Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

Doctor Who exhibition at Blackpool and they wanted Jon and his trusty companion to open it.

It really couldn’t have come at a better time.

I can’t say I was terribly thrilled at the prospect because it promised to be such a whistle-stop visit. There wouldn’t even be a chance to call in on Mum and Dad, even though they were so close. Jon promised it would all be worthwhile. ‘It will blow your mind, Lissie, trust me.’

Whether he genuinely expected the event to be that exciting or he was relieved to be out of the same building where Tom was rehearsing, I couldn’t say – I was just happy to see him smiling again.

We had a meal in a seafront hotel with some of the BBC suits, then turned in. The next morning at breakfast Jon was all aflush. Apparently he’d been getting ready for bed, stripping in the moonlight, when all of a sudden there was this tremendous roar. A lamp at the back of the room had illuminated his little striptease routine for all and sundry below.

‘I looked out the window and there’s a hundred people cheering!’

I thought he must have been exaggerating but my mind was changed the second we stepped out of the hotel. I’ve never seen so many people in my life – and they were all screaming for Jon. I was literally speechless, so stunned I couldn’t move. If Jon hadn’t put an arm around me to guide me towards the waiting Bessie I think I’d still be standing there now.

As we scrambled into the old yellow car it dawned on me that Jon had been expecting this. After so many years as the Doctor he must have been used to it but I’d never seen anything like it. I just began to get my bearings and then I heard someone shout, ‘I love you, Sarah Jane!’ and I crumbled again.

They love me? I certainly hadn’t expected that.

The next half an hour was the most surreal of my life. Somehow Jon negotiated Bessie out of the car park without running anyone over and we drove at a snail’s pace along the promenade. You couldn’t see an inch of pavement anywhere. People were lined five deep along the route, all waving and cheering, calling out their appreciation – and, yes, love! – for us. It was like the Queen’s Coronation – and we were only off the telly!

I was so glad for Jon; this is how I wanted him to remember Who. And this is how I wanted to remember him. Adored by thousands, playing to the gallery, living and breathing Doctor Who. Not squirrelled away in a rehearsal room with just his post for company.

I was genuinely amazed to be treated so warmly by the fans. When I joined the show I’d felt so conscious of replacing Katy. In a way I half expected them to be calling her name, not mine. But Who fans are the best in the world: if you’re good to them, they’re magnificent to you. Peladon had just started airing by then and I suppose they’d had fourteen or fifteen episodes to get used to me.

I must be doing something right.

A lot of the exhibition itself didn’t mean much to me. The Daleks I recognised, of course, and Exxilons, but I think there were plenty of exhibits from before my time. If Jon didn’t recognise all of them you would never have guessed – ‘Look at this, Lissie’, ‘See what this gadget does’. He was so masterful at interaction, all the while oblivious to the barrage of camera flashes in our faces. I’d never seen a person command so many people with such ease. Never seen him happier, in fact.

And, I suddenly realised, I’ll never see him this happy again.

*   *   *

It would have been the humane thing to have ended Jon’s involvement in Blackpool, let him go out on a high, but we had work to do. Even with Barry in charge, those final days on Spiders seemed to drag on forever.

And then suddenly, on 1 May in Studio 6, we were done. There was a party, of course, and I seem to remember a cake with Jon’s face on it. But I couldn’t enjoy it (the party, not the cake!) – I had to get in a car for Hereford where the next serial had already begun shooting. I felt such a fraud bolting out like that but it couldn’t be helped. Jon’s association with the show may have ended but mine was continuing as normal.

It was just continuing with a different Doctor.

Chapter Seven

What If A Snake Slides Up My Skirt?

TOM BAKER was once asked: ‘Why did you get on so well with Elisabeth Sladen?’ He gave the interviewer one of his transfixing stares and then said, ‘That’s easy – she laughed at my jokes.’

Who wouldn’t laugh at Tom’s jokes? He’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. Anyone who has seen him regale a convention with tales of OAP shopping adventures and the like knows he can spin comedy gold out of any subject. Tom has such an energy, a genuine impish delight in the absurd; always playful, always alert to the possibility of a punchline – a treasure. I’m so glad he’s known to a whole new generation now, thanks to Little Britain. As he says, ‘I’m in that lucky position of the people who liked me as a child now offering me work.’ And, as he also says, ‘No one does Tom Baker quite as well as me.’

But I didn’t know any of this as my car hurtled down the roads towards Worcester that night in May 1974. I’d met Tom briefly at Acton, just hellos and handshakes at that stage, because he was hard at work on his Doctor’s character upstairs with new producer Philip Hinchcliffe and I was flat out on Spiders, but I remember he was big, very big, and had piercing eyes that seemed to be constantly scanning for something in your face when you spoke to him, and there was that mellifluous, rich voice. But, honestly, our time together had been so brief. Anyone can turn on the charm for a meet-and-greet – many an unpleasant actor has mastered that little trick. The proof of the pudding, I decided between snatches of sleep in the car, would be in the meeting.

I’ve always had a fairly laissez-faire attitude to employment. Or maybe that should be que sera, sera. I’ve never worried terribly about the next job and I’ve always been all right. So as the end of my contract with the Beeb approached, I took it in my stride. Change was in the air, you could almost taste it. Jon was leaving, UNIT was being downplayed to give the new Doctor breathing space, Terry Dicks was off and, of course, Barry Letts was about to produce his last serial. Philip Hinchcliffe, who had been shadowing Barry for quite a while, would obviously want to put his own stamp on the series when he officially took over in the autumn. If he decided the incoming Doctor deserved a fresh companion, then so be it. I wouldn’t take it personally. I’d had a good year. A tiring one, definitely. And I’d learned a lot about people in that time. But it had been fun and I was confident I’d done some good work. Damn it, I was proud of Sarah Jane Smith.