Continuing the migration of these individual entries from my Podcast page to this blog for reasons of space and navigability. You can find all the the list of interviewees, editions and charities who have benefited from this labour of love here. Episode Seventeen – (3rd May 2013) William Ilkley A warm and friendly guest this…
Derek Ware, the stuntman who founded the agency HAVOC who provided much of the trademark action of the Jon Pertwee era, has died. His association with Doctor Who went back to the very first story, for which he arranged the fight between caveman Kal and Za, as well as doubling for actor Jeremy Young. He…
This isn’t the one you’ll be expecting if you listened to last week’s instalment which kicked off my chat with Mark Ayres. That’ll wend its way to your ears next time. We are reaching the end of the project of course so the countdown element is important – more important than my notes are legible…
Due to Big Finish having other audio fish to fry later in the week the latest edition is a tad early. Although I had vowed to avoid conventions as much as possible, reasoning that (a) it was cheating a little and (b) the interviewees would be a bit “Who”-ed out, I nonetheless couldn’t resist during…
Continuing the removal of the individual episode blurbs from the Podcast page and placing them here instead, for reasons of tidiness… Episode Eleven (2nd April 2013)The Keys Of Marinus Special What do you do if you get a Doctor Who story that doesn’t have a DVD Making Of and that not one, but four people involved with…
TOM BAKER ERA LIGHTING DESIGNER AND MUCH ADMIRED “GENIUS” PASSES AWAY AT HOME. Duncan Brown, the highly respected BBC studio lighting designer who worked on four Doctor Who stories has died – this news comes just after the airing of a new series episode that could be seen as a sequel to his very first credit…
Doctor Who is back on air tomorrow so it’s appropriate (though entirely coincidental and completely unplanned) that we talk to someone who works on the show even today and in a key capacity. A last minute technical problem meant that I had to hurriedly improvise so the sound isn’t great – but it has been hugely…
As I am apparently the BBC’s Man Who Interviews Elderly Actors in residence I was fortunate enough, earlier in the year, to participate in a fascinating archive release that will be available very soon. Agatha Christie – The Lost Plays is a triple bill of audio productions from the mistress of murder. I had the pleasure…
There was no way I was going to let Milton Johns be edited down to the usual half an hour or so – so he’s been given a two parter and this is the conclusion. What a gent he is – he later showed me around the Garrick Club, regaling me with glorious stories about…
If Carlsberg made Afternoons Designed Specifically For Toby then I suspect they would involve collar and tie, the Garrick Club and one of the finest character players ever to grace our screens : which he has done without ever sounding a duff note in over five decades. Here he talks about his three encounters with…
And so it’s part two of my interview with fantastic production designer Roger Murray-Leach whose work I have long admired: it was a real thrill to be able to talk to him about his work on the show and – of course – his illustrious career beyond time and space. His charity is Hope &…
A prime scalp in this week’s edition of Who’s Round: a very talented designer with an amazing career outside of the show and whose work on the series itself is of the highest quality. It’s a two parter and involves tales from a golden period in the Doctor Who’s history. He’s one I never thought…
Clifford Earl, who played the Station Sergeant in the Christmas Day 1965 episode of The Daleks’ Masterplan (The Feast Of Steven) and Major Branwell in 1968’s The Invasion opposite Patrick Troughton – both for director Douglas Camfield – has died at the age of 81. Better known in certain quarters of the outside world under…
Continuing my repositioning of the early Who’s Round blurbs from the Podcast page into the blog (because it was taking up a lot of space and has been superseded by the brilliant work of Ian Atkins at Big Finish – he has done a definitive list): Episode Six: Waris Hussein Only the first ever blooming director of…
This week’s Who’s Round continues my chat with George Gallaccio, whose career as a BBC producer after his days as Doctor Who’s production associate took in all sorts of classics including Bergerac, The Omega Factor and Miss Marple. He was also offered the top job on our beloved show and explains his reasons for not…
I am updating my website and as Big Finish* have now put up a handy alphabetical link of every Who’s Round episode and accompanied each one with the relevant charity link, I’m taking my incomplete list off my Podcast page. Instead of wasting them I shall post them here as they may be useful for wandering…
Robin Phillips, who played Altos in 1964’s The Key’s Of Marinus, has died at the age of 73. A friend of the director, John Gorrie, he was brought aboard to assist the TARDIS crew as they struggled to complete a task (discovering the whereabouts of s series of hidden micro-keys) which they had to compete without…
Olaf Pooley was Doctor Who’s oldest surviving actor until he passed away yesterday at the grand old age of 101. As ever with people who have crossed paths with the famous Time Lord, there was much more to him than his 7 weeks as the obstinate Professor Stahlman in the Jon Pertwee classic Inferno (1970). That…
News has reached me, via his widow Julia, that Michael Hawkins – who played General Williams in the 1972 Doctor Who adventure Frontier In Space – died late last year. Julia is happy for the information to appear online so I thought I’d do a quick post for the actor best known among visitors to…
Examining the extraordinary role of HG Wells in the creation of the nuclear bomb 70 years ago – how a simple, devastating idea led to the world we know today. In his 1914 novel The World Set Free, Wells imagined bombs that destroy civilisation and lead to a new world order. But his “atomic bombs”…
As I type this you have just over three weeks to catch The Dad Who Fell To Earth on iPlayer. It is a play I wrote for Radio 4 about a man who discovers that his recently deceased father wasn’t a door-to-door salesman as he thought but in fact an alien from a distant world…
Thanks to the success of the BFI Out Of The Unknown DVD Box Set for which John Kelly and (to a lesser extent) I supplied the majority of the extra material, we have been asked to provide a similar service on the forthcoming release of the Douglas Wilmer series of Sherlock Holmes (click on the title…
Myself and Bernard at the CAA last month. I am very sad to report the death of that fine actor Bernard Kay. I’ll add something personal later but for now: The actor Bernard Kay, who starred in Dr Zhivago and was a recognisable TV face in over 100 programmes ranging from the very first episode…
I have had the privilege of working on the DVD commentaries for the forthcoming BFI box set of Classic BBC sci-fi anthology series Out Of The Unknown. With about 8 weeks to turn things round and a minuscule budget, producer John Kelly and I managed to accrue a pretty decent roster of talent which I…
A couple of weeks ago I was very sad to learn of the death of Ray Lonnen – a fine, understated actor who took part in a couple of television shows that deserve to be remembered for a very long time: namely Harry’s Game and The Sandbaggers. I had the good fortune of visiting Ray…
Hello, you are hopefully someone who has worked on Doctor Who in front of or behind the cameras, and who has been directed to this website by a friend or colleague. Thanks for popping over, and please allow me to explain my lunatic scheme : I am a professional actor, writer, stand-up comedian and…
For some background on this foolhardy quest, see here. The Podcasts themselves can be found at the Big Finish Website where it is one of their Ranges. On this page you will also find an alphabetical list of the interviewees plus information on the charities recommended by my subjects. In 2013, with the help and technical…
I have decided to do a stupid thing. A couple of days ago a gentleman called Jon Keefe (@jjkv007) posted on Twitter: Doctor Who 50th; a weekly podcast w everyone thoughout the history of the series interviewed by @TobyHadoke . Make this happen internet Gods. In the absence of input from any such invoked cyberspace…
Next week, it’s the anniversary of when I began a comedy night that I hoped would give me regular employment for the next two and a half months. On October 4th, XS Malarkey reopens to celebrate its fourteenth birthday. We’d shut down for the first time over the summer as our venue, The Queen Of…
EDINBURGH FRINGE 2010 REPORT NUMBER ONE Well the madness has begun: flyers litter the streets and students dressed as pirates line the pavements thinking that the best way to get punters to come to see their thespian hi-jinks in Penzance is to yell at strangers and guffaw in a way only those with a vestige…