Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

The next morning Jon and I were being taken to record a TV programme. I opened our door just in time to see Ingeborg and Jon march past. I couldn’t help noticing he had a big plaster on his nose.

‘What’s …? I began to say but Ingeborg pulled a face and mouthed, ‘Don’t ask.’

I got the story eventually. ‘Oh, darling,’ she said, ‘poor Jon was so tired last night and the air conditioning was so noisy. I reached up to switch it off – and it fell on his head!’

We both burst out laughing but it must have hurt, especially with that nose.

Jon’s day didn’t get much better. We were taken in a car to what we thought would be a large Manhattan TV studio. The truth was some way short – quite an ugly building in a rather grubby area. Jon took one look and said, ‘I’m not going in there.’

Ron Katz looked horrified. His big idol was upset!

‘Come on, Jon,’ I said. ‘It will be fine, the three of us together.’

The inside, it turned out, was even worse than the exterior. Ron led us nervously to an office door and knocked. The guy inside looked like a Coen Brothers’ send-up of a typical TV producer – bald, big cigar and loud. His office was tiny and crammed with scripts. Ron ushered us in. Jon shook his head, upturned a wastepaper basket, and sat indignantly on that in the hallway.

As it turned out, I don’t think his behaviour hurt our chances.

‘These are the actors from England I told you about,’ Ron announced eagerly.

The producer stared blankly through a fug of smoke.

‘Who?’

‘I sent you a letter.’

The guy gestured to the pile of mail on his cluttered desk. Poking out near the bottom was Ron’s letter – unopened.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any weirder, the producer looked at me and said, ‘Do you have a Green Card?’

‘No.’

‘I can fix that.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ I said – I was just being polite.

Then he asked, ‘Are you married?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Hmm, I can fix that too.’

I’d heard enough. I grabbed Jon and we headed back to the hotel. By the time we arrived, Ingeborg and Brian had moved our stuff to the nearby Ramada, which had a swimming pool on the roof. Bliss.

It wasn’t entirely perfect, of course. The walls were paper-thin. In fact when I heard Jon complaining to his wife about the standard of room service I couldn’t help laughing.

‘Lissie, is that you?’ his voice boomed from the other side of the wall. ‘Can you believe they served me a paper cup? Outrageous!’

For all our trials I have to say we had a hysterical time. Brian and Jon got on famously, holding court at the bar every night, while Ingeborg and I became friends for life. You probably couldn’t pick four more different people but we really gelled, especially in the face of adversity.

Which was just as well …

Looking back I don’t know how we coped, but one of the funniest things was being turfed out of our hotel in Philadelphia. We’d started the day with Bloody Marys – hospitality was excellent, I have to say – but I think there was a problem with the bill so we had to relocate, in our drunken haze, to the Holiday Inn. Brian and I giggled our way through it but moods across the hall were more highly strung.

Ingeborg was crying, ‘Oh, Jon, oh Jon!’, and so out came the happy pills. Hysterical. I think I woke up at one point in the shower at three in the morning. One of my favourite conventions ever!

I seem to remember a fire alarm going off during Jon’s talk in Chicago’s Granada Theatre, which wasn’t so bad considering the place was freezing. And somewhere along the line I was asked for a pair of knickers to auction! Apparently you’re able to see a flash of my pants in The Ark in Space – I had no idea – so they wanted to recreate it. I foolishly handed over a red pair but I was told, ‘Oh no, you were wearing white in the show’, so I went back to my suitcase. The guy who eventually bought them – for quite a few dollars, I think – asked me to sign them. It’s disturbing to think there’s a pair of your pants hanging up on someone’s wall.

I was sad when it was all over: Jon and I had never been closer. It turned out that a four-week bus tour was no time at all – little did I know that an even bigger commitment was just around the corner.

*   *   *

After such a carefree few months I thought it was time to take a step back from the Whoniverse before I got tired of it again. When I got the call from Barry Letts to appear in his new BBC production I couldn’t turn it down. By then, especially after our boozy nights in Fort Lauderdale, Barry was more of a family friend than a colleague – I would do anything for him.

The show was Alice in Wonderland, which brought back fuzzy memories of the school production of Through the Looking-Glass – and of poor Edwina Currie! This time I’d be playing the Dormouse, which sounded fun. As usual Barry had surrounded himself with trusted favourites. Roy Skelton was the Mock Turtle, Linda Polan was with me again and Jonathan Cecil, who’d also been with Linda and me in Gulliver, returned as the White Rabbit. Best of all for me was that Brian was cast as the Gryphon – my husband and my mentor, what could be better?