Sladen, Elisabeth - Elisabeth Sladen - The Autobiography

With the costume people ignoring me I found a new place to hide in the studio. John Leeson had the tiniest space with a curtain cutting it off from the melee. Every chance I got, I popped over.

‘All right, John?’

‘Oh, Lis, do come in!’

I was surprised by another friendly face while we were there. One afternoon I was waiting to go on when I got a tap on one shoulder and a familiar voice said, ‘How’s my favourite assistant?’

It was Chris Barry.

Favourite? I thought. I wish I’d known that when I was working with you!

He was recording in another studio, so we caught up as often as possible to mull over old times or catch up on gossip about mutual acquaintances.

It’s probably quite clear by now that I was no fan of the finished show, but there were positives. I really liked the way the whole thing centred round Aunt Lavinia – who, of course, I had impersonated to gain access to UNIT back in The Time Warrior . So that was nice. The line that came after I unpacked K-9 gave even better continuity.

‘Oh, you didn’t forget!’

It meant nothing to me at the time but I now know this was a direct reference to my closing conversation with the Doctor back in The Hand of Fear .

Hiccoughs and hitches besieged the show right up to broadcast. It had been scheduled to go out on 23 December 1981 to the highest possible audience. Two weeks earlier it was mysteriously bumped back to 28 December – traditionally a veritable viewing wasteland. It didn’t stop there. On the evening of 28 December, a failing of the Winter Hill transmitter meant the entire northwest of England was without coverage. In the event, the 8.4 million viewers scored was an incredible achievement. Despite my misgivings, it augured extremely well for a future series.

JNT rang me a few weeks later with the news. There had been a change of faces at the top of the Beeb – the new suits wanted to distance themselves from Who . Despite the spectacular viewing figures, the answer was therefore negative: we would not be getting a series.

It was a body blow, if I’m honest. I don’t think I turned in the best performance but in the face of the problems, we did all right. The series would only have got better but the decision had been made.

So that was that , I thought. I’d brought Sarah back and it hadn’t worked. Back to the mothballs for her …

On the plus side: at least I’d never have to set eyes on that bloody dog again!

Chapter Fourteen

Think Of The Fans

THE FIRST time I walked away from Doctor Who it was with a spring in my step. Now I was dragging my heels. I hadn’t had the best time on K-9 and Company . On the other hand, if the show had gone to series we could have achieved some spectacular things, I was sure of it. Despite my own misgivings, I could tell from my fan mail that K-9 was a massive hit with kids. No one could explain why we weren’t being commissioned for more.

I’m not one to dwell. The only way to cope with disappointment is to put your head down and work – but where? The answer, I realised, was Bristol. Brian had been there quite a lot recently under the direction of Little Theatre boss David Neilson. ‘Come down,’ he enthused. ‘You won’t be disappointed.’

If David’s name seems familiar, you’ll probably recognise him as Roy Cropper from Coronation Street . Roy’s one of the comedy staples in Corrie and David’s hysterical in real life – but in a completely different way to Roy. There’s none of the pushover about him. He’s utterly in control; a really, really great director and a terrific actor.

As well as being with Brian, the big draw for me in Bristol was the chance to do Twelfth Night again. That was the play in which we’d met. What a perfect play in which to share the stage again?

Then Brian’s agent rang and said, ‘You’ve got a part in a TV series’, and all that romanticism flew out the window.

‘You’ve got to take the telly – it’s four times the money and half the work,’ I conceded.

So that was the end of our little commemoration.

Brian had been slated to play Feste while I was offered Olivia or Viola. I have always wanted to play Viola. If I’ve got any dreams in acting, that would be one. Then I looked at the rest of the cast. If I was being honest, there was another girl in the company who was born to play her. The idea of her playing Olivia was laughable, really, whereas I could get away with either. So that was the end of another dream. I took one for the team and donned my Olivia frock. Thirty years later my chance of playing Viola has probably sailed.

I faced another casting conundrum with the next play. It was a new piece, called Comic Cuts , by Steven Mallatrat (who as a Corrie writer would go on to recommend David Neilson for the show). The advantage of being in a company is you get the pick of the parts. I would never be cast as June in an open casting and by the time Comic Cuts reached the West End I’d been replaced by Janine Duvitski, Angus Deayton’s wife in One Foot in the Grave . I can’t have any complaints – if she walked through the door now you’d think, Yes, she’s June .

Then it was time for panto. Steven had written a modern-day Robin Hood update that was genuinely hysterical. I played Mrs Ross, a podgy thing with twenty children, so I was padded up to the eyeballs. It was just as well because I had to learn a fight sequence with Tim Stern, who played my husband. We rolled all over the stage in a proper slapstick wrestling match. Each night I got up covered in dirt and dust, sweating from the padding. I loved it!

Despite the high calibre of production, the Little Theatre was in financial difficulties – there was actually talk of Robin Hood not making it on to the stage. Then David and his backers came to us with a proposal: if we could all work unpaid for a month, that would provide enough cash to fund their next production, an adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ When the Wind Blows . No guarantees but they were confident the show would be snapped up for the West End – and the money would start flowing in then.

So that’s what happened. We worked for nothing so that the money could go into sets for When the Wind Blows . How many other professions are asked to do these things? Sure enough, it was quickly chosen for a London run and our cheques arrived within weeks. When you know the people involved it makes gambles like that less scary.

* * *

Occasionally, of course, knowing the people involved can evoke quite different emotions. I nearly froze when I got a message that John Nathan-Turner was trying to contact me. Haven’t you banged enough nails into Sarah Jane’s coffin?

Of course if I’d paid attention to the letters I’d been receiving, then I would have known what he wanted. For months, fans had been writing to me to ask, ‘Is there going to be anything to mark the twentieth anniversary of Doctor Who ?’ and I had duly replied, ‘Nothing that I’m involved with.’ But I forgot how rapidly the BBC works. Almost knee-jerky, you might say! It was as though they woke up one morning and thought, Christ, we need to do something!

So that was what Nathan-Turner wanted to speak to me about. They were doing a Special called The Five Doctors – featuring all incarnations of the Doctor, with their companions, being plucked out of time to compete in the deadly game of Rassilon in the spookily named Death Zone on Gallifrey. In order to make it work they were trying to reunite as many of the main men and their sidekicks as possible. The late William Hartnell was to be replaced by Richard Hurndall, but otherwise we were all on board. Tom Baker’s companion would be Lalla Ward – whom he’d recently married – and so I would tag team with Jon Pertwee.