Sladen, Elisabeth - Elisabeth Sladen - The Autobiography

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

Or so I thought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

Ten years after The Five Doctors, and with Doctor Who consigned, or so we thought, to the archives of television history, I never expected to receive another call from John Nathan-Turner. ‘Lissie, it’s thirty years – we need to do something for the fans.’

There he was again with that damn phrase and this time, as well as the stick, he held the added carrot of being part of the BBC’s Children in Need programme. We could potentially raise a lot of money, and having dedicated the last eight years of my life to raising my own daughter it seemed churlish to say ‘no’.

As befits a charity special, it was utterly preposterous. Somehow JNT had conceived of a plot involving all the Doctors – along with the cast of EastEnders ! It was called Dimensions in Time and I was booked to shoot, once again, alongside the Third Doctor. After such fun times on Paradise , I was looking forward to it.

But once again, I was underestimating the power of Pertwee …

The night before the shoot, the Miller family attended a press screening of Sadie’s Royal Celebration . All these kids were running around and it was a really enjoyable evening. Unfortunately, events ended up dragging on and all the while the buffet was sitting under the hot lights. As I was working the next day, I didn’t drink. But a couple of those prawns can’t hurt …

A few hours later and I’d never been sicker. As my morning pickup time of seven o’clock drew closer, it only seemed to get worse. And the thought of squeezing into my Five Doctors costume again after all those years made my empty stomach turn somersaults. Actors rarely have the option of cancelling and somehow I made it to Elstree in one piece, where the makeup girl took one look at me and said, ‘Oh my God, you’re green!’

Oh shit, I thought, I’m really in trouble!

I did the best I could, but Sod’s law, the usually impeccable Jon chose today to keep fluffing his lines, so we were out there in Albert Square for take after take, after take. In a bizarre echo of one of our earliest meetings, he kept calling me Lis instead of Sarah, too. Eventually I couldn’t hold it back any longer. I made my excuses, then legged it round the other side of one of the market stalls and was sick all over again. Completely washed out, I stumbled back.

‘Sorry, everyone,’ I mumbled. ‘I’m really not very well.’

I don’t know what Jon was on, but he turned theatrically to someone else and nonchalantly said, ‘Oh, she always does this!’

What do you mean ‘ always does this’? You’re the one who’s always complaining he’s ill! I thought.

Any other day I would have had him on toast, but this time I was too weak. In any case, the words were barely out of his mouth when he got his karmic reward.

Wendy Richard had appeared on set. As a future Pauline Fowler she was meant to have aged an awful lot, so she was covered in grey powder. ‘Oh my God, darling, Wendy looks rough!’ said Jon.

And I just kept quiet. I thought, If you haven’t read the script, I’m not bloody telling you, you silly sod!

I decided to let him go over and put his foot in it. And he did!

The end result is what it is. In the absence of anything else I think it garnered a lot of interest and fans tell me they enjoyed it. Managing so many mini-plots and myriad time travellers seemed an impossible task but JNT pulled it together. But you wonder why he bothered when nobody else at the BBC seemed to have an interest in the proper show. Who , to the people with the money, was a relic and so was anyone associated with it. We were only good, it appeared, for driving VHS sales – not for investing in with new programmes.

Which makes it all the more satisfying whenever I watch EastEnders and see that market stall. If only the BBC bosses knew …