Standing waiting in that freezing-cold car park we were aware that the TARDIS itself had yet to materialise. Suddenly a lorry pulled in. The driver hopped out and, recognising Jon, said, ‘There’s your TARDIS, mate.’
We all stared at it – it was completely flat-packed.
‘I was rather hoping someone would assemble it,’ the photographer said to the trucker.
‘Not me, mate – I’m just the delivery guy!’
So there we were, me, Nick, the photographer, and the show’s director, Phil Clarke, all trying to do this giant blue jigsaw puzzle. By this point, Who had been cancelled, ending in 1989 with Sylvester McCoy’s third season, and the TARDIS had been in storage for four years. The poor old police box was covered in cobwebs and dust; that was enough for Jon to opt out. ‘I can’t get my coat too near that – it’s too valuable!’
Of course it is, Jon, I thought. Of course it is …
And do you think we could got the thing properly erected? Of course not! Look carefully at the final shots and you can see I’m holding a wall up with my back. One step forward and it would have been on my head – and not for the first time. But the BBC used the images to promote the series anyway, so if you wonder why we look like we’re being goosed in a microwave, that’s the reason.
I knew he could be tricky but few things gave me more pleasure than seeing Jon at the height of his powers. He’d been back at his best on The Five Doctors and watching him in that radio studio, you could see he was thrilled to be the Doctor again. The difference was, when we did The Five Doctors he was still a big star again off the back of Worzel Gummidge. Ten years later, I think the good parts had all but dried up.
Jon clearly had a lot riding on it. ‘Lissie, we have to get our butts out there and promote it,’ he said. Which is how we came to do our first British convention – organised by Alan Langley – since Longleat.
With Who no longer on television, a starved fandom propelled the radio programme to number one in the charts. It was so successful a second serial was commissioned, again written by Barry and directed by Phil. When finally broadcast at the start of 1996, The Ghosts of N-Space was another hit, but its success proved bittersweet because by then it had been in the can for two years. When production on the Doctor Who television movie with Paul McGann started, the BBC held back all other Who-related product. Nothing was to get in the way of the Eighth Doctor’s precious US-aimed adventure. (Nothing, that is, except the plot!)
If only they’d embargoed things before then. I might have been spared one of the least memorable experiences of my career.
* * *
Ten years after The Five Doctors, and with Doctor Who consigned, or so we thought, to the archives of television history, I never expected to receive another call from John Nathan-Turner. ‘Lissie, it’s thirty years – we need to do something for the fans.’
There he was again with that damn phrase and this time, as well as the stick, he held the added carrot of being part of the BBC’s Children in Need programme. We could potentially raise a lot of money, and having dedicated the last eight years of my life to raising my own daughter it seemed churlish to say ‘no’.
As befits a charity special, it was utterly preposterous. Somehow JNT had conceived of a plot involving all the Doctors – along with the cast of EastEnders! It was called Dimensions in Time and I was booked to shoot, once again, alongside the Third Doctor. After such fun times on Paradise, I was looking forward to it.
But once again, I was underestimating the power of Pertwee …
The night before the shoot, the Miller family attended a press screening of Sadie’s Royal Celebration. All these kids were running around and it was a really enjoyable evening. Unfortunately, events ended up dragging on and all the while the buffet was sitting under the hot lights. As I was working the next day, I didn’t drink. But a couple of those prawns can’t hurt …
A few hours later and I’d never been sicker. As my morning pickup time of seven o’clock drew closer, it only seemed to get worse. And the thought of squeezing into my Five Doctors costume again after all those years made my empty stomach turn somersaults. Actors rarely have the option of cancelling and somehow I made it to Elstree in one piece, where the makeup girl took one look at me and said, ‘Oh my God, you’re green!’
Oh shit, I thought, I’m really in trouble!
I did the best I could, but Sod’s law, the usually impeccable Jon chose today to keep fluffing his lines, so we were out there in Albert Square for take after take, after take. In a bizarre echo of one of our earliest meetings, he kept calling me Lis instead of Sarah, too. Eventually I couldn’t hold it back any longer. I made my excuses, then legged it round the other side of one of the market stalls and was sick all over again. Completely washed out, I stumbled back.
‘Sorry, everyone,’ I mumbled. ‘I’m really not very well.’
I don’t know what Jon was on, but he turned theatrically to someone else and nonchalantly said, ‘Oh, she always does this!’
What do you mean ‘always does this’? You’re the one who’s always complaining he’s ill! I thought.
Any other day I would have had him on toast, but this time I was too weak. In any case, the words were barely out of his mouth when he got his karmic reward.
Wendy Richard had appeared on set. As a future Pauline Fowler she was meant to have aged an awful lot, so she was covered in grey powder. ‘Oh my God, darling, Wendy looks rough!’ said Jon.
And I just kept quiet. I thought, If you haven’t read the script, I’m not bloody telling you, you silly sod!
I decided to let him go over and put his foot in it. And he did!
The end result is what it is. In the absence of anything else I think it garnered a lot of interest and fans tell me they enjoyed it. Managing so many mini-plots and myriad time travellers seemed an impossible task but JNT pulled it together. But you wonder why he bothered when nobody else at the BBC seemed to have an interest in the proper show. Who, to the people with the money, was a relic and so was anyone associated with it. We were only good, it appeared, for driving VHS sales – not for investing in with new programmes.
Which makes it all the more satisfying whenever I watch EastEnders and see that market stall. If only the BBC bosses knew …
* * *
Fortunately, after a few years trapped in my own version of The Five Doctors’ Death Zone, my non-Who career was beginning to pick up again. I was pleased to land a small part in a series called Men of the World. The regular cast was very strong: David Threlfall has appeared in Shameless and Harry Potter, while Brenda Bruce was in Paradise Towers with Sylvester, and John Simm of course was magnificent as the recent Master. I played Lorraine in an episode called Lost in France. My main memory of it is of not being stuck in a quarry. Such a relief!
I have to say, that show whetted my appetite for something more. If only Emmerdale hadn’t been offered so early, I’m ready for it now, I thought. The Emmerdale door was firmly closed at that moment but I did get the next best thing, give or take a few miles: Peak Practice.
I was actually a fan of the show when I was asked to audition. I’m not saying it’s quite like David Tennant being a Who aficionado from childhood, but I had a relationship with the programme before I walked in front of the casting director. I like castings, actually, because they’re usually quite near my house in London and they keep you honest – you either perform on the day or you don’t. Well, I was offered two episodes as Dr Pat Hewland and as they fell across Sadie’s summer holidays, we thought we’d all go up to the Peak District and enjoy a week together afterwards. It was a great idea – I loved that place. We stayed in a delightful bijou hotel, ate lamb cooked with lavender and just let our hair down. Even during filming I got to spend time with my family. We worked two days and off, three days and off, so it wasn’t as full-on as it might have been.
I say I was a fan – well, I had been of the original cast of Kevin Whately and Amanda Burton. I knew there was a differe
nt line-up for Series Four but I didn’t know who and I was thrown into it as soon as I arrived. At one point I was sitting at a desk, trying to establish a connection with this new actor, and I began to despair – he just wasn’t having any of it. This is going to be a long day, I thought. I’d just about had enough when he got up and left – it turned out he was a stand-in! When the real actor came in, we got on like a house on fire but they were doing so many episodes at the same time – literally running from one scene to another – that I suppose he’d been needed elsewhere, to get the lighting right, or something.
I admit it was quite hard work getting back into the groove, especially learning how people did things outside Who. Some of it was quite an eye opener – and not always for bad reasons. I couldn’t believe it when I was shown to my trailer.
My own trailer!
It wasn’t as hi-spec as the one I have on The Sarah Jane Adventures – nowadays I’ve got my own bed, and a microwave and even a shower – but it felt like a palace compared to the old days on Who. Just having somewhere to take your lunch other than squatting on damp hillocks, in makeup vans or under awnings made me feel like a superstar.
I was sad when it was over so when the call came for more episodes, I didn’t hesitate – ‘Just tell me when.’
Two days later, I was on the train back up to the Peak District.
This sudden change of fortunes ought to have sounded warning bells. By now it was all very chaotic and they seemed extremely behind. Reshoots were going on left, right and centre and the script I was posted told its own story (every time there’s a change it’s printed on different coloured paper). This was pink – way down the line. By the time I arrived I’d just about got it memorised – and then the buggers handed over an amended version.
Committing two separate speeches to memory is far easier than learning two versions of the same one – you get so confused, your tongue’s saying one version while your brain is remembering the other. I was still poring over it in makeup with a couple of the other actors when I heard one of them say, ‘It’s no good – I can’t learn this.’
‘Thank God for that!’ I said. ‘I can’t make it stick either.’
Not surprisingly we had a lot of trouble that day. It didn’t help that the cameramen wouldn’t stop talking to me about Doctor Who! I was shoving rescue remedy down my throat and grabbing my script in between takes. During one seated scene all three of us had our scripts out of shot on our laps so we could snatch an emergency peek!
I had fun but it wasn’t the big comeback I perhaps needed to boot me up the backside and get me back out there. In fact after that, I only took one more stab at acting, in a series called Faith in the Future with Lynda Bellingham – then I just thought, Do you know what? I’ve had a go, I’ve been busy, but I haven’t really enjoyed it.
And so I retired.
Goodbye work. Goodbye acting. And goodbye Doctor Who.
* * *
Knowing I wouldn’t be working again made it more fun to spend time with my old Who cohorts. In 1996 I bumped into Jon at an event organised by Nathan-Turner. Jon was in his mid-70s by then, but he looked well. He was on good form, too – cheeky, chatty and brimming with gossip as usual. We had a marvellous time reminiscing about this and that, at ease without any work pressures hanging over us. Among other things I remember he was very excited about going to stay with friends over in New England. Then at one point he leaned in and I thought, This must be good if he’s lowering his voice! Jon was hardly discreet.
But this time the gossip was about him: ‘By the way, I had a little crie de coeur recently.’
That floored me.
‘Oh, Jon, I didn’t know you had heart trouble!’
‘It’s nothing, darling,’ he said, dismissing my concern with a wave of his hand. ‘Just a little warning.’
That was the last time I saw him.
A few weeks later I got home and saw my answerphone flashing. I was still taking off my coat and unpacking my bags when I flicked ‘play’, but the message soon had my full attention.
I recognised the voice instantly as Stuart Money, a close friend of Jon’s.
‘Hello, Lissie, it’s Stuey,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way to the airport. It’s about Jon. I will talk to you later but I think you’re going to get quite a shock.’
I sat by that phone for the rest of the day – if anyone else called I just told them to get off the line. And then my worst fears were confirmed: Jon had suffered a heart attack in America.
My Doctor was dead.
I went to the funeral. Sadie sent a little something, too. But do you know who wasn’t there? Barry! No one had told him. Incredible. He was devastated, of course.
The problem with being in the public eye is you’re not given a chance to grieve. Every time I thought that I was over the shock another journalist would pop up asking for a comment. I don’t normally mind, but I wanted to do the best by Jon and I also wanted to be alone and cry.
It wasn’t until I did manage a few minutes alone with my thoughts that I appreciated just how much we’d experienced together. All the shows, obviously, but there were so many private moments, too. Even our big US trip – yes, Brian and Ingeborg were there and we all had a blast – but there were only two people up on those stages. Jon was the only one who knew what I’d gone through first hand. And now he was gone.
Jon’s legacy speaks for itself, but all these years later I do get annoyed at the number of people popping out of the woodwork to tell you how Jon was, what he thought, and what he apparently said to them. There are certain DVD commentaries where the world and his wife seem to have an opinion and I find myself shouting at the screen, ‘How do you know? You weren’t there!’ Some of them weren’t even born at the time, for goodness’ sake.
* * *
The older you get, the more often you have to deal with loss. When my father died, on Boxing Day 1994 – aged 94 – I thought my world had collapsed. We’ve always been alone down here in London but at that moment I suddenly realised it was Brian, Sadie and me against the world.
The tragedy of being associated with such a long-running show is that, inevitably, people you worked with, people you loved, will die. Some, like Jon, will be quite old. Others, like John Nathan-Turner (who died in May 2002, aged 55) are taken much too soon. Tom Baker was hilarious at JNT’s memorial. It feels so unnatural attending the ceremony of a man as young as Nathan, but Gary, his partner, insisted his life should be celebrated. We were at St Paul’s, the actors’ church in Covent Garden. Tom gazed up at the heavens and said, ‘Sorry, John – it’s this St Paul’s’, which broke the ice. Then he brought the house down when he said: ‘What would John, looking down, be thinking now? Well, I can tell you …
‘He would be thinking, I would rather it were Tom up here than me!’
Chapter Sixteen
That’s The Last I’ll Be Hearing From Them
I ENTERED THE restaurant thinking, I’m going to lose my agent over this!
I was in central London, at a very swish venue, and about to meet Russell T Davies and Phil Collinson. Russell, of course, was the creative head of the newly regenerated Doctor Who and Phil was the show’s producer. They’d asked my new agent, Roger Carey, if we could meet and I’d duly gone along with it. I wasn’t hopeful. Approaching my sixtieth birthday and thoroughly enjoying my retirement, my thoughts were so far away from Who you’d need a telescope to spot them.
Still, it’s always polite to attend these meetings and hear what people have to say. And a meal at an expensive restaurant with wonderful company is never to be sniffed at. The trick is not being afraid to turn offers down – which we, as actors, find notoriously hard to do. There’s always this fear: ‘What if nothing else comes along?’ I’d lived with the spectre of ‘what if’ most my life but that was all behind me now – being a full-time wife and mother was quite enough, thank you very much.
But I wasn’t daft. I knew Russell and Phil wouldn’t have called just for the s
ake of it. They were obviously planning to propose something – just as I was planning to turn it down. It wasn’t that I thought their new series with Chris Eccleston and Billie Piper didn’t look amazing – because it did; it was marvellous – but my time on Who was so precious to me that I wasn’t prepared to spoil it again for a cheap ratings-boosting, blink-and-you’ll-miss-me cameo. If Russell wanted someone from the ‘classic series’ to fill a few screen seconds then there would be no shortage of others who I was sure would leap at the chance.
And so, a little guilty that I was wasting my hosts’ time, I decided to just relax and enjoy my afternoon.
From the moment I sat down I knew I was in the company of two men who cared more about their programme than anything else in the world. They weren’t in it for the money or the ratings – although of course these would come – they truly, deeply sweated and bled Doctor Who. And not just Who. Towards me they were so warm and welcoming, and charming and funny, and … I could go on all day. It was a really unforgettable dinner. Russell will have anyone hooting with laughter in seconds, but he’s so sharp and serious as well.
Out of the blue he placed a script on the table and said, ‘We’d like you to do this story.’
* * *
It was back in 2003 that I began to hear things. Just rumours at first, idle gossip, really. At one time they were making another movie, then there was a programme about a new Time Lord. Each whisper was as fanciful as the next. Then, on 26 September 2003, the head of BBC1, Lorraine Heggessey, announced to the press one simple fact.
She was bringing back Doctor Who.
I remembered the ill-fated attempt to relaunch the show in 1997 with the lovely Paul McGann. I hope they treat it better this time, I thought, but my interest ended there. It had nothing to do with me – not as an actor or even as a fan.
Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography Page 32