I Love the Bones of You

by Christopher Eccleston;

  I was in Melbourne in autumn 2016 filming The Leftovers, running along the river, when I saw a figure in front of me and people scattering, backing away left and right. He was right in my eyeline, to the extent he was shouting at me as I ran towards him. I stopped. He had the most beautiful green eyes, but was in a very heightened state.

  ‘What’s wrong, mate?’ I asked him.

  ‘What’s wrong, mate? I’m going to kill myself, that’s what’s wrong.’

  He was very distressed but quickly quietened into conversational mode.

  ‘I hope you don’t do that,’ I told him. ‘I felt like that once.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I thought I was going to lose my children.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ He put his hand on my shoulder.

  Suddenly, in that exchange, he had started to think about me. It had changed his perspective, diverted him from himself. He wandered off. I don’t know what happened to him, but my experience allowed me, perhaps unlike some other passers-by, not to feel intimidated or threatened by his state of mind. Having lived through a very altered state myself, his condition didn’t surprise me, and the fact I was calm in the face of his crisis meant he had a brief moment of contact.

  There remains a stigma attached to the word ‘breakdown’, when actually it’s a very legitimate response to life in the early twenty-first century. We are not designed for the non-stop world we live in, the pressures put upon us, and those we bring upon ourselves. For young people, especially, those pressures are becoming ever more intense. Social media, the battle for jobs, the speed with which we judge – it’s a lot easier for kids now to be made to feel inadequate in so many different ways. I worry about what any child picks up in their subconscious just through their daily interaction with the world. Societal pressure has got worse for children, and I hope my own experiences will make me better able to help my children tread that difficult path.

  I am on antidepressants to this day. I could be on them for the rest of my days. I do have an issue with that. I would like to attempt slowly to reduce the dose, to experience reality again, to see how I do. It’s a matter of pride. It concerns me also that, artistically, the drugs may somehow deaden my creative side. And yet, interestingly, I have received some of the best reviews of my life since I started taking them. Perhaps it’s because, while acting and my career was always the most important thing in my life, Albert and Esme came along and superseded that single-minded desire. I have come to realise that life – one with Albert and Esme in it – is much more important to me than work. Therefore, there’s far less pressure on acting and I’ve found a relaxation in front of the camera. I do wonder if I have as much empathy and emotional depth as I had pre-breakdown, but, no doubt about it, medication has saved my life. I can’t help thinking that if Dad could have had the treatment I’ve had, lived in my era, there’s a very good chance he’d have avoided dementia. To have had access to counselling and medicines, to have seen, and learned, another way – simply to have been able to reflect and relax, to learn to shed the accumulated years of frustration and non-communication – would surely have acted as a pressure release on a cramped and complex mind.

  As it was, Dad never had a chance of a reconciliation with his own past. The mental scars were too deeply ingrained. He’d lived a life dictated by others and to start again was asking too much. He was one of millions of (to those who know no better) faceless individuals who were never given access to psychiatric help the like of which I received. Part of that is about eras, but part of it is also about capitalism. If a worker breaks down at the end of their life, why fix them? You wouldn’t spend that time and money if it was a machine. You’d just get another. The likes of my dad are expendable. Give him a few pills, send him home, get what we can out of him for a few years, and then that’s the end of him. Remember Boxer? George Orwell didn’t write Animal Farm for nothing. The working class are useful, then they’re not. Binary. No grey areas. Politicians talk about the ‘burden’ of an ageing population. Presumably it was better when they died young from industrial diseases. Respect is what it boils down to. And the likes of my dad weren’t shown any.

  Two men, two breakdowns. One better for it. One who never recovered.

  That’s me and Dad all over. Same person, different eras. Time travellers.

  12

  DOCTOR DADDY 1

  WHILE WATCHING DOCTOR WHO. EPISODE 1: ‘ROSE’

  ALBERT: Daddy, your voice sounds different.

  ESME: Is that your electric screwdriver?

  ALBERT: Do you still have that jacket?

  ESME: When was this?

  ALBERT: It was made in twenty-thousand-and-five. It was before you and me were born. It was fourteen years ago. Look, Daddy’s got no grey hair.

  ME: Look, JFK – I was there at all the great historical events.

  ESME: You mean you?

  ME: Not me, my character, the Doctor.

  ALBERT: But you are the Doctor.

  ESME: What happened to him?

  ALBERT: The plastic bin just ate him.

  ESME: Is she your friend?

  ME: Yes, she’s called Rose.

  ALBERT: Is that your telephone box?

  BOTH: Christopher Eccleston!

  ESME: Look! On the telly! It says Christopher Eccleston!

  ALBERT: Is that Rose? Where’s she going?

  ESME: Who is this, Daddy?

  ME: It’s the scary guys – then I come and save the day.

  ESME: Can you tell me when the scary guys have gone?

  ME: I’m here – look, I’m saving her.

  ALBERT: Did you take her outside?

  ME: I saved her, yes.

  ALBERT: I don’t want to watch any more.

  ESME: It’s too scary for us.

  ME: The Doctor’s going to save the day. Do you find Doctor Who scary?

  ESME: Yes, a dustbin ate up a man and replaced him with a plastic man. His girlfriend asked him to come in the house and then the plastic man’s hand turned into a chopper.

  ME: What do you think of me as the Doctor?

  ALBERT: It’s a bit weird because you’re different and your voice is different. I thought you were American.

  ESME: Daddy, I was worried you were going to be turned into a plastic man. It’s good to see you as the Doctor but I don’t want you to turn into plastic in it.

  ME: The Doctor’s a good guy; he doesn’t get turned into plastic.

  ALBERT: Where has the real boyfriend gone?

  ME: He’s gone, but the Doctor will help get him back because he’s a scientist and a good guy.

  ESME: But why is he called Doctor? Doctors just help people get well when they’re sick.

  ME: Doctor is also a name for a scientist.

  ESME: What was that bottle thing, the lid, that you hit into the boyfriend?

  ME: I opened the Champagne bottle and fired the cork at the boyfriend and, because he’s plastic, the cork was absorbed into his plastic and then he spat it out.

  ALBERT: It fell into his mouth.

  ESME: But what happened to it?

  ALBERT: He chewed it for a minute.

  ESME: Didn’t he like it?

  ME: No. He’s a bad guy. He’s been turned into the bad guy by the plastic bin, but if you watch the rest of the episode, the Doctor saves him and turns him back into a good guy – that’s what the Doctor always does.

  ALBERT: So the boyfriend was eaten by the plastic and it morphed him into a plastic thing.

  ME: It morphed him into a plastic thing, yes.

  ESME: So, like clay, and it squished his skin and then moved it all around.

  ME: But then the Doctor, using his sonic screwdriver . . .

  ALBERT: When you do it, he turns blue.

  ME: He turns Mickey back into a good guy.

  ESME: Wait, he’s called Mickey?

  ME: Rose’s boyfriend is called Mickey.

  ALBERT: How did you do it? Do you have amazing skills to avoid them?
>
  ME: Yeah, the Doctor’s really brave, and he’s also really clever.

  ESME: But, Dad, does Rose ask if she can be with you and go on your adventures? And then you teach her how to fight?

  ME: That’s right. She is braver and smarter than even the Doctor. So you, Esme, could be the Doctor’s assistant or the Doctor. Now the Doctor is a girl.

  ALBERT: Are you the main character?

  ME: I’m the main character.

  ESME: Because you’re our daddy, we can call you Doctor Daddy.

  ME: Rose is also the main character. The two main characters are a man and a woman, like Albert and Esme.

  ESME: Doctor Rose and Doctor Who.

  ALBERT: What are those on the DVD box? Are those the machines that make people plastic?

  ME: Those are the Daleks.

  ESME: The Garlicks?

  ALBERT: Dad, I’m stuck – can you help me get down from here?

  ESME: What do the Daleks do?

  ME: The Daleks are the Doctor’s worst enemy. The Daleks are the only thing that the Doctor is scared of.

  ESME: Do they beat you?

  ME: No, I win in the end.

  ESME: What do they do?

  ME: They’re bad guys. The Daleks are bad guys.

  ESME: What’s their power?

  ME: They’re made of metal and they’re really cruel. They can go sideways, forwards, up stairs.

  ESME: What’s that?

  ME: That’s the TARDIS.

  ESME: What does it do?

  ME: The TARDIS is Doctor Who’s police box. It means Time and Relative Dimension in Space.

  ALBERT: What’s that spider? It’s got a pink spider inside it?

  ME: That’s the console. That’s the control centre of the TARDIS.

  ESME: Who’s that?

  ME: That’s Captain Jack. He’s a good guy as well. He comes and helps. But Rose is my best friend.

  ALBERT: What are you staring at?

  ME: We’re staring at the Daleks, that’s why we all look a bit serious.

  ALBERT: You go serious because you are hiding your fears inside you.

  ESME: You feel scared but you don’t show it.

  ME: That’s right. If the Doctor feels scared, that means Rose will feel scared. But also the Doctor gets excited by his adventures and stimulated rather than scared. He wants to work out what the aliens are and where they come from.

  ALBERT: Even the plastics?

  ME: Even the plastics.

  ESME: But how does the living plastic do it?

  ALBERT: This is too scary.

  ESME: It’s too scary.

  ME: Would you like to watch some more of it?

  BOTH: Noooo!

  ME: Never again?

  ESME: We can watch it when we’re older – fifty-five, like you.

  13

  LOTS OF PLANETS HAVE A NORTH

  ‘The past is another country – 1987’s just the Isle of Wight.’

  Doctor Who

  It was strange watching Doctor Who with the kids. Strange to see the younger me, no beard, no grey hairs. Strange to see me lean as a whippet. Strange to watch the work I did fifteen years ago. Strange to think how that character on the screen would so relentlessly follow me in real life.

  More than anything, though, seeing my series through their eyes provided a much-needed answer to a growing phenomenon. Everywhere I go, Cornwall, Belfast, Glasgow, wherever, I now get people of a certain age, mid-twenties, coming up to me. ‘You were my Doctor,’ they tell me. Occasionally, and a little worryingly, they’ll add, ‘I had a little plastic model of you.’ Yes, I was captured, looking mildly constipated, in plastic. I’ll ask them how old they were, telling them, as their cogs whirr, ‘I did it fifteen years ago.’ I can see them doing the maths. ‘I was nine!’

  I’m even getting it via the children. Albert told me the other day that someone had told him, ‘Your daddy is the best Doctor ever.’

  ‘Does that mean you make people feel better?’ he asked me. Which I thought was brilliant.

  ‘Oh no, son,’ I told him, ‘I’m not a real doctor. I played a character on television called the Doctor, same as I played Macbeth.’

  I’m loving the new joy I’m getting from Doctor Who fans, because I was never really able to take it in at the time. I spent my first day on set chasing a short Glaswegian dressed as a pig in a spacesuit around a studio and it never really got any more normal from there.

  I can still remember the exact spot, the view across the field, where the Doctor first entered my consciousness as a character I could potentially inhabit. I’ve always been an actor who’s actively looked for work, studied the newspapers and the trade press. Earlier that day, I’d read that Russell T. Davies was overseeing the much-vaunted return of Doctor Who. Now I was out running and I couldn’t stop thinking about the show. When I was a kid, Doctor Who had never really meant anything to me. In my head I had a black-and-white image of Patrick Troughton. Then there were Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, with whom, unlike, for instance, Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner or Danger Man or Sean Connery as James Bond, I simply could never identify. Doctor Who seemed to me like your typical white middle-class authority figure. He was an upper-crust eccentric, very male, posh. The programme didn’t grip me at all, to the extent I barely watched it, apart, that is, from the regeneration scenes when the Doctor would change from one body to another – I would always tune in for those. I wasn’t fascinated by the phenomenon from a technical sense, the special effects, like some kids might be, but I was very taken with this notion that a character could remain the same in a different physical form. I would want to be there in front of the TV to see it happen.

  Fast forward three decades and now here was Russell at the helm of Doctor Who’s rebirth. Aside from a film version in 1996, the show hadn’t been seen for sixteen years. Neither had it ever gone away. Such is the passion for the series, its place in TV culture, that the clamour for a return had never disappeared.

  Russell’s involvement intrigued me. He was a writer and producer who’d never made TV by numbers; Queer as Folk, which followed the lives of three gay men in Manchester, being a case in point. Originally, Queer as Folk’s producers had wanted to see me for the role of uncompromising advertising executive Stuart. I’ve always regretted not pursuing that part but at the time I was very much in the grip of my anorexia. Playing Stuart would have involved nudity, something I’d never had an issue with before, but at that point my body dysmorphia was exerting an iron grip. I featured as a good twin/bad twin combination in an episode of the BBC One comedy drama Linda Green around that time and I was skeletal. Instead, I suggested Aidan Gillen for the role. I’m sure he was on the list anyway, but I’ve always been proud of that suggestion because he was brilliant. I have huge regret about my own non-involvement, but I don’t think I’d have bettered Aidan.

  Russell had followed up Queer as Folk with the equally origin al The Second Coming, which was where our paths first properly crossed. I took the part of Steven Baxter, a video shop worker who discovers he is actually the son of God, his mission being to avert the end of mankind. Originally, the drama was intended to be a landmark series on Channel 4. At the last moment, however, Channel 4 threw the production into doubt. I was never party as to why they nixed it – that’s one of the frustrations of being an actor – but its makers, Red Productions, managed to pull it out of the fire by getting it to ITV, albeit in the form of a two-part drama, some way abbreviated from the original idea.

  While the drama was still highly praised, and its content raised eyebrows with its central questioning of the worth of religion, one reviewer, Craig Brown, was fairly negative, calling it a ‘shaggy dog story’. To a certain degree, my view chimed with his. I always felt like it was a missed opportunity. The expanded version Russell had originally concocted dealt with massive biblical issues. In my head I was thinking it would be up there with Our Friends in the North in terms of impact. Instead it ended up something of a novelty, but it alw
ays meant more to me, from having known the piece in its original form. For Russell, too, claiming a big spot on prime-time ITV for an ostensibly unusual, hugely original and very un-ITV piece of work was undoubtedly a big deal.

  At the time of The Second Coming, Russell and I were at different points in our careers. Russell was climbing the greasy pole whereas I was flying high. I’d done Our Friends in the North, Hillsborough, Cracker, Flesh and Blood, and been in a couple of high-profile films. And yet we existed on the same plain because he and I looked at things in a similar way. Russell, for instance, was on set every day on The Second Coming, which impressed me. He also offered practical help. There’s a scene where Steven Baxter is on the pitch at Maine Road, the old Manchester City ground, and starts to receive a message from God. I was a little perplexed at how to play such a concept.

  I went over to Russell – ‘How do I do this?’

  ‘Well, you know,’ he pondered, in his broad Welsh accent, ‘it’s like you are downloading it.’

  Actors can work from abstract directions like that. Russell said it with so much enthusiasm and so much originality that it was a moment of absolute sense.

  When Russell’s name was then attached to Doctor Who, the fact that this man who I respected so much was so invested in the show meant a massive amount. If anything could make the return of Doctor Who work, it was his creative leap, and that was what I had in my head as I ran along. After lots of heavy drama for adults, I was also very interested in doing something for children. But I wanted it to be right. I knew how much I’d invested in TV as a child, how it had sparked my imagination, my sense of me. Doctor Who had to be the same. I felt Russell was exactly the man to do that. His previous work told me his approach to children was not going to be infantilised.