IS THERE LIFE OUTSIDE THE BOX?

It’s not just cricket

released OUT NOW! 288 pages | Hardback Author Peter davison Publisher John Blake Publishing

A genuine TV star but

never a chat show fixture or tabloid target, Peter Davison always felt too private, too understated, too British for an autobiography. The subtlest Doctor Who, he had none of the outsize charisma of Jon Pertwee or Tom Baker – and, you suspected, none of the tall tales and showboating anecdotes that powered his predecessors’ memoirs.

“I’ve ambled through my career,” he confesses, remembering the fragile chain of luck that took him from a guitar-strumming, ambition-free existence in kaftan and beads to a golden spell as the unofficial face of the BBC in the early ’80s. He’s the product of South London suburbia but this is, you realise, a life less ordinary: his father, fascinatingly, was a mixed-race West Indian, gold-toothed and flirtatious.

It’s a wry, engaging, often killingly funny read, with a winning line in self-deprecation. And while you won’t be short-changed by the Doctor Who bits (there’s an eye-opening insight into a Pertwee-Baker ego-clash at a US convention), Davison’s life beyond the TARDIS is just as worthy of your time.