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Dr Who was the best job but I wish I'd been a comedian instead

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As Tom Baker's career enjoys a new incarnation, thanks to a cult radio show, the former Time Lord reveals his one big regret in life


TOM BAKER had a letter the other clay from a fan. It read 'Dear Tom Baker. I was having a drink with my boyfriend Ralph and we were talking about depression, disillusionment and the anxiety of growing old and your name came up. Ralph remarked to me that you had died in 1986.1 was quite startled by this. Is this true, sir? Yours sincerely. Richard Rick'

Baker sat down and wrote the following reply 'Dear Richard Rich, my name is Michael O'Boyle and Cm the secretary of the Tom Baker Friendship _Society I just want to tell yell that 'Ralph is quite right Tom Baker did die in 1986. But we're in regular contact with him through table-rapping etc. He appears to be happy wherever he is and I'm sure he would send his best wishes.'

The man still remembered as the definitive Doctor Who (even though three actors succeeded him in the role) roars with laughter as he tells the tale. He laughs a lot these days. "I'm 68 and the older I get, the more I want to laugh.' he says. In fact, he now thinks he'd have been better off as a comedian.

"I never thought of myself as an actor. I always wanted to be an entertainer really, but I didn't know how to do it So, after the army I went to drama school and became an actor - but I'd have been much happier as a stand-up comic."

Perhaps there is still time. For Tom Baker who has regenerated himself more times than the Doctor himself - is undergoing his latest and most dramatic rebirth, as a comic icon.

Baker was born in Liverpool. where his mother was a cleaner and barmaid and his father a sailor In his first reinvention, he ran away at 15 to become a monk. But he hated the celibacy and, after five years. left the monastery

After drama school, he married Anna Wheatcroft and had two children but her wealthy parents hated him. He claims be tried to murder his mother-in-law by throwing garden implements at her. Divorce followed, and a suicide attempt

His career seemed to take off when he played Rasputin in the Oscar-winning Nicholas And Alexandra_ and he was nominated for Golden Globes for best supporting actor and best newcomer (he is too modest when he says that 'everything I've done has been a failure, except Doctor Who"). But he returned to unemployment and his lowest ebb. He was working as a builder's labourer when, in 1974, he was asked to replace ton Pertwee as the Doctor.

There followed seven glorious years in which he stomped in and out of his police-box Tardis in his long coat and lager scarf, booming at companions such as Mary Tamm,. Louise Jameson and Lalla Ward (who became, briefly and disastrously his second wife) and being trailed around by the robot dog K9, a cheap-and-cheerful forerunner of Star Wars' R2D2.

He eventually found personal happiness in his marriage to TV producer Sue Jerrard, with whom he shares a home in Kent. He worked prolifically on stage and screen, with TV roles including Sherlock Holmes in The Hound Of The Baskervilles and a hospital surgeon in the long-running series Medics. But he is the first to admit that none of it approached the profile of his glory days.

But now, suddenly, he is everywhere again. He has become a national treasure, evoking for thirty- and fortysome things the same kind of cosy nostalgia that the Queen Mother represented for the wartime generation. And it has all happened thanks to a programme in which he does not even appear.

Dead Ringers, which was recently made into a TV one-off, started life as an impressions show on Radio 4. It became cult listening, not least because of its trademark last sketch. This involves a hoax telephone call from a perfect Tom Baker sound-alike, Jon Culshaw„ who phones a real-life hotel clerk or minicab office and tries to make a booking in the name of 'The Doctor'. The possibilities - wrangling over the postcode of Gallifrey or trying to arrange a cab to arrive 10,000 years ago - are endless.

The joke went a stage further when Culshaw phoned Baker himself, giving listeners the treat of hearing two Doctors talking to one another. Baker had never heard the programme but he played along anyway. By the end, it was hard in tell who was parodying who.

'They caught me on my mobile because someone at the BBC betrayed me and gave them my number.' he says. with mock hurt '1 realised they were taking the mickey and I thought I have to go along with it I take the mickey out of other people so why shouldn't they do the same to me?'

HE FURTHER showed he could take the joke by agreeing to appear opposite Culshaw on a TV show called Alter Ego. and the modern cult of Baker was born. He is now more in demand than ever for voiceover work and, tonight. he fronts a Discovery Channel documentary on comic-book superheroes.

Unfortunately the Time Lord himself is not included, though Baker thinks he should have been. 'I'm a comic-strip hero because there is a Doctor Who Marvel comic. Cm a sort of Superman,' he says. He narrates the programme with an eye-roiling enthusiasm so over-the-top it makes Graham Norton look restrained It is as if Dead Ringers has given him the licence to send himself up even more than Culshaw does.

In fact, it is hard to imagine anoxic taking themselves less seriously Ever the eccentric, he eschews the offer of being wined and dined at a top London hotel insisting instead on meeting in a sandwich shop, which he treats as his local You have the sense that be says the first thing that conies into his head just because it is more fun that way. He says his ambition is to star as Lady Bracknell in a New Orleans, jazz-age version of The Importance Of Being Earnest. He also observes: "I'm just a parody of Mae West, really"

And while he once boasted in his autobiography about how much sex he was offered when he was a Time Lord, he is now the first to admit that his admirers have aged as much as he has,

"When you live in the country it's so boring that you find yourself going to Tesco and Sainsbury's a lot. They are my day centres. I have these little flirting contacts with old ladies over 86. One of them saw me recently and gasped. I asked what was the matter and she said, 'When my grandchildren were little they used to get frightened when you were on television and would bury their head in my bosoms. When I saw you now, my bosoms tingled just like they did all those years ago'. And her eyes filled with tears and ruined her mascara." As with all stand-up comics, you never quite know if he is making all this up. He goes to bed early and says his passion in life is ironing. "I am a terrific ironer. If! see anything I want to iron it. Just looking at your shirt, I wish I had my Rowenta with me."

He gets serious for a galactic nano-second. "I've been talking light-heartedly, but Doctor Who was such a lovely job. Sometimes people say it must be terrible just to be known for one thing, but I don't mind a bit because it was such a lovely thing to do."

He doesn't attend many fan conventions and, of his Doctor role successors, the only one he knows well is Sylvester McCoy. But after our appointment he is off to have lunch with the partner of the long-term Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner, who died recently. "He was my producer in the last season I did and I didn't much care for his style. I didn't dislike him but I didn't care for him," he says, with surprising candour. "Yet, after I left, we became very close and I suddenly saw how nice he was."

BAKER loves the fact that he is being given work by TV producers who hid behind the sofa when they were children —and, in some cases, they still are hiding there. He tells of walking into a production office the other day to find it deserted. "It was furnished like somebody's sitting room, very smart. There was nobody there and I said 'Hello?' and the producer popped up from behind the sofa. He said he had always wanted to do it and that was why he had given me the job." He loved the joke.

So all is well in the world of Tom Baker. He even sees his sons again, after a gap of nearly 30 years, having bumped into one of them in a restaurant in New Zealand four years ago.

There is only one person who doesn't seem to value him. Ten days after writing his spoof reply to Richard Rich, he received a letter back: "Dear Michael O'Boyle, thank you very much for confirming the death of Tom Baker in 1986. When you're next table-rapping with him, would you ask who his favourite companion was?"

"No tears!" Baker booms in outrage. "No bloody sorrow." And then he strides off, his coat flapping around his knees.

Top Ten Comic Book Heroes is on the Discovery Channel tonight at 8.30pm.


Caption: WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED: Tom Baker enjoyed a hugely successful seven-year stint In Doctor Who, starting with a host of beautiful assistants including Louise Jameson

Caption: TIME TRAVELLER: Tom with his Doctor Who co-star and ex-wife Lana Ward, top, and as Sherlock Holmes in ITV's Baskervilles, above

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  • APA 6th ed.: Edge, Simon (2002-06-05). Dr Who was the best job but I wish I'd been a comedian instead. Daily Express p. 30.
  • MLA 7th ed.: Edge, Simon. "Dr Who was the best job but I wish I'd been a comedian instead." Daily Express [add city] 2002-06-05, 30. Print.
  • Chicago 15th ed.: Edge, Simon. "Dr Who was the best job but I wish I'd been a comedian instead." Daily Express, edition, sec., 2002-06-05
  • Turabian: Edge, Simon. "Dr Who was the best job but I wish I'd been a comedian instead." Daily Express, 2002-06-05, section, 30 edition.
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