My favourite photo
Ex-blue Peter presenter Peter Purves shares a snapshot
“I WAS nine years old when I decided I was going to be an actor. The school play was The Pied Piper Of Hamelin and I was given the lead. Then I got the lead in Robin Hood.
I thought I’d made it. ‘Dressing up for a living. I’ll have some of that.’
And I was used to the idea of ‘showbiz’ because I was brought up in Blackpool. Outside of London, it was the home of showbiz. The big names came to Blackpool every year and I went to see ’em all… The Crazy Gang, Arthur Askey, Charlie Chester, Tommy Trinder, Nat Jackley, Frankie Howerd. I liked being in that world.
It might sound silly now, but I fancied myself as a bit of a leading man. Square jaw, rescuing the damsel in distress. And it kind of turned out all right. I worked in rep, then started getting some TV jobs like Armchair Theatre, Dixon Of Dock Green and this relatively new series called Doctor Who.
I was only down for one episode, but I suddenly found myself playing the Doctor’s new companion, Steven Taylor. That one episode turned into 46.
Obviously, I loved the Dalek plotlines, but I always enjoyed taking the Tardis back in time. This picture is from my favourite story, which was called The Massacre Of St Bartholomew’s Eve with William Hartnell. It was set in Paris in 1572… tensions between the Protestants and the Catholics. Look at that outfit. It’s wonderful.
We never had any money on the show, but the crew always did the most amazing job, creating these sumptuous sets and costumes.
For many years, this picture only existed in black and white. The show was filmed in black and white and we were still a few years ahead of colour photographs becoming the norm. I always looked at it and wished I could bring the colours to life. As if by magic, I came across a guy called Clayton Hickman who used to work at Doctor Who Magazine. He told me that he’d been colourising some old Doctor Who pictures and offered to do this one. Obviously, I had to tell him the colours, but, after a couple of attempts, we got it spot-on. That’s exactly the image I had in my head. I was thrilled.
The picture would have been taken at the old BBC Television Centre in west London, which is where we did all the filming – unless it was an outdoor scene. And we were on such a tight budget that each episode had to be more or less recorded live.
We’d run through the whole thing in one go, only stopping if we needed to insert an effect. If you made a mistake, you just carried on. It was weekly theatre for television. Here we are, almost 60 years since the start of Doctor Who, and we’re still talking about it. People are still watching it. It’s a global phenomenon.
Even though I left the show in 1966, it’s remained a big part of my life. In recent years, I’ve been involved in the audiobooks and providing commentaries for the DVDS. I’ve even been to a Doctor Who convention in Long Island and took a group of fans to the top of the Empire State Building, which is where one of my episodes was set. The only sad part of this story is that The Massacre Of St Bartholomew’s Eve is missing. Of the 46 episodes that I did, only 17 survived. The rest have been wiped. In total, almost 100 Doctor Who episodes have been lost.
After I left the show, I naturally assumed that I’d carry on getting acting work. I did a couple of bits like Z-cars, but then it all went ominously quiet. Was it the fact that everybody knew me from Doctor Who? I don’t know. The phone just stopped ringing.
Looking back, I suppose that was quite lucky. In 1967, I got a call from Blue Peter and… well, that’s another story.”
Peter is at Film & Comic Con Exeter, Westpoint Centre, on September 14 and 15. Visit showmastersevents.com/exeter.