I can barely get through a shave, let alone see myself on television
- Publication: Radio Times
- Date: 1994-07-30
- Author: Andrew Duncan
- Page: 24
- Language: English
Medics
Tuesday ITV
He was happier playing Doctor Who than a doctor in Medics and Tom Baker still likes to keep the real world switched off
Eccentrics are rare in these timid times, so they should be cherished, even if they do proclaim in advance how difficult they are. "I rarely work twice for anyone and I'm never invited back anywhere. Why is it?" asks Tom Baker. "I don't understand. I wash harder than ever, send my gear to be leaned, but I know I'm ridiculous. That's why I'm an actor. I see myself as a professional diverter, taking people away from the horrors of the world. I can scarcely bring myself to watch the news these days."
Before we "divert", let's try to discuss Medics, in which he stars as surgeon Geoffrey Hoyt, but he is continuing: "I don't like real life because I don't understand it and 'm no good at it. Most people want fantasy, but keep their desire under control. I can't escape entirely but my wife [Sue, a TV director] understands my anxieties and doesn't let much impinge on me. I'm never so real as when I'm entirely fictional, and never so insecure as when I have to be real, which is why I'm garrous and try to amuse. Self delusion gets us through life. I'll invent things if I can't think what to say."
Conversation with him is a captivating series of on sequiturs and progresses at a stately pace with a few friendly insults and bits of advice on the way. He smiles and, apropos of nothing in particular, imparts some unsolicited information. "The best is lace for fellas of our age [he is 61, I am not] to get is picked up is the London School of Archaeology.
hose young crumpet adore old men, the more frazzled and grizzled the better. Sometimes I loiter with the hope of being mistaken for Jonathan Miller. Anything can happen then. Do you know Jeremy Irons?
e's a wonderful cure for insomnia. He wears fantastically beautiful clothes and would have been a great star in the silent movies. It's just when he peaks he's done for. Mind you, most of us are. We should keep quiet, if we can. I read about others and think, 'My God, do I sound like that?' Is it true that people who write profiles are misanthropes? Why is anyone interviewed by these harpies who do hatchet jobs on fellas? They seem to hate men."
Medics ... "Ah yes. This is the third series. I've also done The Russia House and Priestley's Lost Empires on the wireless. I love the wireless. The pay is terrible, but it's so much more immediate - no make-up and you don't have to wear costumes-as well as an excuse to be childlike. I adore stepping into a cat litter tray to make the sound of gravel. One is never disappointed listening to radio, whereas watching television one almost always is. People look so plain, speak badly, are ashamed of their own language, and have no apparent convictions. I don't have any convictions, but I can pretend I have, with terrific conviction. And viewers are distracted by one's thyroid condition or whether you're wearing a suit that reminds them of Uncle Willy. My mother always remarked, 'Our Monica used to have a frock like that.' Actors think television is enormously powerful, but viewers don't really care. I haven't watched anything through since the Six Day War. You don't have to. A 50-minute programme comes on and within five minutes you've got it."
Medics ... "And I'm looking forward to Arsenic and Old Lace on the wireless. It's about two intensely religious ladies who poison old men with wonderful whisky spiked with arsenic. Fortunately, they have a big cellar and a brother who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt-that's me - and who buries the bodies. People adore serial murderers. Anyone can do a one-off. I see passengers on the train who terrorise their wives reading Great Poisoners of Our Time, but the only ones we know about are the incompetents who were discovered. There must be successful ones lurking. What intrigues me about you is you could be on your 19th murder and you're inviting me to lunch in order to get me somewhere so I can be your 20th victim."
Funnily enough, I say, I've always been a bit suspicious of him, living as he does next to a graveyard in a Kent village, lovingly tending the grass. "I like the dead. They're so uncritical." He has bought his own tombstone, but before he dies he imagines he'll have a period in the gutter. "A lot of inadequates have a desire to end up there and I'm infatuated with failure. I treat beggars very well. I came out of a religious bookshop the other day and one said to me, 'So you're a believer?' I shrugged winsomely, and he continued, 'Have you noticed how faith banishes fear and embarrassment? Could you let me have the price of a ticket to Bristol?' Beautifully put,' I replied and gave him all I had. I like to think I'm chosen by the beggars, except so many of them now turn out to be journalists researching documentaries for Channel 4."
He pauses for a second. "Journalists are a pretty repulsive lot, as bad as actors. At least you should have the expertise to give people the impression you're genuinely interested in them, instead of wanting to rip them off which is the fact of the matter. I had to talk on the phone to some girl from What's On TV. God she was dull. Do you realise that this interview could be sold for $25 a tape to the Doctor Who Society in America? They have conventions and I go among them and lay on hands, certainly my life is packed with failure. When I was young I only wanted to be loved. Now I'm into adoration tinged with worship and luckily I have a wife who adores me. The wonderful thing about marriage is you don't have to speak to each other. Good marriages are to do with mind reading and having separate bathrooms. I loved my sons terribly when they were little, but why do I have to go on loving anyone? I stopped loving God, for God's sake. That was a big effort. Sometimes he calls me up. I get these jangling noises in my head — 'Isn't it time we got back together?' Well, we won't. Not unless he offers me a very good part. Have you noticed how vicars don't believe in God? I'm thinking of writing a soap opera about one who does."
Before that, how about Medics? "They asked me back for my second series [he wasn't in the first], which is amazing. However, they changed the producer and directors. The only person who survived was my dresser. The thing is that when you're really inadequate — and I don't want to labour this, you've got to be able to enjoy any old s**t."
Presumably we have moved on from Medics now. "The work may be terrible, or it may be a small part, but like all alchemists you have to make something out of nothing or something better out of
Middle-aged ladies stick their tongues in my ear under the pretext of listening. The odd thing is that after the age of 47 chunky little females have tongues like shrapnel. It makes me slightly deaf. A blessing in disguise in our business."
All right. I give in. Let's discuss Doctor Who, which he starred in from 1974 to 1982, even marrying, and subsequently divorcing, his co-star Lalla Ward. "It was the most wonderful part I ever had and I was a madman to give it up. I got proprietorial and became demanding and insecure. I talk emphatically about everything because I know very little about anything. I never meant to be difficult, but I began to live in the world of the Doctor, this benevolent alien, and thought no one understood me and I'd had enough. But of course I hadn't. I could have gone on for ever. I've never really recovered. They wouldn't give me the film [being made by Steven Spielberg] would they? They won't know how to do it. Popular films are tawdry, about images and not about thinking."
To return to Medics ... "I'm pretty successful in the sense that people know me, but I'd like the applause to be louder. I wanted to be a star, not just an actor, so I thought I'd start by becoming a saint. At 15 I joined a monastery — anything to relieve the boredom of being at home, ashamed of one's parents. The house was dirty because my mother was out cleaning other people's homes. Now I'm ashamed of that attitude. She loved me unconditionally, but gave me rather upsetting advice — 'Tell the truth, keep your bowels open, say your prayers, know your place and always polish your shoes.' My parents [his father was a sailor] didn't speak to each other for nine years. I remember the melodrama, which I liked."
He recalls his mother's dying words. Both she and his father were desperately ill, in adjoining rooms, and he asked her if there was anything she wanted, like perhaps a bag of boiled sweets. "Just one thing," she breathed. "What?" he asked anxiously, and she gleamed temporarily back into the joyful woman he once knew. "I just want to outlive that old goat in the next room." She didn't. She died two weeks earlier than he did.
Baker stayed for six years in the monastery. "I was terribly close to Him, but ended up a martyr to my lust, following my erection, which I called Arnold. I was besotted with my fellow celibates but there was no chance to score. Celibacy induces a kind of madness, but once you have the illness called love, you become a victim. You suffer." A few years later, when he was 26, he married his first wife Anna, daughter of gardening expert Harry Wheatcroft, and they had two sons, now in their 30s, who he doesn't see. "They remind me of their mother, and therefore a failure, but I don't think they can have any bad thoughts about me. Like all dodgers of reality I'm full of self justification, but I've done my best. I'm sure I've disappointed most people and something OK. I only have a very tiny gift — as anyone who has worked with me will tell you —but I do have the capacity to enjoy. I would enjoy washing up in the kitchen here, for a while. People adore tales of woe, much more than comedy. It's terrific to watch others suffering. Casualty is the street accident and everyone running. In Medics, we're more ... well, I only read my bits of the script, and I don't watch it. My God, I can barely get through a shave, let alone see myself on television. Everyone likes the idea of being a doctor. Looking after the sick gives you such a wonderful sense of power. Patients are so grateful and do what they're told — or else. It's amazing to be able to do a little test on someone and then mutter, 'Oh, dear ...' I'd like power, cor yes. I'd abuse it and make people uneasy, particularly those who try to tell me what to do."
He works intermittently on an autobiography, called All Friends Betrayed ". . starting with God. Actually, I don't have friends — I'm a real actor— but my wife has lots and when they come to the house I love serving them. There's something terribly abject about actors and our need to be adored. I'm no good without attention. When I die I'd like people to say, 'He did his best He bought the drinks and gave a generous performance.' "
Caption: Doctor in the house: "I only have a very tiny gift, but I do have the capacity to enjoy"
Caption: Doctor at large: Tom Baker as Doctor Who, with Lalla Ward who he later married and divorced - as his assistant Romana
Disclaimer: These citations are created on-the-fly using primitive parsing techniques. You should double-check all citations. Send feedback to whovian@cuttingsarchive.org
- APA 6th ed.: Duncan, Andrew (1994-07-30). I can barely get through a shave, let alone see myself on television. Radio Times p. 24.
- MLA 7th ed.: Duncan, Andrew. "I can barely get through a shave, let alone see myself on television." Radio Times [add city] 1994-07-30, 24. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: Duncan, Andrew. "I can barely get through a shave, let alone see myself on television." Radio Times, edition, sec., 1994-07-30
- Turabian: Duncan, Andrew. "I can barely get through a shave, let alone see myself on television." Radio Times, 1994-07-30, section, 24 edition.
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