Sladen, Elisabeth - Elisabeth Sladen - The Autobiography

So there I was, on stage at the Playhouse in a Saturday matinee on 23 October, knowing that the nation – well, a young proportion of it – was engrossed in my sorrowful farewell. I still spoke to my folks afterwards as usual, except this time I listened more intently to their comments. Was I any good? Did they like it? These things are more important when you don’t catch it yourself.

I did see the show eventually. Do you know when? When the BBC released The Hand of Fear on VHS in the 90s.

It transpired that I was free to watch the debut of my successor in 1977 but – sorry about this – I didn’t want to. Tom was my Doctor. What pleasure was there to be gained from seeing him with someone else? It would feel like watching my husband with another woman.

Bizarrely, before we set off on our African trek, Brian had been finishing up at the Orange Tree in Richmond. With time on my hands I went down to join him. Afterwards, I was sitting at the bar when this pretty young thing came up to me.

‘Hello,’ she said, ‘You don’t know me but my name is Louise.’

‘Hello, Louise,’ I said.

‘And I’m going to be the new companion in Doctor Who .’

‘Oh.’ I was speechless. What were the odds of that meeting without a real-life TARDIS?

‘So,’ she continued, ‘I wondered if you could give me any pointers. I mean, what’s Tom like?’

We had a proper chat. I told her she was about to have the best years of her life. Well, I had, anyway.

* * *

In theatre you can be whoever you like. Audiences are very open-minded about casts, which is how I’ve played pensioners, teens, foreigners and sometimes even men. Television is a lot more restrictive. Producers see you doing well in one area and so they hire you to do the same thing again and again. I’d already turned down a lot of sci-fi offers but being viewed as a ‘children’s star’ was harder to get away from. Perhaps if I’d been slightly cannier immediately my ‘retirement’ was announced I’d have had more choice. However, when the offer came a year later to present a show called Merry-Go-Round for BBC Schools, I said yes.

After all, at least I knew I could play the character!

Merry-Go-Round had actually started at the same time as Doctor Who and it would run for twenty years. It was essentially an educational resource for junior school teachers covering all sorts of things like science, history, geography and even the odd sex education programme. I said I’d be happy to present on any subject they threw at me.

And then they mentioned the helicopter!

The episode was called The Fuel Fishers and I’d have to whizz around different oil rigs. And how do you get to those? I came so close to pulling out when I heard about it but Brian and Todd kept saying helicopters were so much safer than aeroplanes – basically, anything to calm me down. But they hadn’t been in Planet of the Spiders .

We were flying out to the Shetland Isles and from there to an operating rig. You don’t need me to tell you that the weather in the Highlands in winter is not going to be great. Oblivious to the conditions, our director led us out to an airfield in the windiest, wettest conditions I could remember. Waiting for us was the largest helicopter I’ve ever seen in my life. It was a Sikorsky.

‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘this thing will never get off the ground!’

The pilot laughed. ‘Safer than cars, these things.’

Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you? But I climbed on.

We took off with such a lurch I thought I’d left my stomach behind.

The director must have seen my face. ‘It’s not so bad is it?’ he said cheerily.

Then the Sikorsky plummeted about a hundred feet in a second.

‘He’s just flying beneath the clouds,’ my companion advised. ‘It’s safer nearer the water.’

There was a curtain between us and the pilot but I couldn’t resist taking a peep through. Now, I’m no expert on flying, but watching that pilot stamp repeatedly on the floor, as though he were desperately willing the chopper back into the sky, didn’t look textbook to me.

The director had noticed too. ‘Perfectly normal,’ he said quickly, but he wasn’t smiling now.

Somehow we made it down into the middle of nowhere and went out to eat in the one available pub. I was still trying to warm up when the pilot wandered over, grinning from ear to ear.

‘Well, that was a lucky escape,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

I wished I hadn’t asked. There are three tanks of fuel on a Sikorsky and when one is empty, the second and third kick in; that’s the theory. On our one the first tank had finished but there was a blockage in the second and third and the fuel couldn’t get through. That’s why he’d been stamping on the floor – he was trying to unblock it.

‘Yeah,’ the pilot admitted, ‘I was actually preparing to land on the water!’

After that, I couldn’t eat a thing. And I was still feeling sick when I heard this familiar voice.

‘Hello, Lis. It’s been a while.’

I stared at the man in front of me.

‘Dave?’

I couldn’t believe it. Dave Owen, my first boyfriend, was standing in front of me! We hadn’t seen each other for fifteen years and there he was, in army gear. I always knew he’d join the forces – although what they were up to in that particular outpost I had no idea. Dave knew plenty about me, though, from interviews and newspapers. You never quite get used to strangers or people you haven’t seen for ages having an endless supply of facts about your life. I always presume no one’s reading anything I say!

The next morning we had to fly over to the actual oil rig. The Sikorsky was being checked over so we took another helicopter. If the other one had looked too big, this thing was so small it looked like it would be blown down by the first big gust. Somehow I was persuaded on and we made it out to the rig, safe and sound.

Or so I thought.

The moment I stepped out onto that platform in the middle of the North Sea the director announced, ‘Congratulations, Lis. You are officially the first woman in history to set foot on one of these!’

I also discovered that according to old seafaring lore, it was considered bad luck if a woman boarded a vessel. I’m not one for superstitions but when I heard the helicopter we’d arrived in had somehow damaged its rotor on landing, I began to think there might be something in it. There was no way to fix it there, so we were stuck unless another one came out for us. When that chopper arrived, our bird was hogging the single landing spot so, for ten frightening minutes, our pilot had to take off with his damaged rotors and hover just long enough for the other one to put down and deliver the replacement parts. It was terrifying to watch.

Especially knowing that everyone on the rig was blaming me!

Despite their reservations, people were very kind. The food on the rig was delicious but, more importantly, I got a series of insightful interviews with some terrific characters. They took me right down to the bottom of the rig, which was even more nerve-wracking than being in the air. Every so often I get flashbacks of clinging to a post as the waves crashed around – and wonder how the hell they persuaded me!

It was such a release to just be myself for the cameras – even if you never quite do the ‘real’ you – and not to rehearse every last detail and learn pages of lines. Working without a script, using your wits, is very liberating. (Perhaps a little too liberating. I thought it hysterical to find myself talking to a man called Rex about shipping wrecks. I couldn’t say his name enough. ‘Now, Rex, can you tell me about these wrecks, Rex?’ Very unprofessional!)