KATY MANNING, Dr Who's pretty companion, should be a junior Diana Rigg. 'I'm supposed to crack safes and pick locks, Avengers-style,' she says. As Jo Grant, she has been adventuring with the Doctor since the New Year — currently they're facing The Daemons (Saturday 6.10 BBC1) — but really I need looking after.'
Though she may exaggerate her helplessness for the cameras, the real-life Katy needs protecting too. 'I'm always in a muddle,' she says, always one step behind myself, but Jon is so stable and marvellous. He's for ever picking up my scripts or whatever it is I've left behind me.'
Jon often drives Katy to rehearsals to make sure she arrives. One day on their way to a location he asked her what route to take. 'I was frowning at the map' she says, when Jon leaned over and said "For goodness sake, Katy don't you think it would help if you looked at the map the right way up? " And reading through the script for The Daemons we found an identical scene had been written in.
'I'm as blind as a bat without my glasses and I fall over a lot,' she says.
We went to film The Terror of the Autons at Dunstable and in my very first episode I had to run across a heap of rubble. Away I went calling my usual lines "Doctor! Doctor!", fell flat on my face and twisted my ankle.'
Though she receives plenty of fan letters, she didn't realise how concerned viewers were about her until she went filming for The Daemons. 'There were always crowds of village children around us and they'd say Jo, are you going to be all right?"'
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