Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

was a funny old accent, a great mix between Geordie and across the sea to the Scandinavian countries. I was pretty pleased with myself when I arrived on set but the second I opened my mouth everyone just stared.

They couldn’t understand a word!

‘I think you’ll have to take it down a few notches,’ Derek laughed.

That’s not the effect I was going for.

I was always trying to do new things, suggesting different touches I could do. This is how you workshop a play, after all. After yet another bright idea Derek sighed, ‘You’re a real thinker aren’t you? But we haven’t got time for any of this.’

I’d learned a lot on Corrie but I was still very green where filming was concerned. The fact you shoot out of order takes a bit of getting used to, obviously, but it’s something that never gets any easier. Sometimes you can film a character’s death scene before they’ve even been introduced in a show. You don’t yet have any relationship to react to. That’s why the continuity people in TV are so important – always running around with Polaroids or digital cameras these days to capture how you look and where you’re standing so it tallies with everything else. (Jon Pertwee really struggled with this sort of thing, so we invented a sort of shorthand for scenes – which I’ll tell you about later.)

Even though the show had been running since 1962, there was none of the ‘them and us’ vibe that I’d got from Corrie. Z-Cars was a great working environment, actually, very friendly, like a proper company. If I’m honest, most of the cast probably enjoyed it a little too much – some of the regulars could have phoned in those performances. But for a new girl they all made it a lot of fun and I was sad to leave.

My next job was Doomwatch, a science-fiction series which was the brainchild of Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler – former Who writers who also happened to have created a breed of villain I would soon become very familiar with.

The Cybermen!

I don’t know how to say this, but I was never a sci-fi fan – and I’m still not! But I’d heard of Doomwatch because Robert Powell was making a bit of a name for himself in it. I was looking forward to meeting him, but sadly he wasn’t in my episode. I did meet Anthony Andrews, though.

I had a decent part in the episode Say Knife, Fat Man. My character, Sarah Collins, was a university girl suspected of hiding plutonium, so she was on the run from the police. The problem was, she wasn’t just running – she was driving.

I’d struggled to handle our old Anglia – and the Saab was a no-no – but they wanted me to drive this large van. At night! All I had to do for the shot was drive, at speed, down a hill and stop where the soundman and the lights were but do you think I could get the hang of it? After half a dozen attempts Hugh Ross, who was in the van with me, said, ‘Look, you do the pedals and I’ll do the gears.’

Maybe that gave me a little too much confidence. The director called action, I slammed my foot down and we shot down that hill! We screeched to a skiddy halt inches from where the sound guy was holding the boom mic.

‘Christ, Lis,’ he said, ‘I think my underwear’s changed colour!’

Z-Cars aired in November 1971. Doomwatch went out in June the following year. I can’t remember where I was when they were broadcast, but I know my parents were glued in front of their set. Around this time I was beginning to pick up a few little adverts as well, but you never knew when those were going to be aired, much to Dad’s annoyance.

Meanwhile Brian’s run in How the Other Half Loves was finally coming to an end. I think he was ready for it by then. Then he announced proudly, ‘They’re taking it to Toronto!’

Obviously I was delighted for him, if insanely jealous, and we did discuss me flying out with them but with his regular salary ending and mine being so hit and miss we really couldn’t afford it. A few days later I was backstage at the Lyric when Robert Morley’s distinctive tones bellowed out from his dressing room.

‘Hello, my little star’ – he always called me that, I don’t know why! – ‘I hope you’re coming out to Canada with us?’

‘Oh I wish, Robert,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think we can run to it.’

‘Nonsense,’ he boomed. ‘Brian, you have to have her out there. Lissie has to come. Production will pay!’

And off he stormed to inform poor Peter Bridge what he’d committed him to now.

Well, obviously we couldn’t allow that, but Morley insisted and in the end, once we were sure Peter really didn’t mind, we said yes. I was so excited. Sod’s law, then, that Todd Joseph called practically the next day with more work. It was only ten days but slap-bang in the middle of the Toronto run.

Obviously I couldn’t – and didn’t – turn it down, especially when the job was another Z- Cars and it was such an honour to be offered that part so soon after the first. Shows very rarely do this. It messes with the implied realism of the episode a bit too much if an actor pops up playing different parts too close together. It wasn’t quite so prominent as Freema Agyeman being cast as a Torchwood employee in David Tennant’s first series, then coming back as the Doctor’s companion, Martha, in his next, but you get the picture.

I’d never had a female director before so I was quite looking forward to working with Julia Smith, but she was some taskmaster. This was years before she created Angels or EastEnders but I could tell she was a person who would go places – and probably not quietly.

She was a name to be reckoned with even then, but she could turn on a sixpence. I was happy she’d cast me so obviously against type as Rose, one of three Liverpool scrubbers accused of shoplifting. I just loved this part and relished making myself up for it. I thought I looked gorgeous in a trashy sort of way: false eyelashes, torn stockings, skirt hitched up.

Then the note came down from Julia: ‘Could you tell her to make her skin look a bit more unpleasant?’

Bugger off! I’m trying my best to look beautiful here, I thought.

I think Julia was having a relationship with one of the other actors on it, John Collin. John had a drink problem,