Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

another offer, this time to play Rik Mayall’s daughter in something for Granada. Sadie was desperate to do it but I looked at the hours and the travel and thought, No, education has to come first. She was furious, of course, but now she’s been to college, she has four A-levels and she’s been to university: she still has her acting career ahead of her.

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While my television career appeared to have hit the buffers, my radio career was about to spring to life – and with it an old relationship.

The last I’d heard of Jon was Barry’s message that he was upset at not being invited round to dinner after Sadie was born. However, having managed to miss each other on the convention circuit for eight years, we both now agreed to take part in a Doctor Who radio serial for the BBC. I knew it was time to clear the air and was genuinely pleased to see him; I wondered if he’d forgotten. Then he said, ‘Ingeborg is very upset with you.’

I thought, Jon, don’t play that card. So I said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you know, we never got the invite to see Sadie.’

I wasn’t in the mood to pull punches.

‘Look, number one – you were invited to the christening and you couldn’t come. Number two – after that Brian was working in Bristol, I was alone and I didn’t have grandparents around to help: Brian’s mother is disabled and in Birmingham, bless her, my dad was very old. I had no one down here to say, “Have a day out, Lis.” Do you really think I had time to worry about dinner parties?’

He looked suitably sheepish at that.

‘Get Ingeborg on the phone – now.’

Ten minutes later we’d had a chat, our first in almost a decade, and it was all sorted. In fact, we were giggling about how the last time we’d met she’d been appalled by me saying I was going to give birth on a bucket – apparently gravity really helps! Everything was fine. How silly to have wasted so much negative energy over the years, though.

Of course, once the seal had been broken, Jon was like an uncle to Sadie. We started bumping into each other at conventions or parties and he was so good with her. Once we were at Manchester town hall doing an event and he said to her, ‘Come and help me with my signings’, so she sat there drawing or colouring while he scribbled his name. Some people reading this book might actually have my daughter’s first autographs! But he was such a terrible tease, too. I always think children should dress their age, not in something out of Victoria’s Secret. So she’d stand there in her frocks with her little lace-trimmed socks and Jon would turn his nose up and say, ‘Oh Sadie, your knickers are falling down.’ Bless her, she always looked!

Our radio programme was called The Paradise of Death and, I was so happy to hear, it was written by Barry Letts. His son Dominic played a few minor characters, which was nice, and Nick Courtney was onboard as well. We all had a great time. It’s such a treat to act without having to worry about hair and makeup. And there’s zero chance that anyone will say, ‘Can you bring your own clothes, Lis?’

Or so I thought.

Word came down that we were to go into the car park at Maida Vale studios in our lunch hour and have a few promotional snaps taken with the TARDIS. ‘Oh, and Lis – could you wear something colourful?’

The shoot was a disaster from start to finish. Firstly, the Brigadier’s costume sent for Nick came with the wrong belt. Nick’s a fastidious old thing and declared, ‘The Brig would not wear that and neither will I!’ So, he ended up in civvies. Jon, on the other hand, was resplendent in his original Who coat – which was odd because I could have sworn I’d seen it at auction half a dozen times. It was almost as if he’d had a whole bunch of them run up just to sell …

Standing waiting in that freezing-cold car park we were aware that the TARDIS itself had yet to materialise. Suddenly a lorry pulled in. The driver hopped out and, recognising Jon, said, ‘There’s your TARDIS, mate.’

We all stared at it – it was completely flat-packed.

‘I was rather hoping someone would assemble it,’ the photographer said to the trucker.

‘Not me, mate – I’m just the delivery guy!’

So there we were, me, Nick, the photographer, and the show’s director, Phil Clarke, all trying to do this giant blue jigsaw puzzle. By this point, Who had been cancelled, ending in 1989 with Sylvester McCoy’s third season, and the TARDIS had been in storage for four years. The poor old police box was covered in cobwebs and dust; that was enough for Jon to opt out. ‘I can’t get my coat too near that – it’s too valuable!’

Of course it is, Jon, I thought. Of course it is …

And do you think we could got the thing properly erected? Of course not! Look carefully at the final shots and you can see I’m holding a wall up with my back. One step forward and it would have been on my head – and not for the first time. But the BBC used the images to promote the series anyway, so if you wonder why we look like we’re being goosed in a microwave, that’s the reason.

I knew he could be tricky but few things gave me more pleasure than seeing Jon at the height of his powers. He’d been back at his best on The Five Doctors and watching him in that radio studio, you could see he was thrilled to be the Doctor again. The difference was, when we did The Five Doctors he was still a big star again off the back of Worzel Gummidge. Ten years later, I think the good parts had all but dried up.

Jon clearly had a lot riding on it. ‘Lissie, we have to get our butts out there and promote it,’ he said. Which is how we came to do our first British convention – organised by Alan Langley – since Longleat.

With Who no longer on television, a starved fandom propelled the radio programme to number one in the charts. It was so successful a second serial was commissioned, again written by Barry and directed by Phil. When finally broadcast at the start of 1996, The Ghosts of N-Space was another hit, but its success proved bittersweet because by then it had been in the can for two years. When production on the Doctor Who television movie with Paul McGann started, the BBC held back all other Who-related product. Nothing was to get in the way of the Eighth Doctor’s precious US-aimed adventure. (Nothing, that is, except the plot!)

If only they’d embargoed things before then. I might have been spared one of the least memorable experiences