and I thought, What’s your problem? I think actually he was very shy (he liked to surround himself with his friends), but he turned in a stand-out performance. He really brought a lot of life to it – he knew exactly what he wanted from the part and it was good to see him with Nick Courtney. At the end of the day, Pat was a bloody good actor. It would have been nice to share some scenes with him and get to know the man, though.

  Pat wasn’t the only one with friends. Every Doctor seemed to have his clique off-screen; some companions had their own groups as well – it’s inevitable when you have so many people milling around at the same time. It was just as complicated onscreen. Everyone was paired off and at some point we all had our own villains to face. I think a few details got overlooked in the confusion so, for example, when Janet Fielding as the Fifth Doctor’s companion, Tegan, enters with Peter Davison and I walk on with Jon, the men start combining forces and we’re just left standing like lemons. I thought, I’d better go and introduce myself. How implausible would it be if we just stood there ignoring each other? Little things like that were a bit sloppy, I’d say – another sign of a rushed production.

  We had some fun on 17 November – a year after I’d recorded K-9 and Company. A photocall was announced for the four Doctors, the Brig, Carole Ann Ford (who played Susan, the Doctor’s grand-daughter during William Hartnell’s time), K-9 and me. Tom had also promised to put in an appearance. However, when push came to shove, he couldn’t be seen for toffee – but Nathan-Turner had already thought of that. So if you look at the snaps from that day you’ll notice Peter, Jon, Pat, Richard – and a waxwork of Tom, courtesy of Madame Tussauds! And if you can think of rude things to say or do to a dummy of Tom Baker, we probably did them. A rare highlight, I have to say, on an otherwise uninspiring shoot.

  Location filming took place in Wales and it was bloody cold, as you can imagine in November. There was a team of people armed with hairdryers whose job it was to hide behind rocks, then rush out and give your body a resuscitating blow-dry between takes! So when the photographer requested a few snaps of Carole Ann and me, we persuaded him to come back to the warmth of the hotel. ‘OK,’ he agreed, ‘but I haven’t got long.’ No sooner had we stepped inside than our faces went off the pink scale. Sweating and high-coloured is an absolutely hideous look, but the photographer snapped away regardless.

  ‘These pictures had better not see the light of day,’ I said.

  ‘No one would be stupid enough to use them,’ Carole Ann agreed.

  And so we promptly forgot all about them.

  * * *

  Being reunited with Jon was a total buzz. He himself, though, couldn’t find it in him to enjoy The Five Doctors for what it was. He’d never really got over watching Tom Baker regenerate into his part back in 1974. Having to sit back while Tom then went on to become the most popular and long-serving Doctor had been a hard pill to swallow. As a consequence he rarely let an opportunity slide to toss out a catty remark about his successor. Tom not taking part in The Five Doctors couldn’t have given him more material if he’d tried.

  ‘Oh, he’s too grand for the likes of us,’ he sneered. ‘Who’s not good enough for him any more! Charming, I’m sure.’

  Delighted as I was to see Jon, there was only so much of this talk I could take. Some of his bitchy remarks when we were posing with the Tom mannequin had been amusing but the joke quickly wore thin. In the end I said, ‘Look, if you can’t say anything nice, I’m off.’

  The look on Jon’s face! He’d forgotten how much I loved Tom. I’m not going to let you trample on my memories, I thought.

  A lot of Jon’s venom should have been directed at the BBC. They were the ones, he felt, who had tricked him into leaving by their intransigence. More crucially, they had never hired him since – he was very sad about that. He had a proud Dickensian face. They could have used him for all sorts of things but he never got another sniff until The Five Doctors and nothing outside Who afterwards. I guess Tom might have been the easy target but in reality Jon was annoyed at the whole Corporation.

  We had some fun together, of course. Jon got to trot out his catchphrase ‘reverse the polarity of the neutron flow’ once again, while Bessie was drafted back in to add an additional blast from the past. Annoyingly, once they’d brought her out of mothballs they needed to use her, so we had this ridiculous scene where I fall down a cliff and Jon has to winch me out using the car. All fine – except when you look at the cliff, it’s about three foot deep and not steep enough to keep a toddler at bay.

  Deciding where to tie the rope seemed to take an age, and all the while I was lying on this cold, damp patch of grass. In the end I called out, ‘Shall we not bother?’

  Shortly after that I heard Peter Moffat say, ‘Why don’t we just tie it around her neck?’

  Jon and I just looked at each other. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘I could strangle you.’

  I was so cold I almost said yes!

  Recapturing our old onscreen relationship came pretty naturally, I think. There’s a point in the show where I roll my eyes exasperatedly at Jon. That sort of thing isn’t in the script but it’s what I would have done – and did – back in Peladon. The years might have passed, I may have matured, but Sarah Jane is still there to puncture the Doctor’s ego when she gets the chance.

  Jon desperately wanted to make his mark on the show and despite his comments, I’m sure he had a lot more
fun with Tom not being there. He revelled in being the Doctor again and you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be thrilled for him.

  And I wasn’t the only one pleased to see some of Jon’s old pomp return. We all descended on a restaurant in Wales one night and for some reason naturally paired off in our Doctor and companion couples around the room. Jon and I both ordered trout with almonds – we always did share food tastes. Usually with that dish you got a few nuts sprinkled around the plate. When our meals arrived it looked as if they’d served the almonds with a dumper truck!

  I said, ‘I think they’re pleased to see you, Jon!’

  Bless that restaurant for trying to impress him but I still laugh when I picture him holding a knife and fork like excavation tools, saying, ‘Where on earth is the bloody fish?’

  I think all of the Doctors had a good time. I didn’t have many scenes with Peter Davison, and it was so bloody freezing all the time that if you weren’t in a scene you didn’t hang around, so sadly we didn’t really have much to do with each other.

  Jon had a great camaraderie with Patrick Troughton. They really bounced off each other, and the marvellous Richard Hurndall was someone I immediately warmed to. The stories flowed from him and I’m such a sucker for an older actor’s life story. He was such great company. It must have been intimidating playing a fake Doctor around so many originals but he didn’t let it show. I heard afterwards that poor Richard had died before he got paid! I really hope that’s not true but with the BBC you can never be sure …

  The four Doctors got on surprisingly well. I suppose three of them had bumped into each other before on the convention circuit and would do so again, but it was the other companions with whom I most enjoyed spending time. Carole Ann Ford was fun to be around, and Frazer Hines, who was starring in Emmerdale at the time, was excellent value as well. He’s the joker in the pack, one of those characters who have you in fits of giggles right up to the moment the clapperboard snaps. Then you do the scene and he has you cracking up again immediately afterwards – very naughty sometimes, but a breath of fresh air. He has been acting since he was a young boy so I suppose he doesn’t know anything else.