As an adult I was privileged to know Elisabeth Sladen.
David Tennant
September 2011
Prologue
I Wouldn’t Have Missed It For The World
IT SHOULD have been the happiest day of my life.
Sweeping up to the front door in a vintage white Rolls, a vision in ivory, from the flower in my hair to the heels on my feet; this was the moment I’d been waiting for all my life.
I entered the hall and saw him waiting: the man of my dreams. I stared into his eyes and the world melted away. Nothing else mattered. Not our guests – neighbours, an old editor, my hairdresser and accountant – or my trusty dog hidden under the table. Not even my son, who had given me away. Those people were my past. My future was standing next to me. In a few minutes it would all be over and we would be together. Forever.
Finally, the wedding music stopped and the ceremony began. The registrar’s words drifted past like clouds; she could have been saying anything. I wished she’d hurry up.
Just a few more seconds …
The formalities continued: ‘If any person can show just cause or impediment why they may not be joined together, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.’ Nearly there, I thought, just a few more moments.
And then the skinny man in the blue suit ruined everything with four simple words.
‘Stop this wedding – now!’
* * *
‘And cut!’
Thank God for that. I could finally breathe. A prop it might have been, but my beautiful frock was as uncompromisingly tight as a real wedding dress. After all, no one wants to look anything short of their best on their special day – even if it is only make believe.
It was May 2009. We were shooting The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith and the skinny man in the blue suit, none other than David Tennant, had just blown the doors off our show. It was an incredible entrance, so passionate, so electric and so above and beyond anything we might have expected considering he was coming to us direct from filming his last moments as the Tenth Doctor. You knew he could smell the freedom, almost touch the fresh pastures. But first … Seriously, no one on The Sarah Jane Adventures would have been surprised if he’d turned in a more low-key performance. To be honest, we were just grateful he’d actually turned up at all. But David – and the Doctor – always delivers (even when he almost certainly didn’t want to be there, but more of that later).
Back in my trailer, after an amazing first day with our guest star, I had to pinch myself. Was it really more than thirty years since I had first stepped into the TARDIS – and into the living rooms of millions of viewers? It seemed like yesterday, but that’s time travel for you. In fact, even though I’d said goodbye to relative dimensions in space in 1976, my character, Sarah Jane Smith, seemed to have lived on in the memories and hearts of so many fans. I don’t know why she was so popular, but the letters from new generations of audiences never dried up, not when I left Doctor Who, not even when the show was finally taken off air in 1989. People always cared about Sarah, and no one more so than the wonderful Russell T Davies, who not only brought her back in 2006 but also created an entire show for her.
My show.
And here was David Tennant starring in it. You really do have to check it’s not a dream sometimes. I wasn’t in David’s show. He was in mine. Mine! The Sarah Jane Adventures, for goodness’ sake.
At the point Russell had rung to ask if I’d return for David’s first series, I was actually retired. I had certainly left the Doctor long behind, especially so far as television was concerned. But Russell wanted me back and, as soon as I’d spent one moment in his company and experienced his enthusiasm and – let’s face it – his genius, I wanted me to come back as well.
And here we were, three years later. Little Sarah Jane Smith, wide-eyed, obstreperous Sarah Jane Smith had gone from pretending to be her Aunt Lavinia – RIP, Auntie – to leading her own band of junior alien-battlers – and topping the viewing figures for BBC1’s children’s programming in the process. Who saw that coming when I was shuffle-step-changing as a teenage dancer? Who saw that around the corner when I was sweeping the stage at the Liverpool Playhouse in the hope of winning a line or two? Or when I was the non-speaking attendant in Twelfth Night, the figure of Alan Ayckbourn’s mocking in Scarborough, or Elsie Tanner’s whipping girl in Coronation Street? Who looked at young Lis Sladen, starving and cold in Clapham in the early 1970s, and predicted the fever pitch that would accompany her appearances at conventions the world over so many decades later?
Doctor Who has given me so much. Not just me, in fact. International adoration of Sarah Jane and the show has taken me and my family all over the world. Like a lot of wonderful actors, my husband, Brian Miller, has appeared in Doctor Who several times (as well as in The Sarah Jane Adventures) – no thanks to me, mind – while Sadie, our daughter, also starred with me in the Sarah Jane Smith audio plays. Even before that, Sadie had her own fan club, thanks to her mother’s association with Sarah Jane. She’s been signing autographs for as long as she could hold a pen and receiving fan mail for even longer. Seriously, what other programme in the world could have given her that?
So, why does it happen? What makes Doctor Who so special? You have to start with the story of course, and the characters, and then there’s the writing, and the effects, and so, so much more. Honestly, though, I think the main difference is the fans. When you’ve been carried over the heads of thousands of cheering Americans at an LA convention – despite having not been in the show for half a decade – you realise you’re in the presence of truly passionate people. It’s like that all over the world – Who fans pop up in the most unlikely places. In fact, I’m sure I only got invited to audition for Peak Practice because the producer had been such a fan as a boy!
Over the years, thanks to Who, I’ve met hundreds of wonderful people, worked with many of them and, sadly, said goodbye, ahead of time, to some. Jon Pertwee, John Nathan-Turner and, of course, the wonderful Barry Letts (without whom …), truly memorable pals, one and all.
It hasn’t always been easy, of course, for three years’ work in the 1970s do not a career make. At times it’s been a struggle. On other occasions I’ve fallen into jobs without looking. There’s never been a plan, I’m proud of that; never been a strategy to achieve this by then. And yet here I am, in 2011, star of my own show and with new fans arriving from all points of the globe every minute of the day. I may not always have loved it, I may not at times have even liked my character, but one thing I do know. As Sarah says to David’s Doctor at the end of her comeback School Reunion episode: ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’
Chapter One
‘S’ Is For ‘Star’
JON PERTWEE, like the Doctor he portrayed, was very much what you would call a ‘man’s man’. He got off on gadgets, fast cars and physical challenges – anything that got the adrenaline pumping.
I don’t think it was any coincidence that Jon’s time on Doctor Who saw the introduction of Bessie, his beloved canary-yellow roadster, the space-age Whomobile and all manner of car, speedboat and helicopter chases. And whereas his predecessors usually took flight at the first sign of fisticuffs, how many of Jon’s fans were left disappointed if an episode didn’t feature a swift demonstration of his trademark fictional martial art, ‘Venusian Aikido’?