Way back in 1985 I met my first ever stars of Doctor Who and was thrilled to bits, over the years I've been incredibly lucky to meet several more stars.  Back in the spring of 1987 I was very upset to hear that the wonderful actor that potrayed the second Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton has passed away and I had lost any chance of ever meeting and shaking hands with the great man and catching it on camera.  Therefore I decided as I was watching old Doctor Who's to make it my aim in life to get the chance to say 'Thank you' to as many of these wonderful stars as possible.  When I was old and grey, I could look back at these episodes and have happy memories of seeing the actors in my hallway and online if I was travelling away with happy memories.  I've added to this anecdotes of when I met them, some stories are funny, some stories are sad and some are just missed oportunities, I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed putting it together, so withoug further ado, we go right back to the begining and 1963 to the .....

THE WILLIAM HARTNELL YEARS

DAVID BRADLEY

Okay, okay, to start with this one is a bit of a cheat.  I have never met William Hartnell since his sad demise in 1975.

David Bradley did a great job at playing the actor and brought a sad poignancy when he played Bill Hartnell in the 2013 one off drama ‘An Adventure in Time & Space’.

I told him that I hoped he’d win a BAFTA for his performance which he sadly didn’t.  I did not recognise him when he turned up recently on American TV in ‘The Strain’.  

CAROLE ANN FORD

Carole was great to meet.  This was back in 2003 so it was a real thrill to meet one of the original stars.  She was with Verity Lambert which as you’ll hear later on, I had an opportunity to be photographed with and missed.  You only live once and I missed a golden opportunity.  I can understand her frustration with the role, there are I guess only a certain amount of times that you can strain your ankle.  I remember watching her in ‘Whatever Happened to the Likely Lad’s’ which she was great.

I believe that she’s less keen now on having her picture taken which is a shame but you have to respect her privacy.

  

WILLIAM RUSSELL

A legend, simple as that.  Bill Russell is just one of the nicest blokes, if not the nicest bloke on the planet.  His enthusiasm never stops. 

I attended a Doctor Who celebrity dinner and our original guest did not show so they drafted in Bill at very late notice and he was great.  He spoke about the Second World War in where he was stationed in South Africa.  He then went on to talk about working on ‘The Great Escape’ with all these famous actors in what he called ‘Pipe Acting’.  He was one of the lucky chaps to be married to Rita Fairclough from Coronation Street.  It was great hearing him talk with fondness of his time in the first two years of the series and you could see how much he loved working with the late Jacqueline Hill.

CLIVE DOIG

The legendary Vision Mixer from the Hartnell years.  My only regret with meeting Clive was not getting the chance to ask him how far he got in his interest in becoming Doctor Who producer during the eighties which could have been interesting.

I guess we'll never know.

NICHOLAS SMITH

A charming man, I interviewed in when I was 15 years old and he told he a told me how he convinced director Richard Martin to have him come back for a later episode in the Dalek Invasion of Earth to lead the resistance which got him an extra weeks pay.  I did feel a bit bad that all my questions were on something that he’d did twenty odd years ago and I covered ‘Are You Being Served’ with one question which he did want to talk about!

Sadly, like so many Nicholas has only recently passed away and will be much missed.

MAUREEN O’BRIEN

I’d been chasing after Maureen O’Brien for a number of years and to her credit she has done a number of convention appearances that for one reason or another I was unable to attend.  I jumped at this one and held my head in my hands when it was announced that she would not be doing photos at the event.

Gutted I have to say, I was determined to get something so my good friend Stuart Mitchell came to my rescue and took a few snaps as I was getting something signed.  There not perfect by all means but for what it’s worth they are also some of my favourites due to the length that Stuart went to get those shots.  She was pleased that I’d bought her book.

There was a funny moment when she was due to go on stage for her panel that she had a dig at her steward by saying, “Can I go for a pee please, I’ve been signing at that desk non-stop since half-past eight this morning”!  That’s what happens if you’ve had a couple of years away from doing conventions Maureen!  I’m always a little star-struck when I meet these people that I’ve watched so many times at home to know that there they are, right in front of me, great feeling.

It's funny how things come around as I was convinced that I would never get another chance to have a photo shoot with  Maureen so when it came up again I jumped at the chance on both days and got carried away with the photos!

JEREMY BULLOCH

Jeremy has such an impressive CV.  Its great attending all these events and seeing so many people dressed up as Boba Fett from Star Wars and he loves it.  I fondly remember him from Robin of Sherwood which he was great at.  I think you can tell when you have a company of actors that are enjoying themselves and he certainly seemed to on that show.

Every time I watch the Space Museum I do think that his character, Tor and his friends all belong to a planet of students, they all look so young, very nice man.

Sadly, like so many Jeremy has only recently passed away and will be much missed.

PETER PURVES

Peter was great.  I love his portrayal of Steven Taylor.  He would really stand up to Bill Hartnell’s Doctor and he was given some great stuff to do such as the Myth Makers and the Massacre.  He did well managing to go through 3 Producers which isn’t a bad survival record for that time.

When I last spoke to him I told him that out of Bill Hartnell’s 3 series, my favourite is his third one by a mile.  For me it shakes everything up, new styles of telling stories, the companions are no longer safe and you have 3 styles of Producers.  It would have been great if the Doctor had returned to the planet in the Savages and seen Steven Taylor changed to a ruthless leader.

JEAN MARSH

I met Jean Marsh at an event in Milton Keynes.  She wasn’t doing that many events in 2014 and she was a late addition to an event that I had no intention attending despite the like of Noel Clarke and Arthur Darvill appearing.  I originally was tempted to bring my daughter's Nerf Gun with me so she could do a Sara Kingdom pose but sadly she wasn’t in the best of health that day and I felt it would have been rude of me to ask but like a good trooper she carried on.

As soon as I heard that Jean was going I drove down from Aberdeen over night, got an hour’s kip in the car, I got my photo and felt very humbled to meet her.

She’s done so much in her life, I can mention the name of Jean Marsh to so many people that are out with the Doctor Who circle and they’ll know exactly who she is.. 

THE SEASON 3 TEAM

I’m not one for taking photos at convention but I’m glad that I took this, from left to right:-

Paul Erickson (The Ark), Nigel Robinson (Writer of Doctor Who target novels in the eighties of various Hartnell books, John Wiles (Producer of the first half of season 3), William Emms (Galaxy Four) and interviewer Ian McLachlan.

The picture was taken in 1987.  This was my favourite Hartnell series over a fascinating period of history on the show.  I just wish looking back that I’d got to meet these guys properly as I have so many questions now to ask them that sadly cannot be asked.

I did send a letter to Nigel Robinson in 1986 asking if I could write Planet of Giants, Edge of Destruction and The Rescue.  The swine went on to write them himself!

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

This is the point where you want to nip into your own time machine and travel back in time.

Bill Hartnell as I mentioned sadly passed away in 1975.  Thought he did make it to the tenth anniversary and must have been so proud as to what the cheap children show had achieved, to see how far the programmes come by 2013 is staggering and I’m sure he would have been really proud.  A fascinating man with a lot of pride, I can understand his tetchiness is not wanting to let people down, I must confess as I get older I get a bit like that too .  

Jacqueline Hill sadly died from cancer in 1993.  Though Bill never lived to attend any conventions as such Jacqueline Hill did attend one back in the eighties that can still be viewed on U-Tube and it would have been great to attend which was around 1985 I believe, I’m sure they’ll be a handful of fans with a photo with her.  When you watch her in the ‘Aztecs’ you really see her at her best, my favourite first season Hartnell story where the debate against changing time is at its strongest.  Bill and Jackie really sell it. 

I remember reading an interview with Adrienne Hill back in 1986 where after a period of being a drama teacher she wanted to break back into acting and she’d done the odd convention and appearance and she hoped this would lead onto better things, sadly she died of cancer in 1997.  I still think that Wiles/Tosh got it wrong in letting her go, though she was frustrated with the role, her loss added to the excitement of the Dalek Master Plan.

Jackie Lane is very much alive and is someone I would dearly love the opportunity to meet and have a photo with.  She’s not keen on attending conventions or events and values her privacy which you can fully understand.  She appeared in the series for about 3 months before informed that her contract would not be renewed which was a great shame.  I thought her character Dodo was great and it’s a great shame that while some of her stories still exist, The Celestial Toymaker and the Savages are missing.  I have a soft spot for Dodo, while she only managed 19 episodes I think, like so many companions she would have improved over time.  

Sadly, Jackie has passed away, For a number of years I sought opportunities to meet her and sadly did not.  Something that I truly regret and she will be missed.

Carmen Silvera did two Doctor Who’s and I managed to meet her in 1986/87 where I interviewed her regarding her roles in the Celestial Toymaker and the 1974 story The Invasion of the Dinosaurs.  Her clear favourite was the Celestial Toymaker and she enjoyed very much seeing old photos of herself from the story and showed them off to her co-star Gorden Kaye who was appearing in the same play as her.  The annoying thing was that I did not take any pictures at the time, stupid on my part.

She had clear memories of watching a playback by Bill Sellars the director of her character Clara and her co-star Campbell Singer’s Joey the clowns being shrunk back into a box.  It makes fascinating listening to her when you’ve never seen the story.

She also told me an intriguing story that she was offered a third story in the late seventies involving some cave which she was unable to do?  I have not got a clue which story this was?

THE PATRICK TROUGHTON YEARS

 

ANNEKE WILLS

What a lovely lady.  I got the opportunity to ask her one question at a convention which was, “If they managed to get the technology to colour in the old Black and White Doctor Who’s would you consider this Art or Vandalism”?.  Well Anneke did not waste any time in calling it vandalism!  I bumped into her later on and she made a beeline for me to say well done for the question which I was chuffed at!

She’s so incredibly cheerful, when she walked past a queue of us she shouted out, “I want to take you all home”!  Next to Kay Manning, one of the best huggers in the Doctor Who companion business.  She really does enjoy herself at conventions and dare I say it is a bit of a fan of the programme itself.

FRAZER HINES

Frazer Hines, what can I say about Frazer Hines?  Well I’ll tell you a story about Frazer Hines, Frazer was appearing at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Doctor in the House back in Aberdeen in November 1985.

Now as a terrified 15 year old I waited by the stage door for the cast to turn up with my mate Dave Ballard.  A Jeep turns up with Frazer and his good friend Robin Asquith in, they jump out and grab car cones that are on the side of the road and trumpet out, “Where here, the play can now go ahead, don’t worry, were here”!

Dave and me had no idea what was going on.  Frazer came up to us and realised that we were Doctor Who fans (The Kagools gave it away I guess)!  Anyway, I stumble my way to asking him if we can interview him.

“No problem”, he says and arranges it there and then.  What he did next I’ll never forget.  I asked him if he can pass on some letters to the other members of the cast that where in Doctor Who as well, again requesting interviews with them.  He takes the letters, looks at them and turns to us and says, “Follow me”.

He takes us into the theatre and knocks on the relevant actor’s doors that have all been in Doctor Who.  Now Frazer does not ask these actor’s if they mind being interviewed, he tells them their doing interviews!

Once this was done, Frazer then took us on a tour of the theatre.

That Saturday when we did four interviews, we got autographs, we got photos, for two 15 year old boys who from Aberdeen Scotland who could not afford to travel down south and were too young to attend a convention, Frazer Hines brought that convention with him to Aberdeen that day where their were more attendees than guests.  Even today I’m moved by his actions.

I off course thought that getting future interviews would be easy after that but they were not.  This just proves what a guy Frazer Hines is. 

For that, I personally salute Frazer Hines for that day and giving a very shy fifteen year old lad more confidence in him-self to prove that you don’t get if you don’t ask.  A memorable day from my youth which when I look back gave me so much confidence for the future.

DEBORAH WATLING

Ah Debbie Watling.  You know there’s one thing that the world does not know about Debbie Watling, I went out with Debbie Watling around 1987, right here in Aberdeen!

It was so secret in fact that not only did the world not know about it, neither did she!

When I was at college in 1987 I was studying computer data processing.  Now all the lads there had stunning girlfriends and I being a Doctor Who fan hadn’t even got around to thinking about girls at the age of 17.  There idea of fun was renting out VHS tapes from the Video shop with Arnold Schwarzenenner; my idea of fun was listening to a tenth generation copy of ‘The Abominable Snowmen’ trying to make out what they were saying on my cassette player with all the hissing noises drowning out the dialogue.

Not to be left out with this sea of girlfriends, I came up with the genius idea of showing the lads a photo that I had with Debbie from two years before!  At this point just mention the name girl and I turned red faced so it was a thrill to have a photo with someone as gorgeous as Debs.   I told them that I’d went out with her for a year and that she knew my older sister and she worked for an oil company here in Aberdeen.  I was painting her flat at the time the photo was taken.  They believed it as well, what a guy I thought!.

Amazingly I was never found out until I got invited to a gig where one of the lads was playing Bass guitar.  He invited both Debbie and I along!  Needless to say I made my excuse and told them that sadly, Debbie had a great job offer from an oil company in Houston, America and that she’d left me for warmer climates.

This left me devastated, probably due to the fact it was all in my imagination in the first place.  Years later I confessed my sin to Debbie thanks to my daughter in Glasgow.

Debbie found it very funny and was flattered!  That made it all the worth while.

Her passing in 2017 really broke my heart

VICTOR PEMBERTON & PETER BRYANT

These guys were the production team for Tomb of the Cybermen.

I got a lovely E-Mail once off Victor Pemberton when I asked him about his time on Doctor Who and Victor pulled no punches.  I was intrigued to ask if he knew just before Innes Lloyd left if Innes had given the go-ahead for The Web of Fear and Fury from the Deep or if it had been Peter Bryant.  I knew these had been unsettling times with Derrick Sherwin coming in as script editor.  When producers move on there are some straggly stories left over that are passed on to the next production team, a handover you might say.

He confirmed that while Innes had indeed given the green light for Web of Fear to be commissioned even though Peter Bryant’s name would still be there as producer, his own story was commissioned by Peter.  He was neighbours with Mervyn Haisman one of Pat Troughton’s fellow writers when they all lived in Spain.  He did object to and stopped Derrick Sherwin from tampering with his own script.

Peter Bryant I met in Liverpool.  My one regret was that I have so many questions and queries on that era now that I could not have asked back then.

WENDY PADBURY

The first time I met Wendy Padbury she signed her name in my autograph book when she was appearing in Superted in 1988 at the local theatre.  I was really impressed because she put a little ‘X’ for a kiss at the side of her name making me beam with pride as an eighteen year old.  When your 18 it’s little things like that think you might not be that bad with the ladies.

It was only years later however that I learned that she did it all the time when she signed her name.  I guess I thought at the time it was my aftershave that did it, obviously not!

BRIAN CANT

Brian was great crack.  He told me that when he was exterminated in the Dalek Master Plan that it was half a Dalek that exterminated him as Douglas Camfield wanted it shot from the ground.  He too was bemused that I wanted to talk about Doctor Who with him.

Sadly missed

VERNON DOBTCHEFF

A very funny man, I think he’s got the longest list of credits that I’ve ever seen an actor have.

EDWARD BRAYSHAW

I thought he was great in the War Games, however it was one story he told about the Reign of Terror that impressed me.  When he was in studio he would wear dark shades.  Now this annoyed William Hartnell who told him, “You’re a fine actor but why do you wear those sunglasses, you look such a poser”!  Edward then went on to tell Bill that as a young actor he damaged one of his eyes by catching it on some metal that scratched his eye and damaged it.  This made his eye very sensitive to strong light which was why he wore these dark glasses.

Bill Hartnell was mortified that he had brought this up and felt terrible about it so when they were in studio after this and he spotted Eddie Brayshaw minus his sunglasses he would then get on to him to put them on at once in case he did any more damage!

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

Pat Troughton did a couple of British conventions in 1983 and 85 to which I missed both.  I still remember sobbing as a seventeen year old when I realised that I would never get the opportunity to say thanks.  It was his death in 1987 that made me sit up and realise that none of us our mortal and we must all make the best of the lives, we are not here forever.  He inspired me to get out there and meet as many of our heroes as possible.  I don't believe that he was to keen on signing autographs, he did it, he just did not see the point in doing it which in some-ways I agree.

Michael Craze was another reason not to ever take anything for granted.  Very popular with fandom he did a lot of events even up to the time of his death.  Sadly, while I did a few conventions in the eighties, in the nineties for various reasons I stayed away.  It’s all the more poignant as towards the end the photo studios were beginning to take off and he’d off done a few, again an actor that I would have loved to have met and had a pint with, sadly not to be.

 Douglas Camfield. There are loads of people on the production side that I would have liked to have met, all of them fantastic but I will single out Dougie Camfield who did do a convention circa 1982 and he would have been an incredible man to meet.  If you were picking the best team ever to head up an ultimate production made Doctor Who for some world cup there would be plenty of great competition but only one Dougie Camfield.  The reason that he’s here is that I don’t consider every Doctor Who story made to be a classic, yet if I look at the ones I truly love, stories such as The Time Meddler, Web of Fear, Inferno and Seeds of Doom, his names on them., top rank.

Innes Lloyd would I think be the producer that I would love to sit down and have a pint with.  He did the job for a couple of years, was well thought of by his peers and actors but at the same time could be ruthless in seeking perfection.  He phased out the historical stories, introduced regenerations, Cybermen, Ice Warriors and the Yeti all within his era, impressive.

THE JON PERTWEE YEARS

 

JON PERTWEE

I met the late Jon Pertwee in 1989 when he toured in Doctor Who:  The Ultimate Adventure.  Now at this point I’d retired from trying to get interviews with the stars of Doctor Who because it was such hard work and took up so much time but I had to make the exception for Jon, minus the interview.

Now I managed to send Jon a letter asking if the Doctor Who local group at the time could come and meet him between the matinee and evening show to which he agreed but only for ten people to attend.

Now Jon was a big star, he didn’t want to hang outside too much of the theatre as it was March and very cold.  Yet when he came out of the theatre and marched up to his hotel during a Tuesday night you could tell he was trying to disguise himself and not be recognized.  At the same time, due to his height and the fact that he had a very thespian hat on top you could not mistake him as anyone else but Doctor Who.

Now again, the only thing that Jon stipulated for me was that only 10 people could come to his dressing room.

I was a very naïve 19 year old that just could not say no to anyone and I turned up with 15 fans.  Needless to say I had to make the difficult choice brought about by the door man stopping me and insisting that I would have to turn away 5 fans, this is why I look so miserable in the photo.  One of the hardest things I’ve done, I did a lot of growing up that day and learned some hard lessons about life that you cannot please everyone.

Still, I only met Jon twice in my life so I was grateful for this day.

NICHOLAS COURTNEY

Nicholas Courtney, again a lovely man.  He never seemed to disappoint the fans and was always there at a convention.  It was a real tragedy that he never got the chance to be in the new series at some point.  I’m not the biggest fan at bringing old characters back but he really made the part of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart his own, you would never say 'No' to Nick coming back.

Nick has told many great stories but one of my favourites was towards the end of his life.  He said that a well known actor at the time he was doing Doctor Who in the early seventies would ask him, "Are you still filming that Children's show Nick"?  Now this actor knew that it upset him and yet he would continually bring it up whenever he saw him.

A number of years past and Nick bumped into this actor again and Nick asked how he was doing.  The actor replied that work had not been so plentiful as it once had been and he was struggling a bit.  The actor then asked how Nick was and he explained, "I'm doing great, I have a theatre play coming up, I've got a bit of telly, I'm doing a bit of audio, working in America and Australia".

The actor was astounded and had to ask, "How are you getting so much work"?

Nick proudly replied to the actor, "Well all those children that used to watch Doctor Who are now employing me".  The actors face according to Nick was a picture of realising just what he had missed out on!

In retrospect I wished I’d had more chance to have a natter with him as I met him on a number of occasions but everyone’s always busy at these events.

CAROLINE JOHN

What a laugh Caroline John was.  I met her in 2000 and she did this cabaret with another lady where they did this little add on sketch to the Silurian story where they were the cleaning ladies mopping up on Wenley Moor Nuclear Research Facility and very funny it was too.

When I met her she was in high spirits just having come off a lying panel with Sophie Aldred, Katy Manning and Lis Sladen.  I even got a little peck on the cheek from her which was great, she was having the time of her life.

BARRY LETTS, DON HOUGHTON & BOB BAKER

Barry Letts was a great Producer, a good 5 year run where he’d add the odd bit of politics at the time and bury it into a story to it least create a good talking point.  I think he did well with stories like the Green Death in putting across his message to the world about big companies to which I’ve worked for a couple (Though not Global Chemicals)!

Don Houghton gave me my favourite Pertwee story with Inferno which has a couple of great episode cliff hangers, it’s a shame he never did more.

Bob Baker, one half of the famous Bristol Boys.  Just to be controversial, The Mutants would have been my favourite Pertwee Martin/Baker production out of their many stories.

TERRANCE DICKS

Let me tell you something.  I really became a proper Doctor Who fan from 1980’s Full Circle onwards, however I was fan, not of the series but the Target novels before that in the seventies from the library books that you could borrow, due in part to coming across a couple of Malcolm Hulke books in a second hand book shop in the town of Kendal.

There was no stopping me with the Target novels and the majority were written by this man.  As far as I was concerned back then, forget you’re missing episodes, you would never be able to watch them, video recorders were an invention that hadn’t happened in my eyes yet.   The Abominable Snowmen and the Web of Fear existed while the Krotons and the Invasion were missing because Terrance hadn’t written them yet.

I told Terrance that the last time I met him I felt like calling him Dad.  That’s because when I was growing up, through Terrance’s books he had a far better understanding of where I was coming from as a child than my own Dad.  He inspired me to write.

I’ve never had anything published, I’m not another Scottish Steven Moffat, it doesn’t matter though, Terrance has inspired thousands of kids to hit the typewriters and use their imaginations.  Something that he’s never received enough credit for because on top of that, he is also one of the most humble (And makes wheezing , groaning noises with a very open face)!

Terrance was a definite hero and much missed.

JOHN LEVENE

John been doing conventions for years and I’ve been doing them on and off for a good while to and yet it took years to finally meet the great man himself.  John’s different than what you expect.  When I was growing up I imagined him to be one of the lads, in the pub, loud and the truth is very different.  He’s a  sensitive man, thoughtful man who very much still wants to achieve a lot of things in life.

Coming back from Cardiff I got my first ever speeding ticket and three points off my driving licence, that’s how much I was wanting to meet John Levene!

RICHARD FRANKLIN

I think Richard must get tired doing all these conventions when he’s faced with that dreaded question that must drive him up the wall, “Where you annoyed when Mike Yates turned out to be a traitor”!

It makes me giggle!  I loved Invasion of the Dinosaurs and to a degree sympathise with what Operation Golden Age was about but was he a traitor, you could argue to humanity that he was not, but in the eyes of UNIT command he most certainly was and was lucky to get a simple discharge.

KATY MANNING

You just can’t think about Katy Manning without smiling.  When I nipped along not too long ago to meet her in Milton Keynes it was freezing, I mean absolutely freezing.  So when you have a photo shoot coming up with Katy Manning you’re in for a treat as between her and Anneke Wills as you just get the best hugs of your life!

The banter when she's with her fellow Unit compadres is immense.  During a convention panel it felt like a seventies rock band coming out of retirement with Franklin on Bass, Levene on Lead Guitar and Manning doing an Axl Rose and running herself ragged around the audience. 

She’ll always be young and heart.  When she appeared at her first UK convention having been away from the country for a number of years she took along her very young boy and girl so when they came with her down the stairs of the Imperial college I was panicking for them because they were ever so small and they were soon swallowed up by fans dying to get their picture of her.  She's never changed.

BERNARD HOLLEY & DEBBIE LEE LONDON

The Axon family!  Bernard was a topper of a bloke, I think he’s still bewildered as to why he get’s so much attention for his two roles in Doctor Who.  Debbie was gorgeous but I only briefly met her.

ELIZABETH SLADEN

Regarding meeting Lis, I’m cheating a bit here and I’ll talk about that more in the Tom Baker Years. 

What I will say regarding Planet of the Spiders was the day I bought the DVD of it and I was listening to the commentary for part one.  I thought that it was lovely that the Pertwee team of Sladen/Courtney/Franklin/Dicks/Letts had come together to record this and pay their respects to their comrade, Jon Pertwee. 

Sadly Barry Letts and Nick Courtney had passed on by the time the DVD had come out.  It was at this point I got a text while watching and listening to the commentary on that first episode of the heart breaking news of Lis’s passing.  I’ve had relatives pass away and I’m ashamed to say that I took Lis’s death far worse to the point that I could not bring myself to watch any more, I was that upset as were many young and old.

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

Roger Delgado was sadly killed in a motoring accident in Turkey in 1973 but for Fandom the man is an enigmatic star who too many is arguably the greatest Master of all.

David Griffin is my Tenth Planet episode 4!  I interviewed in the eighties and not only did I not take any photos but I have lost the recording as well.  He did sign my Sea Devil book though!

THE TOM BAKER YEARS

TOM BAKER

What can I say about Tom Baker?  I guess I’m a late fourth generation fan.  A lot of guys my age ( I was born circa 1970) grew up with their first Doctor being Tom and you always have a soft spot for the one you grew up with.  Yet a lot of fans that I know of the same generation started far earlier.  With an older brother and sister in the family they enjoyed watching the Six Million Dollar man rather than Doctor Who so I had to make do with summer repeats of his stories and yet for me, I didn’t really become a fan until Full Circle from his final series.

I loved Tom in his final series.  He was very sombre and a bit more serious.  There certainly seemed to be an air of doom through out that season with the new production team going to war with the old guard of Tom, Lalla, David Fisher and Terrance Dicks with all off their new ideas.

Needless to say when Logopolis came along I was inconsolable.

I heard a story (I don’t know if it’s true) that when he was in a theatre production in Aberdeen he lost a car somewhere in Aberdeen as he forgot where he parked it, this is circa 1984.   

When I met Tom in 2000, he had the biggest queue for the photo studio and I finally got to the doorway of where he was until I felt someone pushing me in the back to get through.  Another pushy fan I thought trying to jump the queue.  “Is Tom in here”, she said, a female fan at that?

I turned around to and started to give her a bit of verbal only to be confronted by Lis Sladen!  I gasped with air as I through myself to the side to let her through apologizing like a machine gun going off.

To see Tom and Sarah together , so happy and delighted that it made me feel humble to be in the same room, that’s the magic of Doctor Who.

ELIZABETH SLADEN

Lis Sladen, even saying her name now chokes me up.  I could go on about what a great actress and ambassador for fandom she was but I’d like to mention something else.

In 2001 my wife Tracy and I tried for a child.  We had a baby boy who sadly died two hours after being born who we called Casper.

A year later in 2002 we tried again and we had a baby girl called Kate.  Now bringing a child into the world was a big thing and I knew that I had responsibilities for this precious little person who was my daughter.

As a single fan you don’t think too hard about finances but when Kate came along I decided that I would need to tighten our finances.  I stopped my subscription to Big Finish and I was going to attend my last convention for Panopticon in 2003 and cut back totally on these fan events.

My final guest that I was due to have a photo with was Lis Sladen.  I’d missed her in 2000 which I was gutted at.

I went into the photo studio and sat down with her and waited for the click/click, thank you very much, next and that would be it, but something extraordinary happened that day.  Back then the photographer was still using film and for whatever reason he’d run out and needed to get more from the car so he raced away.

So, there I am, sat next to Lis Sladen on my own.  What do you talk about, I thought?  Do you mention the ‘Andy Pandy’ costume?  Do you go on about ‘K9 & Company’?

Without much more thought I turned around and asked, “How are Brian and Sadie doing”?

She looked back at me and smiled.  It was as if she was relieved that she didn’t have to give me an automatic repeat answer, instead she proudly beamed with joy and pride at how well her daughter and husband, her own family were doing.  I could swear that Lis Sladen left that room and in walked Mrs Brian Miller.

Being polite she asked about my family and it’s at this point that I felt a bit of a twat!  The emotion of realizing that this was me basically saying goodbye to my Doctor Who family and taking on the responsibilities of my own family hit home.  I started to shed a few tears.

She immediately came to my aid realizing that I was upset and asked me what was wrong and I explained my situation.  She held me tight and explained that everything would be alright and she’d had similar feelings after the birth of Sadie.  She told me that when Kate got older, she’d love to meet her and to take her along to a convention and this would not be the end and there was life after childbirth.

Her words brought great comfort to me and please do not ask me why but I patted her on the knee as a show of appreciation for her understanding, it was purely natural and nothing meant by it.  It was then at this point I suddenly thought to myself, what the hell are you doing, you’re patting Sarah Jane Smith’s knee!  I thought I’d get thrown out of the convention, have my subscription to the Monthly cancelled, I was appalled!  I pulled away instantly in shock.

It was at this specific point that the photographer was finally set up and ready for the picture.  Lis looked at my shocked face and pointed at it laughing uncontrollably, “Your Face”, she howled with laughter!

The photographer shouted at us, “Here we go again, ready”?

It was at this point, Lis grabbed my wrist, slapped my hand back on her knee and looked back at my now aghast face at the terrible crime I’d committed and by this point she was nearly falling off her chair in laughter, she was laughing that much that it was quite possible that any minute now there would be an accident with her bladder!  By now all I could do was laugh at the situation myself and that photo above is my own personal favourite out of all my photos as it captures a moment of time in my life where my emotions went from excitement, to sadness, to despair, to hope and then full blown laughter.

She wished me well and asked again for Kate, I left with so much positive hope.

Seven years later I wrote a letter to Lis asking for a signed photo for my daughter Kate as she was a big fan of the Sarah Jane Adventures and I congratulated her on the success of the programme.  At the very start of December 2010 we received it and Kate was over the moon and so was I.

Four months later, that incredible lady that gave me hope back in 2003 sadly lost her fight for life against the terrible disease of cancer.  That photo represents why I love this programme and all the people in it that I’ve had the privilege to meet.

PHILIP HINCHCLIFFE

Philip Hinchcliffe!  This man can do no wrong in Doctor Who fans eyes having produced Tom’s first three seasons of horror. 

My only gripe is that his era is really that perfect.  Normally when you’re getting your photos for these things taken you ask the guest if they mind you putting your arm around them, I don’t think he was to keen on Doctor Who fans getting close to him and really, let’s be honest, you just wanted to give the man a bear hug because of his great work.

LOUISE JAMESON

I’m just checking my heart-rate.  I think it’s gone up a couple of notches!  I don’t know if Louise get’s fed up with the sexy leather leotards.  For me, my favourite costume of Louise was dare I say it, her Horror of Fang Rock gear with woolly jumper and boots.

Louise was a great actress and I saw her once do a great cabaret act where she did a Joyce Grenfell impersonation where she was a school teacher and her pupils were all her fellow Doctor Who actors so she came out with great lines like, “Tom, Tom, Tom, come and join the rest of the children Tom”, which was in reference to Tom doing a Panopticon in 2000 but going absent for a reunion of the Robots of Death cast.

I also want to thank Louise for of all things using body deodorant spray?  She gave an interview once in the Monthly where she was asked about fandom and she did say that a small minority of fans (No, I’m not meaning you) ponged when it came to getting their photographs with her!  I’ve made sure that when I attend the events I take about six tins with me and in 2014 it paid off.  Louise turned around to me and said, “I love your aftershave”.  Now, just to make it clear, no I am not prepared to tell you which aftershave it was!

“Empty Threat Rutan”!

JOHN LEESON

I once went to an event in Newcastle where I had to wait for 6 hours to get into.  The event boasted no less than Sylvester McCoy & Paul McGann.  The queue I was in started at about 08.00 am and was due to go in at 11.00am, this queue had 50 people waiting ahead of me with little children and babies in front of me.

Five hours later in the lashing rain and wind (It was March) and very, very cold the 50 people ahead of me had got fed up.  It was horrible, there were screaming children, arguments, you name it and by 2.00pm I was at the front of the queue still waiting to get in. 

The reason I held out was that I was there for one reason and one reason alone, to meet John Leeson.  I got in with 5 minutes to spare before buying my ticket.  I didn’t even bother with the rest of the show.  I was out half an hour later!  I was freezing in that photo so that’s why I’m hugging him so tightly, where is Katy Manning and Anneke Wills when you need them!

The best bit of the day however was the queue for John.  There were about 20 fans.  I was at the back with a mother and her 5 year old son with him carrying a toy K9.

The mother kept telling her son that he was going to meet K9.  When her son finally met John he cowered behind his mother’s leg feeling that he’d been conned, who was this strange man he thought!

John, the old pro that he was stepped forward, bent down to this little boy and said in his best K9 voice, “My name is K9.  What is yours”?

That little boy jumped out from behind his Mum and gave John the biggest hug I’d ever seen.  After enduring 6 hours out in the cold and not being in the best of humours this truly melted my heart and reminded me that for a lot of old Who fans, who can moan about this and that and pick holes in everything to do with the programme, you forget why you love the programme and seeing that brings it all back to your own childhood and what made this programme unique.

MICHAEL KEATING

It was great meeting Michael.  I mentioned to him that I did a Blake Seven convention once in Egham that he wasn’t at and reminded him that at the time Paul Darrow was in Elvis: The Musical to which he had happy memories himself of appearing in it too before Paul did with Martin Shaw.

PRIMI TOWNSEND

Talking about that Blake Seven convention, here’s someone that was there in 1988, the gorgeous Primi Townsend.

LALLA WARD

I really looked forward to meeting Lalla as she’d went a bit quiet on the convention front and then suddenly appeared again so I wasted no time in catching up with her.  My sister who was a great lover of dogs bought an Astrology book once on dogs and I was impressed that it had been Lalla that had done the illustrations, a talented lady.

I’d have loved a longer blether but you just have to be grateful for what you get.  She always had the best wardrobe collection for Doctor Who ever, not that I take much notice of fashion!

My favourite story is City of Death, my favourite season is season 18 so meeting her was a big thrill.

DAVID GOODERSON

I’ve met more Davros’s than Masters which is unusual but there you go.  My daughter Kate gave me a hand with this.  I think David did his best to look a bit serious like Davros in the last photo so the photographer told him off and asked him to smile for the next one.  Lucky David didn’t take any Daleks with him or that photographer would have been a negative effect of being exterminated.

JULIAN GLOVER

Lovely meeting Julian Glover, I mean Space 1999, Star Wars, James Bond, Blakes Seven.

He has a twinkle when I mentioned his wife Isla.  I also think he enjoyed meeting the ladies.

He seemed to be enjoying fan events.

ANDREW SMITH

As far as I’m concerned JNT should have kept Andrew on for his other 8 series and he could have become the new Bob Holmes.

Having read the Target novels I remember 1980 so well in that I was a 10 year old that got rapidly bored of Disco Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century and wanted something to stretch my mind with Jean Michel-Jarre music and all I had to do was press number 1 on our big telly and there it was.  It was this story, Full Circle that made me into a fan and I bought issue 47 of Doctor Who Monthly straight after.  Yes the Target novels had helped along the way before then but that day, that was the day that changed me truly into a fan, so I owe Andrew a lot of gratitude and years of happiness thanks to him.

I believe that Andrew who came from Scotland originally still loves the place and many of the stone circles, some of which he wrote about in an audio play with Richard Franklin which is near where I stay.  Thanks for flying the flag Andrew.



THE E SPACE WRITERS

My favourite series of writers with 50% of them gathered together.  One awkward bit was telling them that at the end which may be didn't go down to well with Terrance!

These guys were the reason I wanted to become an author, a bit too old in the tooth now but I should have stuck with it.

e that Andrew who came from Scotland originally still loves the place and many of the stone circles, some of which he wrote about in an audio play with Richard Franklin which is near where I stay.  Thanks for flying the flag Andrew.



STEPHEN GALLAGHER

When I had my target novel of Warriors Gate I always thought Stephen was deadly serious, so it was a lovely surprise when he just came out with this expression, one of my favourites.

GEOFFREY BEEVERS

I've been meaning to meet Geoffrey Beevers for a number of years so it was great when he came to Glasgow.

One question that I got to ask Geoffrey was , "Do you ever wish as a jobbing actor, you would have been happy as a regular in a TV series".  An excellent actor with for me the creepiest voice I think I can remember.

Geoffrey was not too concerned and I think preferred to be a jobbing actor.

Keen to get a fun picture with Geoffrey I always remembered him pawing at Tom Baker's hair in the Keeper of Traken so I could not throw up the chance of sharing the same experience.

The photographer had a lot of fun, he asked Geoffrey if he wanted a copy for the memory.  He said no!  Don't blame him really, I don't know if I would want to keep a photo wearing someone's jacket hood on his head!.

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

Ian Marter died young from a heart-attack in 1986 which was related to him suffering from diabetes.  One of my friends met him at Panopticon in 1986 and was shocked when a mere month later he was gone, very sad I did not get the chance to meet him.

Guy Siner, I interviewed back in 1987 I think and he was completely bemused by the whole thing.  Sadly again, Like Carmen Silvera, no photo.

Russell Hunter was hilarious.  If memory serves me right, he did the Panto with Eddie Brayshaw and I knocked at his dressing room door asking if he could sign some stuff.  He’d turned me down an interview flat, as he put it in his note in 1985, “I don’t want to talk about Doctor Who”!  We interviewed Eddie and thought we’d give Russell another shot.  When he answered his dressing room door he was just standing there with his underpants.  You just don’t expect to bump into Commander Uvanov in his Y fronts, what would Toos say!

Mary Tamm for me was truly heart breaking when she passed away, again a victim of that dreadful disease of cancer.  Now I had plenty of opportunities to meet Mary, she attended regular events up in Newcastle and Glasgow towards the end of her life and of all the people that I’ve missed, she is the one that I most regretted because on her part she gave me every chance to meet her close to my home and I failed to grasp it and for that I will never forgive myself.

David Brierly did attend a couple of events but again, I missed my chance.

THE PETER DAVISON YEARS

PETER DAVISON

I think my meetings with Peter Davison have been cursed, I really do.  You don’t believe me, then read on as I take you through an evening through Peter Davison’s eyes in a restaurant next to his hotel in 1987 Aberdeen where he was appearing in the ‘Owl and the Pussycat’ with his wife at the time Sandra Dickinson.

‘That was a great meal’, thought Peter Davison, ‘I’ll just give the waiter his tip and then Sandra and I can head back to the hotel with our two friends that we’ve just had a meal with, splendid night, great laughs, I’m really enjoying my time in Aberdeen’.

“Oh”, said Peter to his wife, “It’s starting to rain heavy now, lucky the hotel’s only next door, come on everyone”.  His two friends and Sandra followed.

Sandra looked back at Peter as they approached the hotel entrance with a concerned look, there were two teenage kagool wearing young lads with bad acne hanging outside the front entrance to the hotel.

Peter looked concerned and ushered his two friends and Sandra along to save them from getting wet.  His heart sunk as these two lads whipped out from there Forbidden Planet plastic carrier bags a copy each of that special Doctor Who book they took out in 1983 celebrating 20 years by that Haining bloke.  These boys were fast you know, they had their pens at the ready.  No escaping out the front entrance to the theatre to avoid them this time, bugger, with any luck their books would get wet!

The really ugly one pipped up in a squeaky voice, “Hi Peter, could you sign this, oh that’s great.  Did you get my letter asking you to give up two hours of your time between your Saturday matinee performance and your evening performance while we interviewed you asking only 60 questions that we’ve prepared about your time working in Doctor Who”!?!

Peter looked at him and then back at his wife who had held back.  This was the fan that interviewed Sandra last year asking her 20 questions in an interview.  That’s right; it’s definitely him, the little swine.  He asked one question on the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and the remaining nineteen about what she thought of his time in Doctor Who, bloody cheek!  Peter grunted at them.  It was really pelting now and he was getting wet, that was it, these two had now ruined his night, the last time he’d ever want to come back to bloody Aberdeen!

Thirteen years later when I bumped into him at Panopticon I thought I’d enquire how he ended up with a cut above his eye.  He wasn’t too happy about that either!  In retrospect, if I could travel back in time I would go back and ask myself at seventeen years old how I would fancy giving up my lunch break for a two hour interview of 60 questions!  I don’t think I would either but I was so naïve back then!  If you ever read this Peter, I’m sorry, I’m really truly so, so, sorry!

MATTHEW WATERHOUSE

When I was growing up I thought Adric was great and I could understand a lot of his naivety and if you mentioned that to older Doctor Who fans you were shot down.  I truly believe that a lot of fans were put out that not only did a fan get to work on the series in such a capacity, what made it worse for them was that Adric was almost like a mirror image of themselves, awkward, a bit of a know all and would always say the wrong thing at the wrong time, a bit like me I guess.  I still think Matthew did a great job and while you could see the Doctor and Adric work really well together in Keeper of Traken, he always seemed a bit of an outsider when Peter came along which made great TV for an eleven year old watching and I was truly very upset when he met his demise.

There’s a photo further down of the season 19 cast and at that time I was still hoping for a photo of Matthew with me on our own, when it came to it however, they put Janet and Sarah in as well.  Now you have to admit, if I’d have turned around to Janet and Sarah and told them, “Sorry girls, I only want Matthew, it might have looked a bit odd and in the end I was delighted to play the Peter Davison part of the season 19 crew.

SARAH SUTTON

I remember the Peter Davison panel back in 1987 when Peter had a couple of questions asked and so did Janet and so I put my hand up to ask Sarah something but then someone asked my question!  What do you do when the mike is turned on you, then you have to think of another quick question.  The question you ask, “Did you get paid for not appearing in part 2 & 3 of Kinda”!?!  I wanted the ground to swallow me up as the worst question that I’ve asked at a convention ever and surely a contender for the worst question ever asked.  She wasn’t too happy either which is unusual for Sarah as she’s always positive and happy.

JANET FIELDING

 

You might have notice that I’m a big fan of Janet.  Back in 1981, as an elven year old I told Jaclyn Smith from Charlie’s Angels that we were finished as I wanted to lust after someone else now and that was Janet.  I wanted to nip around to her house, knock on the door; invite her out on my skateboard, take her out for a no-expense’s spared meal at Wimpy and treat her to a Cheese-Burger and fries!

The night Janet left Doctor Who I cried like a baby, she was brilliant. 

The one thing I’ve realised about Janet is that while she’s not always been happy with the attention that the role has brought her she’s never held back on ambition.

I really admire her for her work as an actor’s agent, working for the women’s guild and her charity work with Project Motormouth.  She sent me a lovely letter when I was unable to attend one of her events and wished my family and I well for our future plans towards a Guest House in the Scottish highlands.

Her views on equal opportunities for women I genuinely find interesting because while I am, for a better word, a bloke, I have a daughter whose 13, who I’ve brought up playing football, hating Barbie Dolls, enjoying Alien (Yes, I know it’s an 18 but it has a proper female hero for her to look up to) and I’ve never, ever called her ‘Princess’.  She want’s to be a Dentist when she’s older.  I think she enjoys pulling teeth out.  A lot in common with Janet then!

I love watching Enlightenment with Tegan and Mariner.  When I watch it, I remember that puppy love affection that I had for Tegan and like me at 12, Mariner, you’ve got no chance mate! 

When I last met Janet in Newcastle I asked if she’d ever consider writing her own autobiography for Project Motormouth which I was sure would sell very well, it didn’t go down well and Janet does not suffer fools gladly and I think I was a bit of a fool that day, still, if the wife and I ever get around to opening her Guest House in the Scottish Highlands she my top nomination to cut the red ribbon!

THE SEASON 19 CAST

I’m sure if I’d of suggested that we all put on our season 19 costumes they’d of jmped at the chance!

DAVID BANKS

Jon Pertwee wasn’t the only one in 1989 trying to hide from the Doctor Who fans outside the theatre in the Ultimate Adventure.  Being David Banks isn’t easy when you over 6 feet tall however.

THE SEASON 20 CAST

MAYA WOOLFE

Maya was fantastic.  At the time I was attending a local group and I thought it would be great to interview the group members for the group fanzine.  The leader thought it was a terrible idea and I went away thinking where do I get an interview?

I noticed that in the local theatre there was a production of ‘A Bedfull of Foreigner’s’ on at the local theatre and I noticed the name Maya Woolf who was in the Arc of Infinity for episodes 1 & 4.  I wrote her questions for an interview which she did and wrote back with the answers, she gave me the letter back asking for me to come to the stage door.

When I arrived, the lead actress in the production was a Scottish actress called Una McLean (Wife of Russell Hunter).  She arrived on the night and she made the mistake of thinking I was there for her and thought I was after her autograph which was terribly embarrassing.  She gave Maya a shout and I was blown away with this woman, wow!  She said that she would have been far happier doing an audio interview in the dressing room verbally and it was thanks to her that it led me on to meet Frazer Hines a month later.  Thanks Maya.  It was only years later that I realised that she’d done great TV series such as Tenko and Auf Wiedersien Pet.

MARK STRICKSON
   

In this short life that we have on this planet one man that I really admire is Mark Strickson.  He’s wasted no time in looking at his life and going on one hell of a fantastic journey doing all his wildlife films, what a guy.

He’s one of these actors that took me ages to finally have a photo with him.  The first time I met him was literally bumping into him outside the Palace Hotel in Manchester.  That bit where you go, Wow, Turlough bumped into me, doesn’t happen every day in Aberdeen.

I never got a photo then in 2013 I went to Newcastle and then Milton Keynes to get him but as he explained to me a year later when I caught up with him in Hoylake in 2014, there was a delay on the flight.

As I said, topper of a bloke, great crack at a convention.



ERIC SAWARD

Meeting Eric was a great honour.  When you're gowing up one week watching the Visitation followed by Earthshock you know this man's special.  It was a great shame how it all ended.  I think Eric should have left at the end of season 21, the business that followed later with Starburst was not good, as a writer he should have gone on to better things.

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

Valentine Dyall joined the regulars in season 20 and spent 3 stories making Mark Strickson do pain acting which he was very good at.  He attended Longleat back in 1983 which was an event every Scottish thirteen year old wanted to attend but couldn’t.

Gerald Flood like Valentine did a convention back in 1986 at Panopticon along with all the other Davison era and can be viewed on U-Tube.  With such a strong panel, sadly he did not get asked too many questions but I bet a number of fans were like me were sad to miss out on an opportunity of a photo.

John Gillett I managed to interview, great bloke with a very deep voice.  He told me about the trouble breathing in the costume where they had tubes running down it to give him air and stop him collapsing.  Even now, having interviewed him, I still can’t picture him in my mind, missed opportunity there.

THE COLIN BAKER YEARS

COLIN BAKER

 

Things should have been so different for Colin when he got the job of Doctor Who.  I’m not going into all the politics of that era in fandom where you were meant to be either for or against.  I’m still a believer that you stick with a programme through thick and thin.  It must have been heart wrenching for him to have the role taken off him.  Then again, it least he played the role, I remember reading that Ron Moody (Fagin in Oliver) once said that the biggest mistake he ever made in his career was turning the part down.  

When I think of Colin funnily enough I think of 1987, a year after he left.  Some fans were in uproar that he didn’t do a regeneration story but in layman’s terms to an actor this meant one month’s work.  What they failed to realise in my opinion was that he was offered and took 6 months work, he would have lost that had he went ahead and done it, in doing so he had a very successful run doing the stage play, ‘The Corpse’.

What really bowled me over however were the events going on at Panopticon that year which he attended, five days after the first episode of Sylvester McCoy debut went out:  Colin came bounding down the stairs of the Imperial College lecture theatre to a standing ovation.  I’m sure that there were a few of the Anti-Brigade who joined in the applause that he deserved out of respect, his ousting was universally agreed to be an appalling act of misjudgement by the BBC.

Out of the 1000 fans that were there cheering, you could hear a couple of them booing who were drowned out as they tried to make their political point which was all it was.  It’s great isn’t it, is it normal that in life, if someone is made redundant they get booed at, some people need a reality check they really do.

It must have taken a lot of guts for the man to show up to this event where a lesser man would have wanted to turn their back on the whole affair and have no more to do with it.

One of the funniest things I remember about Colin was at a panel that he did in Newcastle after his stint in the jungle in ‘I’m a Celebrity’.  The very first thing he asked was, “Did you vote to keep me in for ‘I’m a Celebrity”?  “Yes”, I replied proudly.

“Bastard”, he said! 

I do not think Colin was a big fan of eating beans and rice on a daily basis under an Australian sky when some of his other campmates stayed at a 5 star hotel eating masses of food and drink!

While I was perhaps, not the biggest fan of his era on television; it’s nice that for just once, thanks to Big Finish that history can be rewritten.  A number of fans including me can be proved that we were wrong, given the right material we get a glimpse at what the world could have had if he’d be been given a bit more love.  To rattle off just a few, I loved Spectre on Lanyon Moor, Marian Conspiracy, Bloodtide, Jubilee, Davros and my own personal favourite The Holy Terror.

NICOLA BRYANT

 

My very first question I ever asked at a convention was to Nicola Bryant in 1987, I thought I’d ask the funniest question ever that would have everyone laughing.  What was the question I asked Nicola, “Is it true that you are actually married and if you’re not, will you marry me”!

Well I got a good laugh with it and Nicola showed off her wedding ring to prove that she was indeed married though she never did answer the second half of my question.  As I sat back smugly thinking that I’d asked the best question for the weekend the smile was wiped off my face with the next one.

“Nicola, will you take your clothes off for charity”!

Suffice as to say that the whole hall exploded into an almighty laughter, claps and cheers and Nicola even started taking her jacket off which was swiftly followed by flashes of camera going off all around me!

Sadly, the next time I met Nicola was in 2000 and alas she was not well and walked with the aid of a walking stick which was quite distressing to see for someone so young.  I’m glad to say that since then she’s a lot of better and still wowing the fans at conventions.

I once met Nicola in 2015 where I talked to her about events in 1987 at the Imperial College and my proposal, she even remembered, so it just goes to show, I'm still in with a shout if the current Misses decides to get shot of me!

In 2016 I mentioned to Nicola that the family hallway is littered with photographs of myself with female companions over the years to which my wife refers to them affectionately as 'Doctor Who Slappers' which is why Nicola decided to live up to the image in the last photo just to annoy her!

While I remember, don't ever ask Nicola, "Is 'The Caves of Androzani' your favourite story" in front of Colin, it all kicked off!

TERRY MOLLOY

Another great character, Terry’s great at just putting the Davros voice on and going for a rant.  That could come in handy when you’re waiting at the bar.  When we were on our way to a convention in London we visited the garage location that Terry filmed at for Attack of the Cybermen which was great, the owner of the house showed us this famous garage and we took some snaps.

The junkyard was around the corner but the owner there didn’t seem convinced that we wanted to view the junkyard because Doctor Who filmed there.  He looked like someone from the Sweeney!

KATE O’MARA

1986, 2000 & 2007!

Let me explain, in 1986 a production of the Cherry Orchard rolled into town with Kate O’Mara and John Gillet (The Gravis) in the cast.  Eager to do interviews I sent a couple of letters out to ask if they would like me to interview them.  John Gillet said yes but there was nothing from Kate.

The day of the interviews arrived and I waited for my mate Ian to turn up at the theatre and while waiting bumped into Kate.  She was gorgeous and signed something for me but I was still chicken to ask the question, would she do the interview?

Anyway, she went in and my mate Ian turned up and we went away to do the interview with John Gillet.  Job done, we came out and passed Kate’s dressing room.  A once in a lifetime chance to interview her, what the hell, we thought, let’s knock on her door!

The door opened and there she was in what I can only say was a very revealing dressing gown, was she happy to see us, not exactly!

“What are you doing here, who let you in, what do you want”, she boomed?

Now please remember, two sixteen year’s olds being confronted by a very strong woman in that dressing gown, the hearts were pounding as was everything else in out bodies, well we turned to mush didn’t we!

“We wondered if you wanted to be interviewed”, we mumbled!

She didn’t.  I don’t know if she thought we were some sort of Paparazzi.  It was true of course.  We did indeed want to know about all the dirt, one of our questions, question 3 I think was specifically about this very subject, “How muddy was it in Park Wood, Middlesex filming Mark of the Rani”?

“Sorry”, we said and scarpered for it!  That night we went back to Ian’s waiting for the Police Siren’s over an alleged attempted sex attack where we were being hunted down.

Fourteen years later I met Kate again for a photo studio in Manchester but did not breathe a word to her about that ‘Incident’.

Nine years after that in 2007 she was up in Aberdeen again for another play.  May I also just say that to me, hand on heart, I think Kate O’Mara was one of the most hard working actress that I think I’ve met because she must hold the record for the amount of times she visited Aberdeen in a theatre productions over the years.

I wrote her a letter apologising for the incident twenty-four years on.  As the week went on I felt unwell and was off my work for a day.  While sleeping I was awoken by a phone call from the one and only Kate O’Mara who was brilliant, she apologized for her behaviour and explained that she’d been going through a rough patch herself after Dynasty and she wished my family and I a good life.

That’s the only time in my life that I’ve ever been called by someone famous and the fact that it was her made it feel right.  She’s had a tough time over her latter years, I miss her loads  but she was one hell of a gutsy lady and sadly missed.



JACQUELINE PEARCE

A lady that I can honestly say as gotten hotter by age, I grew up on Blake's 7 so it's difficult trying not to bow down to 'Madam President'.

PAUL DARROW

Paul did some theatre once in Aberdeen and I was all set with my incredibly expensive camera to get a photo with him, but would that camera work, no it wouldn’t.  As Paul said to me when I walked away minus a photo, “Crap camera”!

When I went to see him at Hoylake he was being interviewed for a panel on his own and I felt so sorry for the interviewer.  I think Paul really wanted that stage to himself and was having great fun with his stand up routine that he made mincemeat of the interviewer.  Even Jeremy Paxman would not have dared to stop Avon.

COLIN SPAULL

Acting is a funny old game, in Revelation of the Daleks/Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel Colin is pretty unpleasant in both and yet he’s such a nice guy in real life.

THE DOCTOR’S STATUE & THE MASTER’S TARDIS

I’d love to say that this is me in my Back Garden, but it’s not.  Happy memories of the sixth Doctor’s era courtesy of Panopticon VIII, I think they auctioned them off at the end, though you had to take them with you before you left, must have been a big boot in the car that took this lot!

TONY SELBY

I only met Tony once but what impressed me about him was that he spoke from his heart.  He was bitterly disappointed with what happened with Colin when he was on the panel and was not scared to take on questions from the audience that were against John Nathan-Turner and defend him.

He put the blame firmly at the feet of the BBC over their lack of belief in the show, I still remember  some of his words, “The BBC are capitulating to I believe, Norman Tebbit and JNT fought tooth and nail to save Doctor Who”!

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

Anthony did a lot of conventions and was always a popular guest, sadly I missed them all.  

Michael Jayston is an actor who again enjoys these events so I do hope to catch up with him at some point.

Lynda Bellingham has only recently passed away from the dreadful disease of cancer that has claimed so many in the Doctor Who family.

John Nathan Turner is someone that always creates a bit of controversy in fandom and yet I know, deep in my heart that I owe him so much for my own enjoyment of fandom.

I missed a photo opportunity with him in 2000 which I regretted, I briefly met him in a bar in Manchester at the Palace Hotel (Steven Moffatt was there as well getting hassled by a female fan of Coupling which had started a few months earlier!) and that was that.

In the mid-eighties while trying to impress fellow Doctor Who fans with recent archive Doctor Who episodes that we’d recently gained on VHS my friend David and I told a porker of a lie to someone that we’d visited JNT’s cottage, both at the age of 15 and obtained these Doctor Who episode tapes which was an utter, utter lie.  The truth came out later when the fan that we told wrote a letter to JNT asking if this was true which JNT replied!  He told this fan that of course we’d made it up but he was very interested in learning how we got all these old Doctor Who episodes.  This is a great example of how naïve at fifteen I was and also when Richard Marson’s book came out years later it made it all the more embarrassing.  So a lesson learned, don’t try to impress your mates unless it’s true.

His job as producer started when I started so when you get ‘JNT’ bashing I just remember the good times, State of Decay, Logopolis, Kinda, Earthshock, Enlightenment, Frontios, Caves of Androzani, Revelation of the Daleks, Remembarence of the Daleks, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy and Curse of Fenric to name a few for me.  They weren’t all perfect, he made plenty of mistakes, he was human like us all.

Having read the book on his life, some of it did leave me disappointed, let down shall we say,  just as reading the bits about fandom in it made me feel equally let down.  I’ll admit, I do wish that he’d moved on at the end of season 21 to give another producer the chance to take Colin Baker in a different route than originally planned.  However, when I say this I’m not saying it for my sake; or fandom’s sake; but for JNT’s own health and career.  I think he could have done very well given different challenges.

I got fed up with certain sections of fandom saying that he was trying to kill off Doctor Who, did they really think he got up in the morning to go to work and do that?  He tried to sell Doctor Who abroad and to a degree he succeeded but at the end of it, that wasn’t his job to do that but he did it anyway.  At the end of it Doctor Who killed him.

If you wanted to blame someone, look towards his BBC Bosses.  I spoke with Margot Hayhoe, a lady who worked as an Assistant Floor Manager for many years and worked under many Doctor Who producers and I thought that she said it brilliantly about JNT that he was ‘The Best Entertainment Producer that the BBC never had’.  The BBC bosses are the ones that should have moved him on and actively looked for someone else.

He had a greater area of expertise in entertainment rather than drama and it’s a shame that no one recognised him for this.  That said, he still produced some brilliant stories which no one can take that away from him.

THE SYLVESTER MCCOY YEARS

SYLVESTER MCCOY

The only Doctor from Doctor Who that lived up in my town, Aberdeen for 4 years when he was a lot younger studying to be a Priest up at Blair’s College which isn’t too far from my house.

While he was up in Aberdeen he stayed in Cults.  It’s not as scary as it might sound, Cults is quite a posh area in Aberdeen and I only found that out while standing at a urinal, very drunk, doing the business while Sylvester was at another urinal probably not as drunk, doing his business  speaking about Aberdeen while at a convention in Manchester on a Saturday night. 

It’s amazing isn’t it, no one ever asks me, have you ever had a pee at a Urinal next to anyone famous and I’m dying to say, “Yes I have, a Time Lord from Gallifrey”.

Sylvester is a great bloke.  When I did a convention in Newcastle over a weekend he flew in overnight from Miami, did the convention and when he did his signing at around 3.30 pm the poor guy was practically nodding off but determined to carry on and be there on the day.  That’s dedication for you.

Mad as a hatter but the world needs far more mad hatters than sane people please.

PETER TUDDENHAM

A man of many voices, I met him back in 1988 at a Blake Seven convention where he was the compere.  He did all his Blake Seven voices together and made a great compere.

BONNIE LANGFORD

You know in the late eighties there was a dark time in fandom where if it was new Doctor Who that you had to hate it and one of the most controversial castings was Bonnie Langford.  To fandom this was unthinkable and blasphemed the laws of fandom.  This was of course, wrong.  Always get behind and support you're team, even if you don't always agree.

I live to wave the flag in support of the vulnerable, the minority, for me there’s no bad Doctor Who and I really like Mel.  You have to give a big hand to Big Finish again who can cast there minds back over work that was not fully developed in the series and improve on it.  To actually go out, change people’s minds and prove to them that there wrong.

The quality shows through.  I thought her first story on audio, Fires of Vulcan was brilliant.  The great thing with Bonnie over the years is that she’s a tough cookie, she must of put up with so much crap and yet she’s still standing while others have fallen, she still getting great roles in the theatre and is so focussed on stretching herself (And body!), she still a big headlining draw at the Box Office.  I'm pleased that she's got Eastenders to show what else she can do.  If you think Bonnie is squeaky clean think again, head down the page to Nina Wadia in the Eleventh Doctor section to know that she can shock which is great.

Now I’d been chasing after Bonnie for a number of years and finally caught up with her in Manchester but missed my photo opportunity then.  I told her that it took me 14 years to finally track her down and she remembered like I did, 14 years previously the convention had been held at the Palace Hotel and that she was expecting her first baby.  So it was good chin-wag about babies and kids growing up so quickly.

She told me that her daughter had been looking around the event wearing a kilt (When in Scotland).  She also gave out some great advice to a young budding actor at the event that impressed the Mrs who was with me as well, great day.

TONY OSOBA

Another actor that I wish I'd had a proper blether with, while he enjoyed talking about Doctor Who in his panel, you could tell that his most passion was for appearing in Porridge and the actors that he was privileged to work with.  He was genuinely upset when his character missed an episode.

SHIRIN TAYLOR

You know, Shirin is a great flirt and when you meet an actress that's a great flirt as a middle-aged balding bloke with a belly it's great.  Shirin was great crack, lovely lady.

SOPHIE ALDRED

 

I remember walking past Sophie Aldred for the first time in 1987 not knowing who she was at the Imperial College before Dragonfire had been shown and you could just tell there was something special with this girl.

Where as Jamie and Leela carried Knives and Janus Thorns, this girl carried explosives and a baseball bat and she wasn’t taking any prisoners bilgebag!

When you watched her and Sylvester in Rememberance of the Daleks, it just felt like two years of hurt being put behind fandom with a cracker of a story that everyone praised.  These two just bounced of each other.  You can get great partnerships, and then you can get a partnership where one was left and the other right and they knew what they were doing.  I saw some footage not so long ago of her and Sylvester at a convention and as soon as they ran on to the panel, one went flying under a table being chased by the other and would come out the other end only to be dragged back in again, great stuff.

Sophie took that teenage role and it’s great to see, even today, female fans enjoy dressing up as Ace.  If teenagers didn’t look like Ace in the late eighties, they certainly did after the eighties.

Yet there’s some sadness.  I watched as Sophie recalled at a BFI event from 2013 that she felt that her era wasn’t as well loved as others which made me so angry.  Doctor Who fandom should be always united and get behind which ever team is running the show, good or bad, that’s what a fan should be.  You go through good and bad together.  Andrew Cartmel said that the BBC hated them, the audience hated them and the fans hated them, where else can you go with an answer like that if no one offers the hand of friendship?

Doctor Who was cancelled in 1989 but one of the best things to come out of it was that Sylvester, Sophie, JNT, Andrew and the rest of the production team made sure that it went down fighting all the way and held it's head high with pride.

Sophie recently made a trip to Aberdeen which touched my heart.

When I turned up with my kilt, whisk, sink plunger, head torch and baseball bat, there was no conversations with the photographer as to how we were to pose, you could tell from this classy lady she knew exactly what to do!

PAMELA SALEM & KAREN GLEDHILL

You know, you meet two gorgeous ladies that also happened to be in Remembrance of the Daleks, you think it will be a great shot and then this happens, Oh dear, not the best shot!

Still they were delightful and so friendly.



THE GREATEST SHOW IN THE GALAXY

There must of been such a relaxed vibe on the making of this story as the banter meeting these guys was immense.  I'm disappointed in fact that when the photo was taken that I wish I'd gotten Robin, the photographer to add a bit of humour.  Chris Jury is a Scouser so he wound me up about being a Jock so I think it would have been great if the photo had shown us all kicking off with Chris and me shouting obscenities at each other with Jessica Martin jumping on his back to pull him off, Sophie Aldred pulling my leg bag, Stephen Wyatt trying to talk me down while Mark Ayres would stand in the middle oblivious to what's going on around him. There's always next year!



MARCUS GILBERT

You have to hand it to the lad, he looks good for his years!  He's a silver fox, without being silver, when I grow up I hope I look like him!

He was telling me that as a young actor he did his rep Theatre up in in Dundee which impressed me as it's just down the road.

IAN BRIGGS

I did have a better photo of Ian Briggs but I thought I’d publish the one from Liverpool where he was asking Terrance Dicks and Steve Gallagher if could become part of the ‘E-Space Writer Gang’ with the unmade season 27 story, ‘The Evil of the Return Back to E-Space through Time’.  I think we all preferred Curse of Fenric myself.

Still they were delightful and so friendly.

MARC PLATT

Marc Platt, I never got to tell him how much I enjoyed Spare Parts for Big Finish, a great weepy that made the Tenth Planet an even better story than it originally was.  I still don’t get Ghostlight but it doesn’t matter because it’s brilliant.

CARL FORGIONE

This was in Liverpool, do you know when you’re that shy that you daren’t ask an actor for a photo with them.  There was no holding back Carl who at a click of his fingers reprised the role of Nimrod for me.  He was ace, sadly missed.

SHARON DUCE

There was an excellent turn out of actors for Ghostlight in Liverpool and Sharon certainly enjoyed the challenge of the part of Light.  I like many was a big fan of her in Big Deal.

MICHAEL COCHRANE

It was a great thrill to meet Michael who I remembered when I was very young being in the BBC serial ‘Wings’

LISA BOWERMAN

The multi-talented Lisa Bowerman, I bought a couple of CD’s from her and was insistent that she signed them, you know me, I was just delighted to get me photo with her and I was all smiles.

THE SEVENTH DOCTOR COMPANIONS (Kind off...)

You begin to feel a bit like James Bond after a while!

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

CHRISTOPHER H BIDMEAD, ERIC SAWARD & ANDREW CARTMEL

Okay, I’m cheating again.  Only one of these gentlemen partook in the McCoy era. 

I was graced with being able to make one of the Panels at Panopticon 2003 in Manchester where I’d spent the whole weekend in the Photo studio.  Sadly JNT had passed away not long after I’d seen him 3 years previous so it was a fascinating panel with them all paying their tribute in their own way.

I was a fan at the very start of the eighties so that teenage, Jean Michel Jarre, black t-shirt wearing youth with spots on the way was ideal fodder for Chris Bidmead’s ideas when he arrived for Tom’s final season and I loved it.

Funnily enough while Eric struggled to find new writers Andrew Cartmel has no such trouble and re-invigorated the programme, bringing in those writers, what I like was that despite only 12 stories to the era, writers like Ben Aaranovitch, Stephen Wyatt & Ian Briggs would get two cracks of the whip at stories.  While Battlefield, Paradise Towers and Dragonfire were okay stories they would come back to make even better stories Remembrance of the Daleks, The Great Show in the Galaxy and Curse of Fenric (I know, I know what your thinking but Ben wrote Battlefield before Remembrance first, so Remembrance was in a way his second story, kind off!).

I must off watched ‘Survival’ about 3 or 4 times in between 1989 and 2005.  I try to watch a couple of episodes a week, sometimes I watch them from An Unearthly Child to Survival in order or to shake it up a fan poll order such as Twin Dilemna (Sorry Colin) to Caves of Androzani (Don’t mention it Peter).

Everytime I watched between those 16 years I would always sob at the end of Survival.  It was Cartmel’s words, the music, Sylvester’s delivery, despite a TV movie there was always hope but when you watched that ending Andrew finished it beautifully.

THE PAUL MCGANN YEARS

PAUL MCGANN

I can now definetly call this ‘The Paul McGann years’, through books, comics audio and finally TV, the eighth Doctor’s adventures have a beginning and an end.  It would have been magic if every easter bank holiday we could get an eighth Doctor adventure on the telly once a year.  Twenty years would do for a twenty-two story era, he was great wasn’t he and he flew the flag for those audio adventures proudly as he met his demise.

I was so excited when Paul did his first convention.  Like so many previous Doctor’s Paul benefitted from Big Finish to which I bought his first couple of seasons and the odd story since.  Family life has curtailed my many joys in the Who universe with Big Finish as well as work.

I remember one Thursday at work feeling very bored and doing what I normally did at lunchtime, eating my apple and surfing the internet looking for something exciting.  When I followed an intriguing link to see the televisual re-birth of the eighth Doctor to my surprise, he was magnificent wasn’t he.  Like Jimi Hendrix plays his electric guitar or Bob Holmes picks up his pipe to have a smoke and types away on his typewriter his next classic story, Paul McGann shone bright as we clamoured for more and then the unthinkable happened, the Doctor died, long live the Doctor.

As I explained to Paul less than a week later at Milton Keynes when I met him, my work colleagues looked up at me as my eyes were filled with tears, “What the matter”, they asked?  I replied, “A death in the Family” I said.

DAPHNE ASHBROOK

I'd been chasing after Daphne Ashbrook for years and you know what, it was so worth it.  She was adorable and I could have listened to her for hours.

When I met her I gave her a Scottish Tunnock's Teacake which she loved, right behind me was a worker from Scotland who also co-incidentally worked at Tunnock Teacake's took a photo of Daphne eating it.

Regarding the photo, sadly I don't have it and if I did all I can say about it is that if I had to give it a cinema rating it would definitely be an 18 with lots of tongue action!     

YEE JEE TSO

Yee Tee was across promoting his impressive book of photos that were taken behind the scenes which looked great.  There Both Daphne and himself are keen to reprise their roles on audio.



ERIC ROBERTS

You know with some people you hear all sorts of things that ‘you’ve got to be careful with him’ ,they say. 

Eric was a topper of a bloke, really friendly.  I must admit I was pretty terrifed when it came to the shoot as I was unsure what the hell he was doing but it came out fine, very different from the norm and I always like different.

EMMA CAMPBELL-JONES

You know, many ladies that have been assistants to the good doctor have been described in the past (Unfairly if you ask me) as ‘being their for the Dad’s’

It’s an unusual expression, ‘Being there for the Dad’s’.  Polly, Leela and Peri would all fit into these categories I guess.  Of course when I was watching these ladies I wasn’t even born for Polly, I was a seven year old nipper for Leela and a teenage lad for Peri.

So where does Cass fit into all of this.  We’ll I guess I have to carry on the grand old tradition that was set by the fathers before.  I don’t want to say that Cass was just there for the Dad’s but I have to confess, when you meet Emma for the first time, she just takes your breath away. 

I noticed that all my fellow middle aged blokes like myself where getting their photos taken with Emma putting her hand on their bellies or chests.  This does wonders for our ego’s in that we can convince ourselves that we still have it (Even though we never did), ‘Crikey’, I thought, would I be chest or belly?

I was belly!  Unfortunately the photographer went in closer and missed it in the photo, bugger!  

Mind you, as pretty as Emma is, I’ve still got my lovely wife.  What does she think about our hallway being flooded with around thirty photos of me with women, with my arms around them all who she has never met, well she has a very special word for them all that I won’t repeat here.

THE CHRISTOPHER ECCLESTON YEARS

CHRISTOPHER ECCLESTON

One night after I had written the umpteenth letter to Chris asking him to come to a convention I lazily stuck into my search engine Eccleston theatre and to my utter, utter amazement, "An Audience With Christopher Eccleton" came up.  I thought I would have no chance of a photo and went to sleep that night unable to sleep.  To sort this I went back down stairs at 2 in the morning and booked my tickets thinking how I could get to somewhere out in the back of beyond.

The man was a mystery, an enigma, intensely private, all I wanted was a photo.

When was a convention, not a convention? 

This was a unique event to say the least.  Christopher Eccleston did not approve of fan's being fleeced, even though some fans might not mind being fleeced.

Arriving at the event at 11am there was not a soul about  apart from a few ducks.  That changed as time marched on, regular Who fans, convention organizers all turned up and someone took the sensible move of organizing fans into an orderly queue.

Time marched on and no Chris so we all headed inside and then he was.

Full credit to the crowd, there were hardly any Who questions though everyone was so tempted, one guy asked if he had a Doctor Who figure to which he did.

There was a mighty sigh of relief when he said that he would do signings.  In desperation thinking I would not get my photo I took one with just my finger and him on stage (Terrible but I was desparate).  Some guy that I met in randomly in a queue, Dave Bullock from Crew agreed that if I got him a spare autograph he would give me my prized photo and boy he did just that.  That really touched me that day and it was near the end of the day when it was taken, I just managed to squeeze through having travelled 500 miles to be there and in one of the photo's there is a definite tear in my eye at the occasion which I though would never, ever happen.

I think Chris came away with something from the event and I hope he does more events like these as a way of interacting with his audience.

BILLIE PIPER

She got so much stick when she was cast for being a pop singer.  It never bothered me because I watched her several months earlier in The Canterbury Tales with Dennis Waterman and James Nesbitt which I thought she was brilliant in so I knew she could act.

The rest is history and she’s gone on to have an extraordinary acting career.  You’re never sure what to make of all the press and the things that you read in the paper so it’s extraordinary meeting someone that’s found herself featured heavily in these newspapers over the years. 

What did I make of her was, what an incredibly down to earth, funny and incredibly warm hearted woman she was.  Having seen her over the years some of those ‘glam’ shots of her in dresses or not much else on, I think and believe that she’s at her happiest when she’s in an old an pair of jeans and jumper and just enjoys being chilled out.  This always seems to be something that the press pick on her for and I’m glad that she doesn’t take the slightest bit of notice.

She’s embraced fandom and flies the flag very well and has been a great Ambassador for the show.

The convention that I was at when I met her, I swear that if they’d had a competition for the best Rose Tyler look alike, Billie Piper would have come fifth!  It was uncanny the amount of look-a-like Rose Tyler’s that were there.

I think she was a big influence for more female fans getting into Doctor Who which can only be a good thing.

CAMILLE CODURI

Camille Coduri was just the biggest bundle of fun.  What you see is what you get and I love honesty, good or bad and she's so good.  That particular day I wanted to take down to Manchester where I met something from Scotland so I went with Scottish Shortbread and when it came to the photo she told me that she was starving and eat everything in the packet which was a laugh.

She was a fantastic actress in Doctor Who where you could easily typecast Jackie Tyler as a desperate man-eating single mother but Camille gave her character great heart which I don't mind saying left me with the odd tear in my eye, particularly with 'Father's Day' and 'Love and Monsters'.  

NOEL CLARKE

You’re asking, what are Noel Clarke and I doing on a night-out?  Okay, I agree, it look’s nothing like a night out.

Well you see what happened is this, I think anyone that‘s been in one of my top 5 TV programmes are ‘amazing’, Noel was great at Mickey Smith.  However, anyone that’s been a regular in two of my favourite top 5 TV programme’s, well their still waiting to make a name up for that!  I am an enormous fan of Dennis, Neville, Oz, Bomber, Wayne, Moxey, Barry and yes Wyman Norris in Auf Wiedersehen Pet so I thought I’d bring along a couple of bottles of beer to do  sort of ‘Why Aye Man’ Auf Pet pose.

I don’t think Noel quite got it and thought I was off my trolley (May be he’s got a point).

As for the man himself, Noel, well he’s on his way to becoming a living legend.  In the old series, Frazer Hines was an old smoothie with the ladies, well Frazer, get ready to hand the crown over.

Noel Clarke had tonnes of ladies old and young eating out of his hand and boy could this guy entertain and keep a crowd laughing and wanting more.  He was courteous and willing to play along with everyone. 

It’s funny you know, you’re tempted to call Billie and Noel new at this game but when you add it all up, how the years go so very quick.

EVE MYLES

You know, when you’ve done these photo things for a little while you think that you’ve gotten used to them and then you make a complete idiot of yourself, the biggest mistake.

Everyone loves Eve, she quite simply one of the funniest women that I’ve ever met and I certainly wouldn’t want to spill a pint of beer over her in a pub as I’m sure that she’ll have a great right hook.  She totally wicked!

Anyway, there I was at a convention with my daughter Kate.  This was a Saturday, the day before on Friday I woke my daughter up at 5 in the morning to tell her that she wasn’t going to school that day in Aberdeen.  Instead she was jumping on a plane to go to Birmingham to meet her favourites like David Tennant, Billie Piper, Gareth David-Lloyd and her favourite, Eve Myles.

Gwen Cooper is one of Kate’s favourite characters.  That’s a great role model for impressionable ten year old if they want her to learn later in life how to beat people up and shoot things!  As we were waiting in queue I could tell that she was a bit nervous and tried to reassure her that everything would be fine, Eve was brilliant with her, just brilliant.  The trouble was that it went that well and I got caught up in the moment that Kate had gotten on with it brilliantly that I was that relieved that I went to pieces myself , I was that happy that I touched Eve Myles stomach!

Gentleman, if there’s one thing that you should learn here; when you’re getting your photo taken with a female, don’t touch their stomachs!  It’s not polite, it’s not nice and it’s not clever, it makes the woman look as if she’s expecting (Which she wasn’t, just to clear that up).  You can tell by Eve’s face that she’s not happy and I think she let me off after I burbled that it was my daughter over there or she might have given me a good kicking.  Oh dead, never mind!

If the ladies want to touch the male stomachs, well that’s fine, well that’s different but no, no to the blokes touching the females, okay.  I guess I should apologize if I meet her again but will that make me look really odd, probably, either way, I made sure that the next time we met I got another one.

ANNETTE BADLAND

Annette Badland was great crack, well up for a laugh.  In her first story, Aliens of London I asked her if to get into their parts, the actor’s that were playing the Slitheen in human form all went out for a Chicken Vindaloo the night before they filmed all their ‘Fart’ Acting at Downing Street which made her laugh.

I also told her how impressed I was with her in Boomtown having to run up and down on location in high heels (Not that I’ve tried that I might add).  She was telling me that they made her do it again, and again and again.

Her feet were a bit tender that night.

She certainly delivered in that first story and Annette deserved to come back in Boomtown.  That restaurant scene in Boomtown where she and Chris bounced off each other is great isn’t it.  It goes from comedy to sadness, definitely the ninth Doctor’s favourite villain in my eyes.

JOHN BARROWMAN

Well what can you say about Mr Showbiz?   The queue was very, very long.  Mr Barrowman was happy to put on whatever pose that you wanted.

There were 3 blokes in front of me that wanted great big bear hugs, by the time I turned up, John took one look at me and realised that I did not want a Bear Hug!

He was a great entertainer though.

At one point during the event I did spot him applying Hand Sanitizing Spray which I guess you can understand,  Shaking lots of hands over the wekend and then going off to work with flu cannot be great.

Just before he appeared he'd popped on twitter some photos of him with his hair going grey which I thought suited him.  Go for it John, be a silver fox..

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

You know, I’m jealous.  When I was growing up I bought the Radio Times 20^th Special and it had a two page article on DWAS, the Doctor Who fan club.  There was a picture of the hierarchy of fandom back then and I thought, that’s what I want to do when I grow up.

I didn’t write books like Gary Russell, I didn’t write music like Mark Ayres, I didn’t do prosthetic make-up like Neill Gorton, I did not write a script like Andrew Smith, I was not a Sontaran like Dan Starkey, I couldn’t make audio stories like Nick Briggs, I didn’t become a Doctor like Peter Capaldi and I didn’t become a show-runner like Russell T Davies.

The difference is that while at the age of sixteen, I told my careers teacher that I wanted to become a television producer, unlike the above names, they kept going and I stopped, that’s the difference.

You know, call it jealousy which it is, it can’t be anything else but I don’t want to really have my photo alongside these fans in some respect (Though just to be a complete hypocrite I will obviously).  The reason is that it goes back to that photo, DWAS, the fan club back in the eighties, when we were all spotty, no girlfriend (Or boyfriends!) and that’s kind of how I still see them as if were all still members of a local group and they all made it and I didn’t, I didn’t swim hard enough.

Then again in some strange ways with the problems that they have in their lives may be they have some days that they wished they lived in Aberdeen selling Hydraulic Seals for a living, may be not.  Russell you’ve done well for yourself lad, very well done.  Be proud, you’ve made the world a happy place again back in 2005.

I kind of feel sorry for Bruno Langley, a ninth Doctor companion in my eyes and yet one that was doomed to fail in that role as a companion in the eyes of the Doctor.  Doctor Who fans never like boy genius companions, or the older ones never do.  Bruno, you did a terrific job sir.

THE DAVID TENNANT YEARS

DAVID TENNANT

You know, my pet hate with conventions (And it’s not their fault) is queueing, I loath it, my feet loath it even more.  Someone should go on Dragon’s Den with a pocket sized armchair that you can sit in while queueing; complete with an array of books, magazine’s and fine wine’s included (Along with a portable loo).

When you’ve got David Tennant or Matt Smith at the end of a queue it you feel like you’re meeting the Pope (Or any other religious figures come to that).

In front of me I remember was a middle-aged mother with her two teenage daughters.  This was all new to me, girls at conventions, outrageous, never happened in my day!  One of the girls said to the other, “I’m going to do it you know, I’m going to do it, and I will tell him that I love him”.  Ten minutes later it was, “I can’t do it, I can’t tell him that I love him”, ten minutes after that, were back to, “No, I will tell him that I truly love him”.  I think you get the picture, yes?

The thing is, I never heard this when I met Sylvester or Colin, not even Peter.  It takes a bit of getting used to for an old mannie like me, Doctor Who:  The Boyband Years.  Oh, in case you’re interested, in the end she didn’t say that she loved him, but she did regret not telling him, I’m sure that Georgina Moffett would have been out the door, yeah right!

After the event I read that a tiny minority of people were annoyed that he didn’t look up when signing autographs, he didn’t laugh at their Zygon joke (It wasn’t really that funny, trust me) and he signed the DVD with the wrong colour of silver pen when they met him at his signings. 

If I’m honest I thought he was great with my daughter and me, Billie too.  I made the point as it was December that I met them as to how grateful I was that they gave up a Sunday with their families to be with us in a hotel in Birmingham.  I’m not a lover of December and Xmas shopping but with their busy schedules here they were.

The panels with them slightly annoyed me.  Let me explain, over the weekend there were plenty of guests but no interviewer so some of the guests were thrown to the lions shall we say regarding the attendees who numbered 800.  Now I loath awkward silences, I really do so I was up and down asking questions and trying to keep things going along with other fellow fans.  Now when it came to David and Billie’s panel I never got a look in, there was an explosion of bums off seats.

Not that I’m complaining, I’m not.  What I loved best was that there were a few kids asking questions and they were great questions.  It was the adults that let the side down.  As David said after he’d been asked about his sex life with Billie Piper and continuity gaffe’s that left awkward silences, as David said, ‘Whatever happened to asking me, What was my favourite story’!

GABRIEL WOOLF

I have a confession.  When I met the fantastic Gabriel Woolf I thought to myself, ‘That’s really nice, someone must have bought him his own mini Sutekh, the Destroyer.  Then when it came to getting photos he was holding it up for everyone to see and I thought to myself, wow.  I mean some actors like Terry Molloy, David Banks, and Geoffrey Beevers are in plenty Doctor Who but you don’t always see them do you?  So I guess when it comes to conventions maybe they do get a bit jealous that there not chased after like David Tennant and have to hide in the toilets before a dozen photo’s and pens are slung in their face.

So whose got the scariest voice in Doctor Who?  I think they should do a Halloween Doctor Who story called ‘Black’ where you can’t see anything (Saves on a 50 minute budget for a start) and you could have a ‘Blind Off’ battle between Gabriel Woolf and Geoffrey Beevers (He's  scary too) where the Doctor saves the universe at the end by replacing the fuse and the light comes back on.

Well if Steven Moffat doesn’t want it, I’ll try Big Finish.

SHIRLEY HENDERSON

Again, a lovely lady who I met all too brief, she just lives down the road from me or used to in Kincardinshire.  I was tempted to take along a slab of concrete with a hole in the middle but I thought that would be rude and very heavy!

MARC WARREN

What a cool dude.  I remembered him very well from the Vice.  Very popular with the ladies.  He was a nasty piece in the Three Musketeers. 

FREEMA AGYEMAN

What do you think when I mention the name Mark Gatiss?  Do you think League of Gentlemen?  Do you think Sherlock?  Do you think Game of Thrones?

Boy, oh boy, did it take an age to track down Freema Agyeman.

I flew down to London once to se her in a theatre play, 'Apologia' in 2017.  I even wrote a letter to say that I'd meet her at the back door for a phot, she went in the front!

Never mind I thought, 3 years later in 2020 I was due to meet her in the summer, what could possible go wrong, a little disease called Covid that cancelled everything.

Three more years later and I finally got my girl.

She was a bundle of fun and so well up for it, her energies that day showed no end and we only had her on the Saturday.

I brought along a brand-new stethoscope for her to pose with quite rightly, she declined putting the thing in her ears.  Honest, I had not worn them.

She was the top on my list to meet, so glad we did.

Freema's done great since doing Doctor Who and seems to have moved to the States.  If I was in her shoes (I don't do heals!) if you get that success and you grab it and hold on to it and don't let go, well done Freema.

MARK GATISS

What do you think when I mention the name Mark Gatiss?  Do you think League of Gentlemen?  Do you think Sherlock?  Do you think Game of Thrones?

I'll tell you what I think when I think of Mark Gatiss, I think of 15 year old Mark Gatiss attending a Doctor Who local group, Mark Gatiss writing a Fanzine piece or attending his first few conventions and meeting his Doctor Who heroes.  I think Mark Gatiss, I think Doctor Who fan.

I admire him because unlike myself and many other's he did not give up and you know what, I bet he likes David Bowie.  There are a generation of Doctor Who fans that grew up with Jon Pertwee as the Doctor that love David Bowie too.  David Bowie, he's alright but I prefer Depeche Mode, I'm post Baker/Davison generation fan.

JIMMY VEE

He's done so many roles now in Who but Voyage of the Damned is my favourite Who Christmas special.

Jimmy Vee is proper Scots, The Sunday Post, Glasgow Rolls and Iron Bru, what can I say, the guy managed to bag a date with Kylie Minogue, respect.

ANJLI MOHINDRA

Oh you Doctor Who fans, spilling you’re cups of coffee, snarling at your Lap Top computers, getting so angry about the crime I’ve committed to the first law of Doctor Who fandom in breaking Canon.

You want me to say it, okay, for your sake I will say it, Anjli Mohindra did not appear in an official tenth Doctor story, are you happy now?  She did appear of course as a regular in the Sarah Jane Adventures where the lad from Bathgate did turn up.

I loved the Sarah Jane Adventures, I truly did and I was surprised that there were not more fans familiar with it.  Terrance Dicks said not so long ago that while he found it difficult to recognise ‘New Who’ as ‘Old Who’, he did recognise a lot of ‘Old Who’ in the Sarah Jane adventures when it came to style.

When I met Anjli you quickly realise that she’s not Rani, she is a good bit older so you have to remind yourself that she’s not at school, she’s not sitting her ‘A’ levels and don’t be shocked if she’s in the bar telling me where I’m going wrong with my choice of beer (She wasn’t, just to clarify).

She did a panel with Gary Russell and Phil Ford where she didn’t let the old boys run away with it.  The next day she did a panel single handed on her own with no interviewer.  I told her on the day that Kate (my daughter) was impressed with Rani in the series.  I still think her debut story is my own favourite of the series with the clown. 

If Lis Sladen was looking down on Anjli while she did here solo panel that day, she’d be very proud as would her family.

GRAEME HARPER

As I get older I get just as excited meeting the Back Room Boys and Girls more than when I was eighteen.  I think with age you begin to see the up-hill struggle that they have to take on.

It’s nice when you have a dilemma like Graeme Harper, do you put him with Peter Davison, what about Colin Baker but then again, most of his work is with David Tennant.

Graeme quite rightly takes the plaudits for his work on Caves of Androzani, when you hear stories such as the Stotz and Krelper fight from episode 2 and how he filmed it and how it looks on screen you realise this guy is special.  It’s as if Dougie Camfield handed him the director baton.  Don’t get me wrong, there are so many great directors that I’ve done a disservice to not mentioning such as David Maloney, Chris Barry, Nick Hurran and Peter Grimwade.

A further complement for Chris is that while my wife is not a big fan of Doctor who, she did catch me watching part four of Androzani while making my tea once.  She was so impressed with the episode and engrossed in it that she ended up burning my tea.  Let me tell you, it was without doubt the best burnt tea that I’ve had in my entire life!

Funnily enough, though I love Androzani, it’s not my favourite Harper story which is one of the new Doctor Who episodes, ‘Waters of Mars’.  Nothing like a bit of controversy, I’ll collect my things and leave the convention quietly!

CATHERINE TATE

After having missed her at one event, then set of with the wife and daughter to see her live in the hope of catching her before she went in the stage door at Edinburgh and what happened?  That failed too.

I was thrilled to bits to catch her in London.

She was up for some silly poses with everyone.  I originally wanted one with her hitting me on the back of the head with the Tardis rubber mallet but with the event being highly secure on any type of weapon I left it at home.  You know, "In the Back of the Neck"!

I'd have loved a photo with being normal.

She made the weekend though, well worth the wait.

JACQUELINE KING

What a lovely lady Jacqueline is, and she came all the way to Scotland for me, thank you Jacqueline.

Do you remember when the Tenth Doctor took Donna home in ‘Journey’s End’.  You know you had all these old companions coming back, quite a celebration really and yet for me, my favourite bit in it was when Sylvia threw the tenth Doctor out of her house.  That left the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.  Jacqueline played that scene brilliantly in the protection of her daughter. She just saw the damage that the Doctor had done to her.  It’s great when the Doctor is not always shown in the best light and I’m sure there must have been a few mums watching that were right behind her.

TRACEY CHILDS

We were the very first photo taken at this event in Milton Keynes.  Now the only wrong thing with that it that the lovely Tracey wanted a chat which I was more than happy to give but when you’ve got a Photographer with a day’s work ahead of him and a dozen other fans behind me eager to get on it’s not easy.

I’ve decided to start having chats with some of the guests when they’re at the autograph desks.  Oh don’t get me wrong, I know their working, I know that their earning money when their signing but there’s nothing wrong with chatting.  I do feel sorry for them if there’s no one at their table.

Anyway, back to Tracy who was marvellous in Fires of Pompeii though I remember her well from Howard’s Way, a lovely down to earth lady who was also great I thought in Colditz for Sylvester in Big Finish.

DAVID TROUGHTON

You know, there’s something humbling about meeting the children of actors who have played the part of Doctor Who and yet at the same time I’m frustrated for them as well. 

They’ve had their careers, great careers and yet you just want to ask them what it was like growing up with Dad.  It’s wrong, very wrong and yet we the fans would go berserk if those Troughton boy’s dawned those Beatle wigs, put a bow tie with a safety clip on, checked trousers and a frock coat and become our heroes, the poor sods!

Actually, I really loved David in ‘A Very Peculiar Practice’ where he played ‘Bob Buzzard’.  His character was great and very rude.  There was a great episode from the first series that was based mainly on his character and his interaction with his family and it turned out that he hated being called ‘Bob’, he wanted to be called ‘Robert’ but he knew that in life he wasn’t a ‘Robert’, he was  a ‘Bob’.  I hate to say it but there was a bit of me that’s just like Bob Buzzard I’m afraid.

GARETH DAVID-LLOYD

The day before my ten year old daughter met him she was woken up in Aberdeen at 4.30 am in the morning and told to come down to the sitting room to face her mother and me.

She was convinced that she was in for a rollicking and I told her that I wanted the truth.  I asked her if she would be going to school on the Friday to which she shook her head and then I called her a liar.  After several more questions I asked her if she would instead be spending her weekend in the company of the Torchwood gang and the Doctor and Rose Tyler.

She was impressed, a couple of hours later we were on a plane heading for Birmingham so it was all a bit surreal for her.  I captured it all on video and it will be one of those treasured moments to look back on the day I got Ianto Jones to babysit the bairn!

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

It’s funny, you go looking for a picture and you suddenly spot Ajoa Andoh with Nelson Mandela!  Then you feel really stupid and realise its Morgan Freeman.  That’s makes it more amazing.  She’s doing a few events so again, I’ll be looking out for her along with the rest of her Doctor Who family.

John Simm I think is a bit like Chris Eccleston.  He is a character actor who wants to do 9 to 5, come home, put his feet up, open a beer and watch the footie with his family.

Nothing wrong with that, he’s done a couple of events and I think he’s still mystified why, for all the things that he’s done, two appearances in Doctor Who and that’s meant to be the pinnacle of his careers in some people’s eyes but not his.

He’s a great actor to watch though, very intense.

I once wrote a letter to Bernard Cribbins in the eighties, he didn't reply, sad really.  I would still love to meet and shake the hand of the man that's brought so much entertainment and quality over the years. There's something about Bernard that always leaves a lump in the throat and a tiny tear in the eye when he gives a performance as Wilfred Mott.

So sad when he passed away, everyone loved Bernard.

THE MATT SMITH YEARS

MATT SMITH

I have so many memories of Matt from this event, such a cool guy, really, a laid back cool guy.  This guy really goes the extra mile for you, no second thoughts.  He’d be doing his signings from dawn to dusk or was it dusk to dawn.

I’d see him rush off to the loo with one of his minders while waiting in the queue for his signature.  You know, if like me your one of these people that nipped off to the loo to one of these urinals and you stand there with nothing happening it can be embarrassing, particular when someone else walks in and join another urinal, well that put’s you right off, hasn’t it?  So if you’re doing your best and you’re really concentrating then only Matt Smith coming bursting in followed by his minder and then joins you by a urinal, while let’s be honest, it’s definitely not going to happen now is it!  You really should have gone to a cubicle from the start!

I got to ask Matt a couple of questions (This is in the summer of 2012), one of the questions was, “A lot has been made about you being the youngest actor to take the part, would you like to be the second youngest actor to leave the role when you make that decision and do a couple more seasons”?

Okay, it’s a rubbish question but what I was basically saying to him was, can you do a couple more seasons after your third.  It’s so true that when they cast an actor in the title role, the first question they are asked are, “How long are you staying for”?  Why do they ask this?  I think it’s down to Doctor Who fans making Pi charts.  Fans like to know what is going on.

Matt ever the good politician side tracked the question but the impression that he gave was that he was going to be around for a long time which got a huge round of applause (Him, not me!).

You know you get in life Alpha males and Beta males.  I’m a Beta Male and very happy with it, Matt I thought was a Beta male, he dresses like a Beta Male and looks like a Beta Male.  When it comes down to it, Matt’s an Alpha Male.  He was captain of his school football team and tried out for Leicester City.  He was no pushover with his questions and knew where he was going.  In saying that, I think at the event I was at, he was still undecided if he wished to carry on with the role in 2014 and as it turned out, he didn't.

CAITLIN BLACKWOOD

You know, I remember Tommy King in an interview regarding the Sarah Jane Adventures thought it was really strange when he turned up at a signing event expecting loads of kids to turn up, only to find middle-aged blokes armed to the teeth with pens and books.

If I’m honest, I didn’t fancy being one of them blokes which is why my daughter volunteered her services to help her awkward Dad out.

She was great though and will be giving Karen Gillan a run for her money.  You think that no one comes from the north of Scotland that’s famous and you get two for the price of one.

Having a daughter myself, I’m always moved by mini Amy at the very end of the Time of the Doctor being left alone waiting for the Time Lord to reappear.

KAREN GILLAN

Karen was on top form when I met her in Stuttgart Germany in 2019.  For me coming from Aberdeen it's amazing that for her early life, she grew up 100 miles up the road where the only nasty beasties were the Midgies's, now she's turning into a Hollywood big name.

Anyway, when I finally met her and gave her some Loch Ness Raspberry & White Chocolate biscuits along with a Tunnock's Caramel wafer, she was terribly excited, it seemed to bring back lots of memories of Scotland.  I was going to take along an Iron Bru but was nervous it might burst.  I was all set to wear my kilt, not in that heat, it was 34 degrees in Germany!

She was squealing with excitment and said, "It's a pity you haven't got, Tunnock's Tea Cakes"!

I did, I didn't want to go over the top as I though they'd probably got squashed but I asked if she wanted the packed, oh she did!!

You can take the girl out of Scotland but not Scotland out of the girl.

ARTHUR DARVILL

You know, when I met Arthur Darvill he was obviously getting a lot of attention from the start to finish of the day.  As Peter Davison once described it, I think he was suffering from that dreaded guest appearance injury problem, smiling locked jaw.

I really like Rory.  I felt kind of sorry for him that I thought he could do better than Amy.  Here was a young lad that had pined for the love of his life since he was in shorts and then while he was waiting to marry her, she tries to jump some bloke with a couple of hearts from the planet Gaillifrey, dry your eyes mate, plenty more fish in the sea!

The Girl who waited was my favourite story from his second series, Karen and Arthur did a brilliant job.  You could not help but be moved by the events in The Angels Take Manhattan also.

NINA WADIA

You know, some of the guest's that appear and only have smaller roles can really surprise you and Nina is one of them.

She came out with a couple or corker stories, one of which was her first day in rehearsals on the Eleventh Hour, her on screen son Syed in Eastenders was played by Marc Elliot who told her before she started rehearsals that he'd gone to drama school with Matt Smith and the one thing that she had to say to him when she met him was, "Morning C@*t"", very rude!  Shocked, Nina told him that she could not possibly say that to the new leading man.  Not deterred Marc pressed on that she must do it and having never met Matt he gave Nina a description of the actor, thin, longish hair.

So on her first day Nina marches over to Matt and says in a large voice, "Morning C@*t".  Matt looks at her clearly not happy and says back, "Excuse me"?  Nina repeats the greeting again and clearly see's that Matt has no idea what she is saying.  It's at this point she notices that on the opposite side of the rehearsal room stands another male who matches the same description that Marc gave her, Nina has just called someone from the Doctor Who production crew a 'C@*t'!

Her second story for me was funnier, having not realised that Eastenders had now recruited Old Doctor Who companion Bonnie Langford as Carmel Kazemi she was gob smacked when Bonnie one day came rushing up to her excitedly and blurted out to her, "I was sha**ing you husband yesterday"!

Nina who is happily married had to give it a bit of thought to work out exactly what Bonnie meant by such a statement!

IAN MCNIECE

This man’s a total pro.  This man brings his own props though Ian made sure that I kept the cigar out of my mouth to keep everything hygienically clean.

TONY CURRAN

You could not help but be moved by Tony Curran's performance in 'Vincent & the Doctor'.  Those last ten minutes really leave you with the hair standing on the back of your neck.

Someone with a great sense of humour.

STUART MILLIGAN

There was an awkward moment in 2012 when I met Stuart.  I’d read in the paper that there was going to be new Jonathon Creek to which I said I’d be looking forward to seeing him in it.  He then corrected me and said I must be mistaken.  I decided not to say any more, may be he was right, I had read it in a newspaper.

Come Christmas however there was no new Jonathon Creek until the May Day holiday next year and with that, no Adam Klaus.

I would have thought that the producer would have had the decency to let him know.  He pulled in a great performance in Doctor Who.

CHRISTINA CHONG & FRANCES BARBER

 

This was the first photo studio shot of the day.  You know what happens, you arrive, you talk to two gorgeous ladies and before you know it, the man’s behind the camera is shouting, “Ready, here we go”!

Okay, you’ve guessed it; I can hide the truth no longer.  Christina and Frances goosed me at the same time the photo was taken!

I’ve loved Frances work for a long time and I’m a big fan or Inspector Morse and she was great in ‘The Death of the Self’ which I had a few questions for her on.    Christina, Frances predicted is going on to bigger things, she suggested her as a future companion.  Looking down her latest credits I noticed Star Wars is in there.

It was nice to have met her though, she did promise to take out the entire convention to her family restaurant!

SIMON FISHER-BECKER & DAN STARKEY

Simon was thrilled to bits to do the final lines for season 6.  When you hear him perform those lines lines it really puts the hairs on the back of your neck up, brilliantly acted.  I know that Simon does murder weekends as well so I made sure that I got a plug in for him with a question from the audience.

What can you say about Dan?  I remember nipping down for breakfast very early in the morning and the only other person there was Dan.  It great to phone home and tell the wife that you’re having breakfast with a Sontaran!  Its amazing hearing him shout “Human scum” at an audience and seeing him get a round of applause.  If he gets stuck for work all he has to do is put on his Sontaran gear and head for the comedy club, he’s so quick with the one liner’s, surely ‘Have I Got News for you’, beckons Strax.

He had us all in hysterics when he worked on the Sontaran Stratagem with Douglas MacKinnon directing, Douglas had to tick him off due to him sticking his tongue out continuously.  This was due to Dan wanting to pay tribute to Master granddad Sontaran Kevin Lindsay and do the ‘Tongue Acting’from the seventies as Lynx would use his tongue too.

Dan denied however that he and his fellow Sontaran actors did not have a night out in the pub before concocting the legendary Queen anthemic tune of,’Sontar-Ha’!

CATRIN STEWART & NEVE McKINTOSH

This is the moment an aging, hair losing, Belly growing middle aged man feels a bit like James Bond!

When these were taken we’d only seen them together in A Good Man goes to War so there was no knowledge of Catrin & Neve coming back for their appearance in The Snowmen but secretly, I think they knew they were coming back but just could not say anything.

I’m glad that they expanded Catrin’s role and I thought her best story was The Crimson Horror which was great.   Everyone was keen for them to have their own spin-off series.

Neve spoke fondly of Edinburgh in Scotland and a pub she remembered from Cockburn Street which I remember myself from the eighties where my future to be wife took me shopping once.  Great day.

ARABELLA WEIR

When Covid struck back in 2020, my wife and I were due to watch Arabella do her stand up show.  This was hoever cancelled.  

We'd watched her do a stage interview with David Tennant some years earlier in Glenrothes I think.  The wife as hoping that David Tennant would interview her as she was a big fan.

We knew her best from Scottish comedy 'Two Doors Down', which she is brilliant at playing Beth and has left us both with sore sides.

I the photo abovem she's next to her colleague Alex Norton who I hope will soon be in Doctor Who.

 

JEMMA REDGRAVE

I'm actually in two minds with regards to this photo.  I've done many photo shoots.  I always like to consider myself a gentleman.  On the odd occassion or giving it a bit of thought, just the once (With Eve Myles I have made a pratt of myself).  I always belive, particularly if you're a bloke with a female that you should ask if it's okay to put your arm around the person which is eactly what I did.

For some reason Jemma did take exception to this.  I had done nothing wrong, I did not put my hand or arm anywhere where it should not be.

Thought she was smashing in the programme and many people have raved about her, my only encounter was the photo shoot.

May be someone had done something that they should not have and she was wary after the incident.

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

You know, in 1985 or 1986 I sat down with my careers teacher and told her that I wanted to be a television producer.  I enjoyed writing, creating, that sort of thing.  My Dad laughed it off and may be he had a point, I’m sure there is many that have tried and failed.  Then again, it least they tried.

One of them ‘trier’s’ was only nine years older and from Paisley, that’s only about 150 miles down the road.
 
So you see Dad, one of them did make it after all, I wonder what happened to the other 459 of them.  I think as Doctor Who fans we all think we could do a better job than the Show-runner.  There are other shows that I prefer to Steven’s top number 1 choice 50^th anniversary story ‘The Time of the Doctor’.  Yet I’m sure if I’d been given the role with my ideas the protest marches would be storming the streets of Cardiff.  For all the flack the man takes, let him get on with the job and don’t listen to what anyone says, particularly me!

You know by 2000 I’d met seventy-five percent of the Doctors minus Messrs Hartnell & Troughton.  Then Chris Eccleston comes along and I’ve got no chance.  Then by 2012 I’m up to eight out of eleven.

Then we get loads of new Doctor’s like Peter Capaldi and John Hurt.  John Hurt, I cry, where did he come from?

Ah, that’s right, Steven Moffat and the twelve regenerations.  Don’t get me started, this is a friendly ‘Who’ site.  I loved John Hurt in Alien, we all did.  Doctor Who though, that’s put the cat amongst the Pidgeon’s.  When he see’s the increase in his mail I bet he’ll be fed up of it by then as will his Postie!

Very sad when John passed away in 2017..

THE PETER CAPALDI YEARS

PETER CAPALDI

First and foremost, when you want to meet the current Doctor this is no easy task.  In 2014 I turned down an opportunity to meet him due to money.  I would have cancelled my daughter's birthday and Christmas money to do it, that was not something I was prepared to do.  There is a line with Doctor Who fans in the sands as to how far you want to take your fanaticism so when the opportunity arose again I took my chance and I had to fight for this one and I got lucky, very lucky.

You get 30 seconds tops with Peter and you know what, history repeated itself as it did 12 years previously when I met Lis Sladen in that there was a problem with the camera so there I am surrounded by Peter's people and minders with the current Doctor.  I blabbed on about Scotland and he asked me where I came from so we talked about Aberdeen and 'Local Hero' which was filmed not far away.

I regretted not asking about his wife Elaine Collins who I remembered very well from eighties Scottish comedy City Lights who played Gerald Kelly's girlfriend Janice.

Top bloke, I truly hope he does it least 4 full seasons.

JENNA COLEMAN

This just goes to show how much dedication I put into meeting Miss Coleman.  Having originally been scheduled to meet her at an event in the middle of 2015 this was postponed and I was upset. Then I got the opportunity to meet her a couple of months after in Blackpool so when I finished work on the Friday, popped a sleeping tablet and nodded off and woke up at 1 am, picked up my mate Stuart and we drove non-stop to Blackpool minus a fuel up along the way.

She was well worth it.  Having recently had her photo in the paper and linked to Prince Harry she was hot property, yet the only thing I was interested in was, did Harry pay the £30 to get his photo with her, I don't think so?

Upon meeting her I complemented her on her Glaswegian accent and her pronunciation of the word, 'SCOTTISH', which I loved though I would have declined a 'Glasgow Kiss' from her!

Despite the crowds, oh there was a lot she was so patient with everyone.  One of my photo's had the top half of my head removed but me mate Stuart rescued it like I was Worzel Gummidge and it's brand new.

The one thing I regret was that a few people had their photo proposing to her, I was tempted to have her proposing to me and I simply turned her down in the photo, well, what would the wife say!

SAMUEL ANDERSON

Samual was a slick cool guy.  He underplayed the role of Danny Pink very well.  I was never sure where Steven Moffat was going with the part and the fact that the Doctor did not endear himself to him was difficult to adjust to.  My favorite episode with Samual was I think 'Last Christmas', it was the first time that for me I saw Danny and Clara as a couple and was very moved by it.

I do wish his character had been given a better chance to be more boyfriend from the start of the series and not so much up and downs with Clara, a lot of fun could have been had.

There were a number of Jenna Coleman look-a-likes that attended the event so it was a great thrill for them to partner Mr Pink himself.

MICHELLE GOMEZ

In twenty odd years if I'm still walking the planet there will be a good chance that I will still be attending Doctor Who conventions.  Now for new fans loving the current Doctor Who they may grow out of it, they may still love it but for all the fans that have missed their opportunity meeting the current line up you really need to take your chance.

Michelle Gomez has currently attended more USA conventions than British ones.  This is one I could not miss and I'm so glad I took my chance.  Michelle is 100% unpredictable Scots and boy do I love her for it.

Everyone of her photo poses she did not comply with the norm which gave everyone something unique.  Indeed there is someone out there who got a photo with Michelle putting him on the floor with her pulling him up by is tie and putting her boot on his chest.  It's brilliant.

I too was a bit put off with her being the Master and being female, but you know what, she's brilliant at doing what she does and again, it's great to be proved wrong.  In fact I'm more annoyed that she's referred to as 'Missy' and not, 'The Master'.  Geoffrey Beevers is my Master but he'd better keep an eye on his back as Michelle's got her Tissue Compression Eliminator aimed squarely at him!





INGRID OLIVER

Now let's be honest, Ingrid look's totally different from Osgood.  You just don't recognize her.  Now I've mentioned sometimes saying something to a guest and then later regretting it, I rattled my mind as to what to say to Ingrid and what came out?  "May I just say Ingrid, you look pretty hot today with the motorcycle jacket"!  Yep, my toes are curling up too!  Luckily for me shook took it off and had a laugh, great sense of humour, great crack.



CHRISTOPHER FAIRBANK

Now when I was a young lad I sat down and watched with my Dad, 'Auf Weidersehen Pet' and loved in and was always surprised that more of the regulars there had never done Doctor Who, 4 of them had done Minder.

Chris had also done one of my favourite Sapphire & Steel's so I didn't have to think too hard with travelling down to Newcastle.  While waiting in the queue Chris came along and nearly walked into the ladies toilets which was funny.  When I requested he put on the famous 'Moxey' hat one last time and hold up a bottle of beer he had no problem doing it.  I managed to smuggle the bottles in past security which I was chuffed at!



PEARL MACKIE

Pearl Mackie was one of the most warm hearted kind people that you could ever meet.  So down to earth and ready for a laugh.  She was such a good sport when it came to photos.

She's full of life and enthusiasm.

She did a panel with Billie Piper where they were acked about their exit stories,  Billie was in hysterics when she heard that poor Pearl got turned into a Cyberman!

Pearls portrayal of Bill Potts was my type of companion, without complications and always ready to stand up for herself.  It was just a shame that she did not get a second series as she really deserved it.

THE JODIE WHITTAKER YEARS

JODIE WHITTAKER

Travelling all the way down to Londan to meet the Doctor 13, Jodie Whittaker or potentially catch COVID, bugger it, head down to meet Jodie!

She was delightful and clearly enjoyed what I believe to be her first British fan event.  She was expecting a child for later in 2022, so if they grow up to become an actor I may have met two Doctors in the one shot.

She did so well on the day and must of been knackered with all the work and carrying child.

I never had any reservations about a female Doctor, she was terrific and brought something very different to the role.  

MANDIP GILL

Mandip really came into her own upon her third series.  Watching her and Jodie do their panel together they really had a chemistry of being a double act.

She was handing out hugs left right and centre.  Such a shame that their period suffered through the COVID crisis.

BHAVNISHA PARMAR

Bhavnisha was delightful too.  The last Bernard Cribbins was due at the event but sadly had to cancel,  so it was great for this old man to get a sandwich hug from Bhavnisha and Mandip.

SACHA DHAWAN 

The Master at a Glasgow shopping centre in Scotland!  Who would have thought.  Of course Sacha has been the Master and the Doctor.  I do hope he returns, sometimes it can take a little time to settle into a role and I thought he was great in the Power of the Doctor.  His sitting down on an asteroid and playing the recorder was great.  

His argument with Mandip in the Tardis was also one of those rare times that really makes you sit up and stop what you are doing as they are both playing it deadly seriously. 

JOHN BISHOP

COVID, in terms of conventions, this retched disease has ruined everything!

Back in easter 2020 I was due to meet Freema Agyeman and Tosin Cole but this was all sadly cancelled and we are no clearer to when it will even be safe again.

So, I was very grateful to my old mucher Stuart Mitchell who gave me the nod to meet up outside to potentially meet John Bishop and thankfully it happened.

Only an invite inside the Music Hall in Aberdeen to met him and was so down to earth and a lovely bloke.

Just before he poked his head out in fear that there may be a mob crowd!  Only the two of us I'm afraid.

I had not done it this way in thirty odd years.

I think he's been great in Doctor Who, particularly in his debut story, a very funny actor and flying the flag for his home town in Liverpool.

He even gave us a wee wave while nipping away in is black taxi.

JONATHAN WATSON

I've known of Jonathan's work for years, in Scotland, a legend, a living one at that.  Only an Excuse, City Lights, Rab C Nesbitt, Naked Video, all predominantly Scottish and of course, Colin in Two Doors Down.  He was born to play a Sontaran and when he spoke, he really used the Scottish accent to his advantage on the battle grounds being an avid football follower himself.

Hope he returns

PETER DAVISON, COLIN BAKER, SYLVESTOR MCCOY & PAUL MCGANN

Okay, cheating again, the biggest amount of Doctor's together that I'd met and they all came to Aberdeen.  A privilege.

WHO IS EWAN MORGAN ANYWAY?

For a number of years now I’ve wanted to put together my own small tribute to my favourite television show Doctor Who which has for over 50 years on television, kept me entertained and managed to keep a smile on my face even when times where less than rosy, a greatest hits you might say.

I am proud to say that I am a Doctor Who fan.  Now Doctor Who fans come in all shapes and sizes and to me, you cannot lump us all in together.

You get some that love only the old series, some that only love the new series, some that love them both (That’s me).  It doesn’t stop there however.  You can then divide your fans into the ones that read on a daily basis Doctor Who books every month, or buy audio CD’s from their past Doctors and their companions.  You can get prop collectors, costumer collectors, cos-players that will make their own costumes.  Don’t forget DVD collectors who purchase all the available episodes and then further DVD’s of missing stories with only the audio tracks and reconstructed photos to use.  Computer gamer’s who can play all the hundred of Doctor Who games available and let us not forget the Monthly magazine that’s been running for 35 years.  Then you can get Doctor Who merchandise collectors, Doctor Who comic collectors, missing episode fans who want to seek those missing episodes by going to the local TV station in Malta when their on their two week holiday there.  Doctor Who exhibition fans who like to attend all the exhibitions or the Doctor Who convention goers who will go along for panels, autographs and photos.

So you see there’s so much to it isn’t there.

As fans you remember things like the name of the first story that you vaguely remember (Hand of Fear); the first story that turned you into a fan (Full Circle), the first exhibition you attended (1985 Blackpool) and the first convention (1987 Imperial College London).

You know when I hit 21 years old I went through a funny faze.  I collected everything, I wanted to have everything.  I wanted to know everything about this show.  I wanted to be the ultimate fan and you know what, that made me miserable!  That’s when I started thinking about girls for a change.

It must have made a difference you know because while I did not fall out of love of Doctor Who, it did make me reassess my Doctor Who lifestyle and I felt all the better for it.

I kept my Monthlies, good old monthlies, which I never understand when people take a dislike to ‘Doctor Who Monthly’, sorry, ‘Doctor Who Magazine’? Constantly there, always updating you with what everyone is up to, bringing news of happiness and sometimes news of sadness.  I started it in 1980, got all the back issue going back to 1979 and have remained faithful ever since (Barring a 3 month affair that I had back in 1981 with Blake’s Seven Magazine but that meant nothing I tell you, nothing).

The video’s which is what I started with (The majority of them were pirates because you could only buy a handful of stories back in 1986) until the DVD’s turned up in 2000.  If you’re a fan, this for me is a must.  That’s a good point!  What makes a Doctor Who fan, a Doctor Who fan?  I’ve always asked that and for me it doesn’t matter how much merchandise you have or if you could name all the members of HAVOC stunt troupe from the seventies.  As long as you do you’re best never to miss an episode of Doctor Who, you’re a fan, a loyal fan through AND through.

I love watching the series, some stories I’ve watched more than others but when you’ve only got a handful yourself that’s only to be expected.  Now-a-days I’m always watching Doctor Who, about 2 to 3 a week and I don’t have any real favourites, I watch them all good or bad.  With a tin of Beer in your hand and the remote in the other you soon forget the good from bad, there’s no difference, its Doctor Who.

Now a game changing moment happened for me over the weekend of my seventeenth birthday.  A great, great actor passed away, Patrick George Troughton.  I never saw it coming but it happened and that shook me, it really did and made me feel that none of us are mortal, we all have an end.

It’s such a strange feeling, you’ve loved this programme that’s made the teenage years easier and there’ so many things that you want to do with so little money and then it hits you, that one thing that you’ll never now achieve, it’s cruelly been taken from your grasp without warning, an opportunity, an honour to shake the hand of Patrick George Troughton and say “Thank you”. That would have meant so much for all those years of happiness that he did entertaining you; that will never happen, not now.

So that made me decide that I wanted to meet as many Doctor Who folk as I feasibly could.  I didn’t just want autographs.  When I went to my first convention I took along with me an autograph book and at the end I looked at all of these signature’s and found some of them so difficult to read.  A bit of ink on paper, that what they were to me.  They were just not special to me.

Now I know that I’m in the minority here, that most Doctor Who fans prefer signatures signed to themselves on photos of the celebrity when they were in the series.  Who the hell am I to say their wrong, their not.  One thing that I’ve appreciated is just how important to them the signature is in just seeing their happy faces. To make matters worse and show what a hypocrite I am, I have some autographs that I would never get rid of, their dotted around the house in cupboards that I never think about or look for.

No, what I wanted was a photograph with the Doctor Who stars.  Something as a permanent reminder of the seconds or minutes that you’ve spent with them, something you can look at hanging in the lobby that you pass each day.

Now financially, an autograph will always be worth far more than a photo.  That’s one of the main reasons why I prefer photos.  All of mine are worthless because my ugly mugs in them all and that for me is an added attraction of why I love them, their personal to me and worthless to everyone else.  It’s my way of reminding myself why I love this programme and don’t like to put a price tag on it as I never got into Doctor Who for that reason.  One day I will be old and very grey but still watching that programme and looking back at happy memories from those happy times.

This is why I’ve compiled a memoir of these photographs on to an online album so that if I’m stuck anywhere in the world that I don’t want to be I can look them up and not feel so alone.

I’ve been a Doctor Who fan for coming on to thirty-five years and Doctor Who feels like a second family so I’ve included some of the stories behind the photos, some happy and some sad.  Each of the Doctor’s era’s are examined minus Peter Capaldi who I very much hope to meet one day as well as his fellow professionals.  I’ve also put on the bottoms of each page, ‘The Ones That Got Away’.  This is a collection of the cast or production that I either sadly never met while they were alive or ones that I still have yet to meet and look forward very much too finally meeting them.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Although I call these people family, they do not know me from Adam!  You meet them, you say hello, you talk about the occasion briefly, you smile, you shake hands and you’re away.  You’ll hear me mention the word, ‘They were lovely’ several times, some were 30 second encounters, some longer but all memorable.

A lot of fans know these stars very well due to the areas that they live within the UK.  Doctor Who has become a worldwide programme that I do stop and think how blessed we are living here in the UK.  I’ve spoken to a couple of international fans who have to save up so much money to come here to the UK for an event, where as those living here take it for granted.  The one programme that I truly love is made here in the UK, how lucky I am. 

Now of course there are some that I guess you could say are lucky if they live in Cardiff (Where it’s made now) or London (Where there are so many events going on and a great homing location to gather a great assembly of cast members).  I have to travel 500 miles for an event but in some respects I still think that I’m really lucky.

Doing these events is not cheap.  The problem that you may have living in London when it comes to these events is saying ‘No’ to them. 

The assembly of photo’s I have might seem large to some but also incredible small to others.  My ambition from the start was to collect as many regulars from the Doctor Who cast as possible and be photographed with them.  I’ve also collected a number of one of story cast members as well which have been fantastic too.  Then again, I know my limits and while some may go after every cast member that’s still around I need to draw a line.  That’s why it’s nice to be reminded by my wife and child that the house need re-painted or the daughter needs a new bicycle.

Of course while talking about my Doctor Who family I must mention my own immediate family of my wife Tracy and daughter Kate who keep me grounded, focussed and incredibly happy.  Thank you.

Of course while talking about my Doctor Who family I must mention my own immediate family of my wife Tracy and daughter Kate who keep me grounded, focussed and incredibly happy.  Thank you.

To finish off of then (And also because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to put them) please find below the football team ‘Who United Rovers’ that I led to the 2010 Television Sci-Fi World Cup football team with a 4,3,3 formation.

Back Row Left to right:- Troughton (Left Midfield), Wilson (Left Wing), Waterhouse (Right Wing), Purves (Centre Midfield & Team Captain), Paul McGann (Centre Forward), the Hills (Centre Back).

Front Row:- Fielding (Goal Keeper), Russell (Centre Back), Wills (Left Back) Watling (Right Back) & Sutton (Right Midfield)

We beat Torchwood Elite 4-0 with goals from McGann (22 minutes), a header from Watling (37 minutes), a penalty put in by Wills (48 minutes) and in the dying seconds the Hills (88 minutes though which one of them scored where still unsure off).  A goal by Wilson was disallowed after it was discovered that it was a Red Balloon that crossed the line and not a football.

Events were marred when Fielding was sent off in the 62 minute for abusive language and replaced by Russell who then went on to save a belter of a penalty from Torchwood centre forward Eve Myles.

Four years later in 2014 we were back again, up against hard opposition, Game of Thrones.

This time going for the traditional 4,4,2 the team was:-

Back Row Left to right:- Wilson (Left Midfield), Waterhouse (Right Midfield), Noble (Centre Back), Mills (Centre Forward), Baker (Centre Midfield), Refusian (Goalkeeper, get it?).

Front Row:- Padbury (Centre Forward), McCoy (Centre Midfield), Wills (Left Back), Rimmer (Right Back) & Badland (Centre Back)

We beat Game of Thrones 2-O in a tense 90 minute game.  Barry Noble (55 minute) scored from the centre line a scorcher that can only be described as ‘Excellent’.  In a game that could have gone either way it came down to Wendy Padbury (89 minutes) to put one through Peter Dinklages legs to finish the game off.

Sadly however, the ‘Who United Rovers’ were disqualified after it was discovered by the linesman, Michael Grade, who spotted that the invisible Refusian in goals had invited along his fellow aliens, an invisible Spiridon, an invisible Visian and an invisible Krafayis.  This had only been brought to light when the invisible aliens had lofted the entire back 4 of Wills, Barry, Badland and Rimmer high in a goal celebration after Padbury scored the winner that can only be described as ‘Unnerving’!

Please do not sue me over any of the photos, this is purely a fun-non profit making sight making an old man happy.