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Review [published March 2000]
Tom Baker: Who On Earth Is Tom Baker?
Robin Askew
At the risk of turning into one of those dreadful
30-something nostalgia bores, the Tom Baker incarnation
of Dr Who has a special place in the hearts of
those of my generation. Forever fixed in my mind is
the time I queued for hours with hundreds of other
grubby pre-teens in a smalltown bookshop awaiting
the arrival of the great man to sign books he hadn’t
written. The cops sealed off the high street, which was
lined with kiddies wondering where the Tardis would
materialise to disgorge the tousle-haired timelord.
Suddenly he appeared, striding down the middle of
the road in full Who garb, dishing out jelly babies to
the gobsmacked hordes.
My illusions took a slight dent a few years back when
I saw one of those unbroadcastable out-take reels BBC
technicians compile to amuse one another at Christmas,
in which Baker was shown getting saucy with an assistant
and taking the piss out of K9. But that’s as nothing
compared to the revelations in this indiscreet autobiography.
It seems Baker’s worst enemy during his years
of national fame wasn’t the Daleks, the Cybermen, or
any of the other low-budget latex terrors, but the Shag-
BUY Tom Baker books online from and
monster. And like all the best monsters, this one turned
out to be – gasp! – himself. “While we were on our
tours about the country to promote the programme, I
was often pulled by women who were keen fantasists,”
he confesses, introducing tales of hotel room bondage
sessions (“A good few of these women wanted to whip
or cane me”) and general pervery (a university don insisted
on wearing his costume, “and as she threw herself
wantonly on to the wide Holiday Inn bed she growled,
‘Come on, Doctor, let’s travel through space’”). Alas,
the man with the sonic screwdriver had no advanced
defence against venereal disease, and soon contracted
a dose of the clap.
Dr Who enthusiasts may initially be disappointed to
find that the programme doesn’t get its first mention
until page 189, but to skip the first 15 chapters would
be to miss a real treat since Baker seems determined
to show himself in the least flattering light imaginable,
as if to demonstrate the veracity of a remark he once
overheard: “He’s quite nice. But there’s something odd
about him, something slightly disgusting.” The book
opens in wartime Liverpool, where poverty-stricken
024
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