My perfect day
- Publication: Today
- Date: 1994-08-06
- Author:
- Page:
- Language: English
TOM BAKER
Interview by Yvonne Swann
Tom Baker is currently starring in Medics, Wednesdays, ITV
Where
I'd spend most of my perfect day in All Saints' churchyard in Maidstone, Kent. It's just 15 miles from my house and one of my favourite places. I always feel so at home with the deceased. You can keep the living - give me the dead every time. I'd sit there, read the gravestones and imagine their owners' lives.
With
Well, obviously I'd much rather be with someone dead, but there are all sorts of degrees of death - so I could take an actor about my age along with me. Then I could look at him and think: "You can keep your organs, it's your parts I'm after."
Music
I like religious music - Gregorian 1.131%; chants and requiems. Anything sad like that. I also quite like a CD somebody sent me featuring a selection of music from various TV soaps. It makes me laugh.
Film
Back home, after my graveyard vigil, I'd like to watch The General, starring Buster Keaton. I'm a great fan of his. I also like The Maltese Falcon with Sidney Greenstreet. Ile was so fat, complicated, twinkly and dangerous.
Book
I like shocking books. One of my best reads is Great Poisoners in the Married State, written in 1934 by Gregoire Harman, about men who poisoned their wives. Not that there can ever be a book about the really great poisoners, because they would be the ones who were never found out.
Food
I'm not really interested in food. I was born in 1934 and brought up on pretty ordinary fare. So on my perfect day I'd have bread and butter. That's my favourite. I also like marmalade.
Drink
I don't drink very much, but I love giving other people red wine. It has a wonderful effect on them, especially Penfold Grange 1984. I drink up to 30 cups of Tetley's tea a day, which ruins our mugs. I had to smash one the other day because the tea stains wouldn't come off even with a scourer.
Activity
On my perfect day I'd do loads of ironing. It's my great passion. I do it all except or my wife's silk shirts. Elaborate pillowcases and duvet covers are a treat for me. I even iron the towels. I wouldn't part with my Rowenta for anything.
Dress
Except when I'm working I always wear the same cheap things. I'm in nylon and cotton cricket clothes most of the time. My wife is disgusted, but I like the gear and have a great quantity so that I can change several times a day and still look exactly the same.
Luxury
My luxury at the end of this superbly happy day will be to go to the churchyard next door to my house at twilight to gaze at my gravestone. I'm very thrifty and have had it engraved in advance. I'll just stand by it and wonder what life's all about. Maybe on this perfect day I'll get a perfect answer.
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