IF 18-year-old Matthew Waterhouse's acting career continues as luckily as it has started, he is set for a bright future.
Without any professional training, Matthew has been chosen as Dr Who's new partner.
He is introduced as a cheeky alien called Adric to the 12 million "Dr Who" viewers tonight (BBC1, 5.40 p.m.)
Matthew was picked by producer John Nathan-Turner after reading from a "Dr Who" script in his BBC office.
He will become Tom Baker's first male assistant ; actress Lalla Ward, his present assistant Romana, will eventually leave the series.
Matthew is obviously a determined youngster. He landed his first TV role by writing to a casting director while working in another BBC department for filing newspaper cuttings.
This led to his first professional acting job—the small part of Briarley in "To Serve Them All My Days."
Then he heard the BBC were looking for a boy to join Dr Who. " So I applied for an audition and got the job," explained Matthew, a barrister's son living at Hay-ward's Heath.
• Tonight's "Dr Who" episode is also an important milestone for another teenager ... 18-year-old Andrew Smith from Glasgow.
He has written a special adventure story entitled "Full Circle" for the Doctor and his new partner Matthew.
It is also his first full-length script to be produced for TV and will be featured as the next four episodes.
Disclaimer: These citations are created on-the-fly using primitive parsing techniques. You should double-check all citations. Send feedback to whovian@cuttingsarchive.org
