(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) I was never a great fan of Doctor Who because, uh, it was always on at 5:1 5 on a Saturday afternoon and I was always at the races.
I was at Sandown Park or Kempton or I'd be doing the ITV Seven, whatever it was, and dash down to the betting shop to catch the last two races whether it's to try and make some more winnings up, or make my losses up or whatever.
So, but I knew I was obviously very aware of it.
Uh, then I was doing a BBC job and Maureen O'Brien got the part, I think, of, um, the female assistant and I sort of thought she was very attractive, very pretty.
So I started to watch it for Maureen O'Brien because we didn't have video recorders in those day, you had to watch it and that was it.
So, I think she, sort of, got me, sort of, hooked on it.
The Tardis was just this sort of Well, when you've seen it on television, it looked fantastic but the first time I ever saw the Tardis was I think at Frensham Ponds, which I think was the travelling Tardis.
I think there was one in the studio and this is the one used to go on locations, you know, it stayed at the best hotels and everything.
It was all motheaten and, you know, chipped and there was a bit of white paint.
It could do with a good lick of paint and the things were falling apart.
And if there was four of you had to get in it, you open the door and the first person has to go like that and the second person had to go It was great if Jamie had to get in and three girls.
That was great fun.
But if you were getting in with a Brigadier, Patrick and another man, it wasn't much fun.
Particularly as I was the girl, 'cause I had the kilt on, so it wasn't so much fun at all.
(CHUCKLES) The Tardis is just a little small box, you know.
But it's bigger in the studio.
It was in Lime Grove.
It was a lot bigger in Lime Grove.
(CHUCKLES) That sounded like two warthogs, the male warthog chatting a female warthog up with a hippo trying to get in on the act, I think.
(GRUNTING AND SQUEALING) And then the hippo would join in.
(LAUGHING) (TARDIS WHOOSHING) The monsters, uh, some were brilliant.
Uh, the Ice Warriors were first brought in withwith Patrick.
And we had Bernard Bresslaw, a lovely man.
No longer with us.
And he invented this (HISSING) .
.
way of talking.
Uh, and they were good, except they were bolted in.
Once you were an Ice Warrior, you were bolted into your costume.
This huge sort of, um, plastic seat, which is very off-putting because if Bernie had done his scene and wandered off, he couldn't be brought out of his costume.
You'd be doing a serious scene with Patrick and then just off camera, there would be this Ice Warrior with his dresser who had got this sh**ting stick rammed up his bum so he could lean back onto it 'Cause he couldn't sit down on it.
reading The Sporting Life, so it was a bit like You're trying to do this serious scene, and there's an Ice Warrior, you know, leaning on Could be at the races at Sandown Park, going, ''Who's going to win today?
'' The Daleks were great fun.
I couldn't wait, you know, because every time we got a new story, I was like, ''Is it the Daleks?
'' ''No, it's not the Daleks here, Frazer, not Daleks.
'' Always wanted to ride in a Dalek and I got a chance to actually ride in a Dalek.
There's an unwritten law, you must never touch the props, 'cause you might break them.
And one lunch hour, I crept back to the studio, climbed in this Dalek, pulled the lid down, and I was walking around (IMITATES DALEK) Exterminate.
Exterminate.
And I suddenly heard somebody coming.
I thought, ''Uh-oh.
'' Could get told off here so I just sat in this Dalek.
It was two actors.
And they lent on me, not knowing that I was inside it.
And they started to slag the programme off, the director couldn't direct a pig to be dirty, the script is rubbish, this, that and the other.
After about five minutes, ''I heard that.
I am going to tell,'' and I walked away and they fell over.
And they chased me around the studio.
''Who is it?
Who is it?
'' (IMITATING DALEK) ''No, I'm going to tell the producer.
''I'm telling.
You are sacked, you are sacked.
'' And it must have been just like going to a hotel room leaning on a wardrobe for five minutes, the wardrobe suddenly walks away.
There's this inanimate object just sort of ran off.
I got free beers for the whole week, you know, from those two actors.
It was great.
The Cybermen I found those quite scary because You couldn't see an actor's lips with green scale moving.
It was just that sort of that straight slit.
And they are always tall, uh, I mean, Patrick, Wendy and I and Debbie were always short anyway, but you always had to look up to these sort of stare-y eyes.
And their costumes got better and better but I think they were quite frightening.
The worst ones we ever had was the Krotons.
We called them ''the croutons'' 'cause they were square.
And it was a story that was brought in at the last minute.
Uh, we were supposed to do one like a prison in space um, where we were captured and it was run by women.
All in sort of leather short pants and leather jackets and I am getting nostalgia just reading about it.
And we couldn't do it, for some reason.
They thought it might be too Too risque.
So we had the Krotons, or the croutons and It was during apartheid (WITH SOUTH-AFRICAN ACCENT) so they had this quite, kind of, South African accent, ''We are the Gonds.
The Gonds are here.
Let us get them.
'' I found that story not sort of We just We felt, all of us, it was just tagged on the end.
Black-and-white to me is more scary than colour.
If you've seen these old black-and-white movies and somebody gets shot, the blood pours out In colour, it's either too pink, too red, too dark, whatever But I think it was the black and that white was scary There is more shadows in black-and-white.
That's my opinion.
You can get more shadows than you can in colour.
Unless you lit it and take four hours to light one particular shot for a film, which you didn't have the luxury on a Doctor Who set.
I can never remember it being that scary.
(SCREAMING) It was believable.
I mean, Patrick, I always think that you always felt at the end of an episode, if he was trapped, yes, he could die that week.
He had this sort of wonderful way of being comedic and dramatic and, uh You felt he could die, but I neverI could never believe people were actually hiding behind settees, but they were.
They were hiding behind settees.
'Cause we tried to bring a little bit of humour into it as well.
And we'dwe'd do something wrong.
If there's something in the script, we'd say, ''We'll alter it.
'' So the trying to get this audience participation They go, ''No, no, no.
Go to the left.
Go to the left.
'' Shouting at the TV screen, ''Look, they've gone to the right, you see.
'' We'd purposely sort of do something wrong.
When my agent said, ''They've asked you to do'' 'Cause it was For me, I didn't have to audition for it, they just rang my agent, um, 'cause I had worked with Shaun Sutton, who was the head of children's TV when I was a little boy and Shaun had used me a lot.
And I think when Jamie came up, he said, ''Well, Frazer Hines can do a Scottish accent.
'' And I didn't know this but they had an idea that if Jamie's character took off, he would go and be a member of the Tardis crew.
So Innes took me aside one day after rehearsals ''Now then, Frazer, old boy'' His pipe.
''Now then, Frazer, old boy, uh ''Fancy joining the old Tardis crew for a while?
''A year or two?
A little spell.
'' I said, ''I would love to.
'' ''Okay, welcome aboard, welcome aboard.
You're in the crew now.
'' Hugh David was directing The Highlanders, and we all had to have rope put round our neck.
And they said, ''All right, take the strain.
'' And I said to Hugh David, ''If they say, 'Take the strain,' ''they're pulling on our neck, ''so shouldn't we actually go up on our tiptoes?
'' And he said, ''Of course, good idea.
'' He said, ''I have a shot of all the feet.
''Yours, the Doctor's feet, the laird's feet.
''Take the strain and go on to tiptoe.
'' That was shot, got to Australia.
''Hey, can't have that, uh, that's No, that's frightening.
'' The Australians cut that bit out.
Jamie McCrimmon was, um, a piper.
Um, at the Battle of Culloden.
And in actual fact, those six episodes Not knowing I was going to go on.
I did a Highland accent and so did, um, all the other actors.
(GENTLE SCOTTISH ACCENT) And a Highland accent is rather like this ''Doctor, you'll be having a cup of tea.
'' A bit like Barbara Mullen and that kind of accent, like that.
And I was saying, ''Oh, Doctor, this is Polly in bed.
'' and when I became a member of the crew, I thought, ''Oh, no.
'' After a while, people'll get annoyed of this sing-song and if it sells abroad, they won't think that's so Scottish.
So, I slowly adapted him into this sort of television, uh, Scottish accent.
But he He was, uh, he was just a Highland piper and from 1 746.
And, of course, brought into the Tardis, um, but he He was, in a way, quick to learn.
He wasn't frightened of things.
You know, he trusted the Doctor completely.
Whereas a lot of people might be frightened.
Although when we landed at Gatwick Airport, ''Doctor, there's a big flying beastie.
'' You know, it was an aeroplane and He could say lovely lines like that.
And he was a wonderful character.
You know, great to play.
Patrick and I would look for the comedy and even the little things that we would do in rehearsal, like grabbing hold of I'd go, ''Doctor'' On the Tardis ''No, Jamie.
''I'm the pilot, you You're just the hairy-legged Highlander,'' kind of thing.
All I know is that thing came on.
Now I've not taken to seeing things.
At least I don't think I have.
We were walking down the street in one episode.
We've started to get followed by this car.
And it just said, ''They run.
'' But Patrick and I said, ''No, we'll do that'' And we started to walk.
Then walk a bit faster.
Then walk a bit faster.
Then in the end, we go We are running like the Road Runner.
(IMITATES ROAD RUNNER) And this car is chasing us.
We try to get that little bit of humour into it and, uh There are times when Jamie might be sort of quite cowardly.
But he knows, ''Oh, no, Doctor, if we go down that road, ''we are going to get into trouble.
''Can we just not stay here and have a sandwich?
'' ''No, Jamie, no, Jamie, we are going down that'' We had a running gag that, um In the Emperor Dalek, which is a huge Dalek, almost the size of the studio.
And the Daleks had this sphericals all the way around the side.
And my line was, ''Look at the balls on that thing, Doctor.
'' ''Yes, Jamie, it is a big one, isn't it?
'' Well, we just could not We could not say it at all for laughing.
And the director, I think it was Paddy Russell, tearing her hair out, saying, ''For God's sake, you're grown men, stop Stop fooling'' In the end I had to say, ''Look at the size of that thing, Doctor.
'' ''Yes, Jamie, it is a big one, isn't it?
'' And that became like a running gag, so every story, we'd try to start off with Jamie saying, ''Look at the size of that thing, Doctor.
'' And when we did The Two Doctors, it said, ''Jamie says, 'Look at the size of that space station,''' and I changed it.
And John Nathan-Turner said, ''Oh, no, hang on.
'' Producers' run.
It says, ''Look at the size of the space station.
'' And Patrick said, ''No, no, John.
At the start of every show, ''Jamie always says 'Look at the size of that thing, Doctor,' ''and I say, 'Yes, it is a big one, isn't it?
' ''We always do that.
It's a running gag.
'' JAMIE: Look at the size of that thing, Doctor.
Yes, Jamie, it is a big one.
HINES: We just We sneaked it in.
We had a sneaky way of doing that.
If we wanted to get a gag in on a producers' run, uh, Peter Bryant or whoever the producer was.
Or Derrick Sherwin.
If you did a gag, they go (GRUMBLING) They'd have their script, scrub it out.
So we'd do a really awful gag just before the gag we wanted to come in.
So they go (TUTTING) and as they're scribbling that down, we'd slip the other one in while they're writing that one.
And by the time you got to the studio, it was too late then because the camera scripts had been written and typed out.
Didn't have time to change it.
The ladies loved him.
He They You know.
And he wasn't most attractive man.
He wasn't tall He could charm the birds out of the trees.
The women, they fell over themselves to get to him.
The makeup girls, the prop girls Everybody, you know, he And he was a lovely man.
Uh, great sense of humour.
And not Not cracking-gags sense of humour, but a very dry sense.
Very eccentric.
He had these Hush Puppies on that he always wore at rehearsals.
And I It took me about six months to realise that those were the same Hush Puppies he wore as the Doctor.
Those were his own shoes.
And he had so many women in tow.
On a Friday night, he'd gave me a lift home.
He'd pop into one house with a bunch of pound notes, and, ''Who's that?
'' ''Oh, that's my first wife.
'' Go to another house and ''Who's that?
'' ''That's my second wife, got three children there.
'' And then, ''Who's this?
'' ''Oh, that's Bunny, my new girlfriend.
'' You know, he'd be dropping money off all these sort of houses.
And But he was He wasn't, um big-headed, anyway.
It was only towards the last three months that I realised he was a very good artist.
He was a very good painter.
I didn't He never said, ''I paint at the weekends, I do this, I do that.
'' He never talked about the w*r years, either.
But apparently he was a very good, um, motor torpedo boat captain, as well.
But, no,just great fun.
We We in the end, we'd got this telepathy that we'd just look at each other.
We'd know what each other was thinking and we'd Go and grab this girl and throw her upside down or do whatever We just had this telepathy.
We were very lucky that our girls We teased them mercifully.
The scene with the foam in the Fury from the Deep, where we row ashore and we start to walk through this foam.
It took them about half an hour to set up so we couldn't even rehearse walking through it.
But as we start to walk through it, I looked at Patrick, he looked at me, and we just grabbed Debbie and rolled her in it and started to And she Bless her, she carried on acting.
She didn't say, ''Frazer, Patrick, stop it.
'' She would go, (IMITATING DEBBIE) ''Oh, you swine.
No, Doctor, Jamie!
You swine!
Stop it.
'' And that was it, they had to leave it in, but they They loved it.
It's the sort of thing that Jamie and the Doctor would have done.
And that was, in a way, the calm before the storm.
We were play-acting, fooling around, then suddenly (IMITATES FANFARE) Debbie watched by somebody on the beach.
You know, it's that little bit of humour that everything in the garden is rosy.
But we don't know what's round the corner.
And we debagged little Padders.
Wendy Padbury, Padders.
She had a little mini-kilt one day.
And we're just sitting at rehearsal.
We used to rehearse in an old church hall and she was reading a book.
And I looked at Patrick and he looked at me, we went And I undid the buckle there and he undid the buckle on the kilt there and I went, ''Oh, Padders, it's our scene now, quick.
'' We got up, ran from the little rehearsal room, she suddenly realised that she had no kilt on.
She had a little pair of pants, white Mary Quant boots, a little blouse, and we had the kilt, threw it to Patrick.
We're chasing around the rehearsal room.
Ran into the corridor and there was the vicar just coming in.
And she went, ''Oh, good evening, Vicar.
'' and curtsied, you know.
We would sort of film on a Monday and then rehearse on the Tuesday or we might film on the Saturday or the Sunday.
It was fun from beginning to end.
You You couldn't wait to get to work.
And you rehearsed, and you You got the giggles out during rehearsals and by the producers' run If you did it serious from day one Monday, by Friday or Saturday, you'd start to get the giggles.
So we got the giggles out of the way.
We had some great directors, Michael Ferguson.
Dear old Douglas Camfield.
By Wednesday, we knew the scripts back to front and he'd go, ''Right, we're going to do a comedy run.
''Right, Patrick, you're going to be Scottish, ''Frazer, you're going to Welsh, ''You're going to be Irish, right.
'' And we'd do the whole run of this thing with different accents.
Or Michael Ferguson, ''We're doing a comedy run.
''I don't want any pauses.
I don't want to see any, 'Hmm''' (MUMBLES QUICKLY) ''Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick.
''I want to see this show done in 1 5 minutes.
'' It was very hard work because in those days we didn't have the video tape editing that we have nowadays.
Nowadays you might Say we were doing Doctor Who now, you do say all the interior Tardis scenes first, then all the exterior, in the caves or the rocks, all the studio stuff.
In those days, we did Actually did it as live.
From page one to page 56, whatever So, you might go from the Tardis to the corridor, back to the Tardis, the corridor You might do five scenes.
One, two, three, four, five.
And if you had the fourth scene and you had a dodgy line to say You'd think, ''Oh, please don't let me dry in this line,'' because they had to go back.
So the pressure was on.
Um, I'd done a lot of theatre so it was quite lucky for me that, you know, I was used to working like that.
Patrick hated theatre.
''It's all that shouting at night.
''You won't catch me shouting for two hours at night.
''I like to be home with my family.
'' But I think theatre training helped a lot of us.
Because it There was a pressure when that red light went on.
There was no messing about.
Um, and you had to do the job.
I was very lucky playing Jamie, because if you get asked the question at conventions, ''What is the conglomerate of'' I just say, ''That wasn't mine, I left that to the Doctor.''