Sladen, Elisabeth - Elisabeth Sladen - The Autobiography

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

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

The producer stared blankly through a fug of smoke.

‘ Who ?’

‘I sent you a letter.’

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

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

‘No.’

‘I can fix that.’

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

Then he asked, ‘Are you married?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Hmm, I can fix that too.’

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

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

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

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

Which was just as well …

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

As a pair of daft non-planners we dared to assume good times were just around the corner for both of us. And we were right – but not in the way we expected.

In the summer of 1984 I went along for my first costume fitting. The designer that day was Jackie Stubbs, who had worked with me on Who . Jackie put down her tape measure and then said, ‘Lis, do you think you should have a pregnancy test?’

‘A what ?’

Jackie could tell I’d put on weight since we last met and that my bust had grown.

‘It’s the only explanation, Lis,’ she said.

In disbelief, I went to a chemist and took three test packs home with me – they all said the same thing.

Our neighbour at the time was Mandy, a sixty-year-old Austrian who had escaped from the Nazis over the Alps. I was always round there knocking back the odd sherry with her and Arnold. That day I was so shocked by the tests I went crying next door, ‘Mandy, I’m pregnant!’

Then I fainted on her kitchen floor.

Shocked as I was, I have to admit it wasn’t an accident. Events over the previous couple of years seemed to have been building up to it. In 1983 Brian had gone into hospital to have a bronchial cyst removed. It wasn’t in any way a life-threatening operation but I distinctly remember leaving his bedside and coming home, opening the front door and thinking, It’s so empty. So quiet. Where are the children?

Brian got a clean bill of health soon after, as expected, and later that year we went to the Greek islands to celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary. What could be more romantic? Then one night we were dining in a beautiful taverna and got talking to the waiter. We explained how long we’d been together and after congratulating us, he said, ‘Where are your children?’

That question again!

It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it took a complete stranger asking that to make us think: Why don’t we have children? The answer, like so many things in our lives, was because we simply hadn’t got round to it. For the first time I questioned whether our policy of not planning anything had been the way to go. And, for the first time, I decided, no. This was something that needed to be planned – and the sooner the better.

So here I was, a year later, recovering in my darling neighbour’s house from the shock of it all. I couldn’t wait to tell Brian when he came home. I planned a fancy meal and even lit the candles – I was going to do this properly.

Then I heard the front door open and before he’d even put his suitcase down I’d blurted it out!

Thirty-eight is pretty old to be starting a family – and it was even more unusual in the 1980s. When I went into hospital for the birth I overheard a matron say, ‘Better keep an eye on this one, put her by the door.’ Thank you so much .

I had a very healthy pregnancy, actually. So healthy that when the invite came a week later to attend a convention in Mobile, Alabama, I thought, Why not? I changed my mind when Brian announced he was too busy to come, but he persuaded me – ‘Go, you’ve got to do it, you’ll have fun!’

But I didn’t want to travel on my own so my agent’s assistant, Barbara, came along for a jolly. I warned her not to expect too much. ‘When Jon and I were on tour last year half the places didn’t even know we were coming, but we’ll have fun,’ I promised.

I have to admit, we had a terrific time. Not only did everyone in Mobile seem to know we were coming, they actually awarded me the Freedom of the City! There was a big ceremony and the Mayor of Mobile handed over a certificate.

As November drew close and the prospect of our annual trip to the Chicago convention loomed, my pregnancy seemed to kick up a gear. About ten days before we flew out, I just exploded – I simply doubled in size. Nothing would fit, so I was hurrying around for new clothes when I should have been getting ready. I remember getting in the lift at the hotel, wearing a pristine white frock, and Frazer Hines stepped in and did a double-take at my bump.