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eckett with laughs,” is how Sylvester Mccoy describes A Joke, the new play in which he is appearing at the Fringe, although some kind of sci-fi spin on the old “a Scotsman, an Englishman and an Irishman” joke must also be viable. The play’s threehanded cast brings two of the world’s biggest television sci-fi franchises together in Dunoon-born Mccoy, the seventh actor to play the role of the title role in Doctor Who (1987 and 1989) and Robert Picardo, who also played the doctor – between 1995 and 2001 he was the emergency holographic physician in Star Trek: Voyager.

“It’s about three characters with no past and no future who find themselves just arriving,” says Mccoy.

“They don’t know where they are, if they’re in a joke or what the joke is, so they explore and try to discover. It’s an excuse to tell hoary old jokes and discuss them, really.”

In fact, the play itself is structured along the lines of the joke mentioned above, with Mccoy playing the Irishman, Richard Oliver as the Englishman and Picardo as the Scotsman. Oliver – an actor who also runs the Theatre Space in Winsford, Cheshire, where A Joke previewed – was recruited by the play’s writer and director Dan Freeman.

Freeman is most well-known as the creator of the acclaimed sci-fi audio series The Minister Of Chance, and Mccoy agreed to come in on A Joke because of the trust established while working with Freeman on the series; fellow sci-fi alumni including Paul Mcgann, Philip Glenister and Jenny Agutter have also been involved.

“I’ve enjoyed working with Dan over the years, so when he asked me I said yes,” says Mccoy. “I’ve always found his writing to be witty and of some depth. A Joke is about humour and life, really, and whether there’s anything else out there. Is there anything else, or are we all just part of this joke? It’s the kind of debate we all have.”

It was Freeman’s idea to cast Picardo, although Mccoy did the asking, the pair being old friends from the scifi convention circuit in America. “It was an irresistible offer to appear at the Edinburgh Fringe,” says Picardo, “and also to go to Scotland and play a character called the Scotsman. That sounds like it’s asking for trouble, but fortunately my character is an American who claims to be of Scottish heritage – although it’s perhaps a spurious claim. I have the licence to do a Scottish accent, but a terrible one, which gave me the confidence to do it. The play is a vaudeville that turns into something more serious at the end.”

An Edinburgh debutant at the age of 63, Picardo has visited the Festival before as an audience member and is excited about the challenge ahead.

The relationship between television and theatre works differently in the US – each industry is largely based on opposite coasts, so opportunities to move between them are fewer than in the UK– however he’s no stranger to the stage. In the late 1970s, when he was still in his late teens, he took two major roles on Broadway, first in Albert Innaurato’s long-running sexual identity comedy Gemini, and then as Jack Lemmon’s son in Bernard Slade’s Tribute.

“For two consecutive Broadway seasons I had probably the best juvenile roles there were for an actor,” he remembers. “Then I moved to Califor-