Behind The Sofa - Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who

Sofa, So Good

Behind The Sofa -
Celebrity Memories
of Doctor Who
Edited by Steve Beery
Foreword by Terry Pratchett
Gollancz
Isbn 9780575129450

Just a very short review but a big shout out to my cousin Steve in Australia, who saw two copies of this book we’d never heard of on sale in a shop over there and was nice enough to send one to me.

Behind The Sofa - Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who is a small but many paged tome that does exactly what you think it does. The proceedings of the sales of the book all go into Alzheimers research and so, quite appropriately, it has a foreword by the late, great Terry Pratchett (it must have been one of the last things he wrote, I reckon). Each entry of a Doctor Who remembrance from various celebrity fans of the show is accompanied by a small black and white illustration but, I confess, I could make no rhyme or reason as to why some were of the celebrity in question, some were monsters and characters related to the anecdote and, also in large part, pictures of completely unrelated Doctor Who iconography (or so it seemed to me)... so in terms of the illustrations, it’s a bit ‘all over the place’. But they’re very good though and some are featured on the front cover design, making up the roundels of the TARDIS.

Something else which has the same quality of general higgledy piggledyness is the order of the anecdotes themselves. One might think the entries would be alphabetical but, no, that’s not a convention which has been employed by the editor here either.

Now, the range of remembrances go from recollections of the apparently not urban mythical ‘hiding behind the sofa’ from various Doctors over the years, starting with William Hartnell (who pop star Toyah lists as her favourite here). Other kinds of anecdotes are mostly from people who have worked, in some capacity, with either the production of the show or with an offshoot from the show (such as writing books about it etc). For instance, Michael Moorcock says some things about the scheduling of the show where he lives and it certainly explains a few things about the weaknesses of the Doctor Who novel he wrote, I suspect (which I reviewed here).

Some of these are even from the actors playing companions in the show (although, I don’t remember seeing any from any of the Doctors themselves here). So we have anecdotes like Richard Briers telling how he played his part in the Sylvester McCoy story he did as an over-the-top Hitler and Janet Fielding, who played Tegan Jovanka opposite Tom Baker and Peter Davidson (returning to the role decades later for Jodie Whittaker’s last story), tells of a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ she had which was instigated by Peter Davidson, no less.

Actually, some of the stories actors tell are exactly what you are expecting them to be but that makes them no less special. So we get Katy Manning’s remembrances of working with Jon Pertwee and the late Bernard Cribbins talks about his two times fighting Daleks, decades apart. Once as a companion to Peter Cushing (where they both got the giggles) in the second cinema adventure Dalek Invasion Earth 2150AD (reviewed here) and then during his regular stint on the show, as the grandfather of one of the companions, during David Tennant’s era.

Chris Tarrant says maybe too much about his friend Sylvester McCoy and his penchant for practical jokes and, in one of the more moving sections in the book, composer Sam Watts talks about accompanying actress Elisabeth Sladen on an episode of the spin off show The Sarah Jane Adventures... and how she found it great fun but it was getting quite tiring. Of course, with hindsight, we all know now just why she was finding it tough going towards the end of her short life so, yeah, it’s a very sad moment in the book. As it was in her autobiography (reviewed here), finished by her husband and daughter.

And I think that’s where I want to finish this review of Behind The Sofa - Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who. Not a book I knew about and it’s always nice to receive a gift. A fond set of remembrances for avid fans of the show and even casual viewers such as myself.