Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

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.

Speaking of naughty, with John Nathan-Turner on set you were never far from a potential conflict. I’m not sure if he did this on purpose but he did like to throw the cat among the pigeons from time to time.

On one occasion I had just completed a scene. Nathan-Turner applauded and walked over to speak to Janet Fielding, who played Tegan.

‘Now that’s how a companion should behave.’

Oh, John, you are such a mixer! I thought. I think he’d always had a spiky relationship with Jan, but I didn’t want to be drawn into it.

JNT could be a bit of a minx but I saw a new side to him on this shoot – as a director. I’m not sure how it came about but when we were at Manod Quarry he ended up taking the chair on the fight sequence with the Raston Warrior Robot – played by Keith Hodiak in a silver one-piece suit. He had all these knives and Cybermen to choreograph and I think he did it masterfully. I would have liked to see John direct more: for good or for bad, he really put his heart and soul into Doctor Who.

For all the large cast and big location numbers, you quickly realise the budgets haven’t changed when you get the call saying, ‘Can you bring some of your own clothes?’ So my blouse is up there onscreen, the Mac is mine – and yes, so are the gloves on string inside it! Why they’re on string I’ve no idea.

I didn’t like the Rassilon stuff much – that whole denouement chugged along a bit too slowly for me. It was like trying to act in treacle. By contrast Jon and I had fun with Anthony Ainley as the Master in the car because those scenes zipped along. I enjoyed Sarah getting a bit tetchy with him: he’s as powerful and clever as the Doctor but she stands her ground. I’d never come up against the Master before so it was good to tick off another landmark villain, something else for the fans to ask me about at the Chicago convention – where most of us were heading immediately after filming.

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It’s always a privilege to receive invitations to go to America. Piling onto a plane after The Five Doctors wrapped had an exciting end-of-term feeling. It’s so nice to be among friends when you’re working and, of course, after such a gruelling shoot even the people I hadn’t really known before had suddenly become close.

We all gave the show a good hard sell in Chicago, which I think was fair. If you asked Janet or Frazer or any of the others what they think about The Five Doctors, I imagine we would all trot out pretty identikit replies. We’d been in better Who productions but this was ambitious and it was fun. Most importantly, it was conceived as a grand gesture, a big celebratory thank you for the fans, and I think it achieved that.

I went to the Chicago convention three years in a row. It was always fun. They were so enthusiastic, and because it fell around Thanksgiving it seemed like all of America was in party mood. I never thought I’d witness the same levels of passion in England.

But then we went to Longleat.

The Seat of the Marquis of Bath had been running a Doctor Who exhibition since 1973 and it had always drawn in visitors to the stately home. With the anniversary coming up, Lord Bath persuaded BBC Enterprises to up the ante and really make a feature of the place. As a result, on Easter Sunday 1983, Longleat threw open its gates to all living Doctors, as many companions as they could muster – and about a million fans!

Stately homes are never built on motorways, are they, but no one in their wildest dreams expected that level of turnout. All the roads were gridlocked and after a while the only people getting anywhere were the police deployed to sort out the mess.

I still get letters about it today. People say things like, ‘I never made it’ or ‘I got within a couple of miles’. Some of them actually struggled through but I’m afraid there were a lot of disappointed fans that day.

Unlike the American conventions, this one was mostly outdoors so you could really appreciate the scale of the audience surging towards you. We were all looking forward to it but at times you knew how it might feel to be a castle besieged by angry villagers. My father, who had come along as my guest, couldn’t help worrying. ‘Is it safe, Lis? Is it safe?’ he kept saying, and I had to laugh. This was a man who had ridden a motorbike through the jungles of Nigeria and now he was shaking at the sight of a horde of Who fans.

Just trying to cope with the vast numbers meant that standards weren’t quite so high as in LA, Fort Lauderdale or Chicago. I managed to nip to the loo at one point and I suddenly heard this voice from the next cubicle: ‘Lis, if I slide a photo under the door, will you sign it?’

Signings are the lifeblood of conventions – fans will queue for hours to get a signature. If Sadie ever came along she’d be asked for her autograph, too. And if Jon was around he always made sure she was spoiled by fans. Usually the organisers massively underestimate how long these things take, so I’m forever saying, ‘I’ll sit here signing until I’ve seen everyone,’ which can throw the running order out completely. Sometimes you do get dragged away,