THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW
Best known for his role as Doctor Who in the 1980s, eccentric actor Sylvester McCoy recalls his brief stint in the priesthood and a love of Mark Twain, whilst revisiting his hometown of Dunoon
Sylvester McCoy shows us round his home town of Dunoon and remembers his time growing up in Argyll
During World War II, my father lied about his age and volunteered for the navy. He worked in submarines because they were desperate for people – at that time being a submariner was one of the worst jobs.
One day he went to a dance in the town and met my mum. They got married after only four weeks and had a honeymoon in Ayrshire, shortly after which he went to sea and never came back. He died two months before I was born – killed in battle off the coast of Sierra Leone in West Africa.
At first my mother didn’t let herself go, but eight years later she became mentally ill and was sent to various lunatic asylums.
After that she never really came back, so that was me an orphan boy. She lived until I was 24 and I used to visit her in a big Dickensian pile on the outskirts of Greenock. It was horrible in those days with tiled floors, big rattling keys, and people talking to the walls. Walking down the corridors you could hear people screaming in their cells.
Because of these experiences I started trying to make people laugh when I was very young. When you have got a mum and dad, they love you – it’s their duty and their natural response, you don’t have to demand it. But when you are an orphan you have to earn it, it doesn’t come naturally. I most likely drove people bananas.
Up until my mother left, I was completely spoilt: she would do anything for me. However, after she left my granny, and sometimes my aunty, would look after me, and I was not spoiled by them. My aunty liked a wee tincture and granny was not averse to alcohol. After a jar or two, one of them would say: ‘I’ll take him’ . But when they woke up with a hangover the next day they would say to me: ‘what are you doing here?’
I dearly love my cousins and think of them as my brothers and sisters. We’re still very close.
At one point we lived along Alexandra Parade, on the seafront in Dunoon. My bedroom was at the top of the house and in winter the waves would come up as high as my window. We had great views of the sea out to Paddy’s Milestone, the big island also known as Ailsa Craig, which is in the middle of the Clyde, halfway between Glasgow and Belfast.
The big boats used to come in here too – paddle steamers like the Waverley, the Jeanie Deans and Queen Mary. Dunoon was always packed in the summer, especially during the Glasgow and Paisley fair fortnights when the town expanded to 36,000 people.
In t he winter only 8,000 people lived here but we used to have dances or ceilidhs. As a child I loved it when it was cut off and the place was ours. My friends and I could wander freely, often leaving home early in the morning and not coming back until bed time.
I didn’t drink. My grandmother took me aside when I was five and made me swear I wouldn’t drink alcohol. I kept my word until I left Scotland. I was 18 when I went to England and learnt how to drink lager and lime.
There were two cinemas in the town, La Scala and the Picturehouse, both sadly gone. They used to do two nights each and my mother, being a widow, would go often. To get into the picture houses you could go with jam jars as you got money back on them. Two jam jars were worth a penny. That got you into the Saturday morning cinema to see Tarzan or a cowboy film. When I was growing up I read Mark Twain’s
Adventurers of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn which gave me my philosophy of life. Twain’s
‘ My bedroom was at the top of the house and in winter the waves would
come as high as my window’
‘I loved dressing up – I think that was what attracted me to the priesthood’
philosophy is gloriously liberal, full of leftwing mischief, which is what I love. You don’t take life too seriously. My real religion stems from those books. As children we used to try to recreate some of the Huckleberry Finn adventures. We camped by the river, and built rafts to take on the water – just like the Mississippi, but chased by midges.
Ever since I was a child I have loved dressing up and I think that was what attracted me to the priesthood. The church was the only theatre in town and it had great costumes and audiences who would listen to everything you said. At St Mun’s, the local Catholic school, I was an altar boy.
When I was 11, our headmistress organised vocational talks. When the priest came I stuck my hand up, saying I wanted to be a priest. After that I was sent to Blairs College, a junior seminary for 11-17-year-olds, outside Aberdeen. French nuns cooked for us and I put on weight, which was lucky as I was a skinny wee chappie beforehand. It was austere, in the middle of nowhere and the central heating would break down. I eventually decided it was not for me so, when I was 16, I returned to Dunoon Grammar School.
A few years ago I took part in a documentary about the search for a new Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, the biggest parish in the area. A priest said that if I had stayed on, it could have been me. I would have been up for it – it’s a great costume!
On Sundays, after church, we used to go to the Cosy Corner for a knickerbocker glory. One of my most popular pastimes was sitting in the Cosy Corner staring at Elspeth Calder. I fancied her rotten. We were in the same class and I once got six of the best from Gilbert’s belt for staring at her during a lesson.
Our teacher, Gilbert McAllister, was a Japanese prisoner of war and was very thin when he came out of the camps. We used to do Shake-
speare plays and Gilbert would play all the main roles himself, while I was always the fool. I have played a lot of Shakespeare’s clowns, including the fool to Ian McKellen’s King Lear, and they are difficult roles to play. Normally they cast an actor as it’s a tragic part, but they often don’t find the comedy in the character. It was my ambition to bring comedy to the role, as well as tragedy.
At school I was the class clown, but good at maths, science, art and history. I didn’t finish my highers because I left school the year before. It was the same year that the Polaris submarines were launched and things went wonky. Before the US Navy arrived there were more girls than boys in Dunoon. The local paper interviewed several girls who all said they would have nothing to do with the American sailors. Three days later, not one Dunoon boy had a girlfriend anymore. Elspeth Calder broke my heart and went off with an American. But it was the best thing she ever did for me.
Recently I went on my first pub crawl in the town. In one pub there were some musicians playing so I got some spoons and joined in. When I started acting in the Ken Campbell Road Show, they all played musical instruments and I didn’t, so someone showed me how to play spoons. Since then I try to sneak them in whenever I can. So far I have managed to play the spoons in Doctor Who and I tried in The Hobbit, when I played the wizard Radagast The Brown, but I think Peter Jackson, the director, must have forgotten.
‘As children we used to try to recreate the Huckleberry Finn adventures’