An actor friend of mine once shared a television booking agency with the great Jon Pertwee. Happening to visit this West End office in the early 90s, he witnesses a phone call from an evidently very flustered Third Doctor. The signs were not good from the off: “Its Jon Pertwee” says the PA, handing over the receiver “…he’s not happy..” Over the next 10 minutes, to the general amusement of all within earshot, an agency rep calmly allows Pertwee to offload a shitstorm of dissatisfaction at the lack of work he’d been offered of late, a stream of classic Third Doctor-style admonishments spewing forth: “…now look here, this really isn’t good enough…you simply have to try harder…” finally ending on that hardy perennial of all actors on their uppers: “Look, can’t you just get me a fucking Casualty?”
I met Jon Pertwee once. Wouldn’t be surprise if you did too. Post-Gummidge (TV shorthand, folks, do try to keep up) and buoyed by his appearance in “The Five Doctors”, the 20th Anniversary special in 1983, he seemed to re-assume the mantle of the Third Doctor at the drop of a hat, swooping down to bestow his coffeured benevolence at BBC Video signings, village fetes and conventions across the land.
It has to be said that I encountered his “shimmering light-bulb” persona in somewhat reduced circumstances. Not for me a gigantic Chigago convention or Virgin Megastore (ahhh..) signing. No, I met him when he cut the ribbon on a shabby little rip-off science fiction stall next to a curry & chips counter in a discount shopping mall in Stratford, London E15. It wasn’t even a shop that Pertwee opened, just a small partitioned “retail space” among many others, all selling a right load of dodgy tat and all reeking of curry and chips. You see, despite his vaunted haute and actorly grandeur, Jon Pertwee still needed to work, and personal appearance fees must have come in very handy as the regular acting and “caberet engagements” dried up.
I nearly didn’t go to see Pertwee on principle, because the guy who ran the stall was right tool; the sort of uptight little git who waits for you to pick up a comic before whining “If you’re not going to buy that put it back for the people who will” This attitude to potential customers goes a long way to explaining why his shitty little venture went under mere weeks after it opened. He also had the most pathetically knackered set of over-priced Gerry Anderson Dinky vehicles I’ve ever seen, but that’s a digression too far for this story…
Anyway, bloody hell, there he was – PERTWEE! And fair play to him, even here, in this desperate shanty-town of cheapness in the back-end of nowhere, he was completely bringing it – the cloak, the hair, the (mighty) nose, the, er, long legs – the full package. Although I could tell he was less than impressed with his aromatic surroundings, he signed my BBC Video of “Day of the Daleks” with great looping swirls that to me said “debonair”, “suave” and “flamboyant”. Or possibly just “Jon Pertwee”. It’s great fun, by the way, “Day of the Dalek”s: UNIT, Daleks (obviously), that bloke who played the sinister sweet shop owner in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and, best of all, a check-shirted Katy Manning at her absolute zenith as the glam rock sci-fi vixen it was OK to watch when you were six years old. There’s lots of shooty stuff around a country manor house and a neat time-travel sub-plot but it all comes down to a plate of quality cheese and a glass of vintage vino with Jon Pertwee, the Jason King-of-Time, lording it (see what I did there?) over the whole enterprise with enormous confidence and panache.
Just before he died he made a final, twinkling appearance as the Third Doctor in an edition of the deeply terrible Cilla Black show Surprise, Surprise. I guess the agent came through for him.
The Man in the Elegant Room 