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Tonight, we salute the unsung heroes of television, the enablers, interpreters, | 0:00:02 | 0:00:06 | |
confidantes and companions who act as sidekicks to the stars. | 0:00:06 | 0:00:11 | |
I don't know of any actor or any performer who would admit to being a sidekick. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:17 | |
We look at the art of the assistant, from the great detectives... | 0:00:17 | 0:00:22 | |
His function is to humanise a sort of genius. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:25 | |
-..to the modern cop show. -I thinks he's Gene Hunt's bitch, basically. | 0:00:25 | 0:00:29 | |
We plot the companion's course from crime fiction to science fiction... | 0:00:29 | 0:00:34 | |
He's an alien. He can behave in any way he likes. | 0:00:34 | 0:00:37 | |
..to children's television... | 0:00:37 | 0:00:39 | |
50 years of sticking your hand up a teddy bear's bum. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:42 | |
..and light entertainment. | 0:00:42 | 0:00:43 | |
I would have been the principal boy, Larry, the dame, for sure. | 0:00:43 | 0:00:47 | |
It's a world full of difficult talent... | 0:00:47 | 0:00:50 | |
His great thing was to always get the better of humans. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:53 | |
..and dysfunctional relationships. | 0:00:53 | 0:00:55 | |
Manuel is Basil's sidekick. They need each other, in a strange way. | 0:00:55 | 0:00:59 | |
These are the Sidekick Stories. | 0:00:59 | 0:01:02 | |
Sidekicks have always been with us. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:11 | |
-Every hero needs somebody to talk to. -I beg you to tell me about it. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:14 | |
Iolaus, who's Hercules' sidekick, who's the wiry, clever one, | 0:01:14 | 0:01:19 | |
or Patroclus, who is Achilles' sidekick. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:22 | |
I wish you'd tell me what you're talking about. | 0:01:22 | 0:01:24 | |
When you look at English literature, | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
there in Shakespeare you find Falstaff, the ultimate sidekick, | 0:01:27 | 0:01:31 | |
a kind of exuberant character who can say and do things | 0:01:31 | 0:01:34 | |
that the main characters might not quite allow themselves to do. | 0:01:34 | 0:01:37 | |
In King Lear, the Fool is the ultimate sidekick as well. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:41 | |
And when you look at cartoons, when you look at television shows, when you look at films, | 0:01:41 | 0:01:45 | |
across the whole breadth of culture, the sidekick is one of the funniest and most essential elements. | 0:01:45 | 0:01:51 | |
-Can you just go anywhere you like in that TARDIS? -Yes, within reason. | 0:01:51 | 0:01:55 | |
A good TV sidekick is someone who's kind of stupid and kind of not, | 0:01:55 | 0:02:00 | |
they're stupid in that they keep having to ask questions, | 0:02:00 | 0:02:02 | |
but they're smart enough to ask the question in the first place. | 0:02:02 | 0:02:05 | |
-Why don't you go somewhere safer? -Because, my dear Sarah, I have a job to do. | 0:02:05 | 0:02:10 | |
One that involves the whole future of your species. | 0:02:10 | 0:02:13 | |
Nobody can be Hercules, nobody can be Sherlock Holmes, but we can be Sancho Panza or Dr Watson. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:20 | |
A study in sidekicks has to start with Sherlock Holmes and the curious case of the archetypal assistant. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:35 | |
Dr Watson's very important in this story because in the books | 0:02:35 | 0:02:39 | |
he's the person through whose eyes we see Holmes. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:42 | |
He's there to guide us through the world of Holmes' thinking, | 0:02:42 | 0:02:47 | |
to be the person who is there to be impressed by what Holmes does. | 0:02:47 | 0:02:51 | |
Well, how did you know about the carriage in which the murderer and his victim arrived, for example? | 0:02:51 | 0:02:56 | |
Child's play. The marks made by the carriage wheels | 0:02:56 | 0:02:59 | |
and by the horse's hooves in the driveway told me all I needed to know. | 0:02:59 | 0:03:03 | |
He's like a narrative device. He's sort of spinning around | 0:03:03 | 0:03:05 | |
the main character like a wee camera, constantly showing new sides of Sherlock Holmes. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:11 | |
And you see that to brilliant effect, perhaps better than anywhere | 0:03:11 | 0:03:16 | |
outside of Don Quixote and his famous sidekick, Sancho Panza. | 0:03:16 | 0:03:21 | |
-And his age? -Well, I deduced that from his footprints. | 0:03:21 | 0:03:24 | |
-Any man who can take strides of 4½ feet could hardly be an old man. -Wonderful. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:29 | |
In the TV versions, he's a sort of fat bloke who doesn't know anything and goes... | 0:03:29 | 0:03:34 | |
How on earth do you know that? | 0:03:34 | 0:03:36 | |
Oh, how can you possibly know that? What is the meaning of all this? What is happening? | 0:03:36 | 0:03:40 | |
Watson is the archetype for the sidekick in that he asks questions | 0:03:40 | 0:03:44 | |
-and he doesn't really get it. -What in heaven's name is that? | 0:03:44 | 0:03:49 | |
But there's more to Watson than sometimes makes the screen. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:56 | |
He's been a soldier, he's been to a Afghanistan, he's a husband, | 0:03:56 | 0:04:00 | |
he's been in general practice, | 0:04:00 | 0:04:02 | |
in lots of ways, actually, he has a much stronger sense | 0:04:02 | 0:04:05 | |
of what life in the world is like than Holmes. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:08 | |
And to think that we heard his screams and yet could not... | 0:04:08 | 0:04:13 | |
Watson, look here! | 0:04:13 | 0:04:15 | |
Watson isn't stupid. I think very often, especially in Hollywood, | 0:04:15 | 0:04:19 | |
he's been played as bumbling. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:22 | |
It's a poor trick. | 0:04:22 | 0:04:24 | |
You know, make Watson stupid because it would seem that then Holmes is even more intelligent. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:29 | |
That's not the right thing to do. | 0:04:29 | 0:04:31 | |
I think the Jeremy Brett series got it better, | 0:04:31 | 0:04:34 | |
where you had a Watson then who was quite thoughtful, who was clever. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
He just wasn't a genius like Holmes. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:40 | |
So how do you play the world's most famous sidekick? | 0:04:41 | 0:04:44 | |
I remember when I started, | 0:04:44 | 0:04:46 | |
thinking, "How many different ways can I act listening?" | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
Because that's the function. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:51 | |
Very often, the director will focus on Holmes, and then he's got to come to you to react. | 0:04:51 | 0:04:58 | |
And a lot of the time, that's silence. | 0:04:58 | 0:05:01 | |
'So you have to be a bit careful that you are not pulling the same face.' Of course. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:07 | |
I do think they are, to some extent, two halves of the same person. | 0:05:07 | 0:05:12 | |
And I think that's why they are drawn to each other. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:16 | |
Watson has qualities that maybe Holmes doesn't show. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:20 | |
And I think his function is literally to humanise a sort of genius. | 0:05:20 | 0:05:25 | |
Watson humanises Holmes absolutely. | 0:05:25 | 0:05:28 | |
Holmes, particularly in his Jeremy Brett incarnation, is way out there. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:33 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:05:33 | 0:05:35 | |
There's an episode, The Musgrave Ritual, I think, | 0:05:35 | 0:05:38 | |
where Holmes comes down to dinner at this rather grand house, a castle, | 0:05:38 | 0:05:43 | |
and he's out of his head on cocaine. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:45 | |
And Hardwick's Watson is just embarrassed by it. | 0:05:45 | 0:05:50 | |
And so he acts as a sort of anchor, I think. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
He's the person who shows us what the consequences of Holmes' strangeness are. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:59 | |
But Holmes' one friend is also the author's alter ego. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:04 | |
In all the depictions of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, | 0:06:04 | 0:06:09 | |
Dr Watson is the one who looks like Arthur Conan Doyle. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:13 | |
The occasional times they've done Sherlock Holmes stories without Watson, it's not really worked. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:18 | |
Even Doyle admitted this. He had Holmes narrate a couple of stories, | 0:06:18 | 0:06:21 | |
and said, "You know, it just doesn't work. You need Watson. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:25 | |
"You need good old Watson." | 0:06:25 | 0:06:27 | |
And you realise that Watson is the person who all this is for. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:32 | |
For all their adventures together, they left their greatest mystery unsolved. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:38 | |
There is something about that idea of two Edwardian gentlemen sharing a flat and eating kedgeree together | 0:06:38 | 0:06:44 | |
that does suggest that this relationship is of a slightly different order. | 0:06:44 | 0:06:49 | |
I think it's interesting to explore the possibilities of the homoerotic nature of Watson and Holmes. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:56 | |
I think there may well be some elements of that, | 0:06:56 | 0:06:59 | |
but I don't think it was what Arthur Conan Doyle was trying to do. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:01 | |
CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYS | 0:07:01 | 0:07:04 | |
Whatever the truth, there's a bit of Holmes and Watson in every sleuth and sidekick who followed. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:10 | |
There are definite parallels between Morse and Holmes, both the main detectives and the sidekicks. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:17 | |
I mean, they were both intellectual, | 0:07:17 | 0:07:19 | |
both very driven, both fascinated by the complexities of their work. | 0:07:19 | 0:07:25 | |
And, of course, there's the music as well, Holmes with his violin | 0:07:25 | 0:07:28 | |
-and Morse with his Mozart and his Wagner. -I liked that. | 0:07:28 | 0:07:32 | |
It was good. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:34 | |
Who was it? | 0:07:34 | 0:07:36 | |
That, Lewis, was Maria Callas. | 0:07:36 | 0:07:38 | |
Was it from Cats? | 0:07:39 | 0:07:41 | |
No, it most certainly was not. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:44 | |
The relationship between Inspector Morse and Lewis is incredibly important. | 0:07:44 | 0:07:48 | |
Morse, grumpy old man, but a genius, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:52 | |
aided and abetted by Lewis, the archetypal plodding copper. | 0:07:52 | 0:07:57 | |
You still don't see anything up there? | 0:07:57 | 0:07:59 | |
Only a balustrade. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:01 | |
Get a body over that, do you think? | 0:08:01 | 0:08:04 | |
-Oh. -Yes, Lewis - "Oh." | 0:08:04 | 0:08:08 | |
Lewis is, almost literally, he is just Dr Watson transformed, isn't he? | 0:08:08 | 0:08:13 | |
Because that show is a police procedural rather than a private eye show, | 0:08:13 | 0:08:20 | |
the dynamic is different, in that Lewis works for Morse so Morse can bully him a bit more. | 0:08:20 | 0:08:27 | |
Come on, come on, let me do it. | 0:08:27 | 0:08:29 | |
But Lewis would boldly go where most sidekicks fear to tread, | 0:08:29 | 0:08:34 | |
by becoming the star of his own series. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:38 | |
The character that goes from sidekick to lead to getting his own sidekick, that's a great development. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:43 | |
I mean, he's the sidekick's sidekick. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:45 | |
They must look up at him in awe, all the others. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:48 | |
The Watsons of this world may just look at Lewis and think, "God, he did it. There's hope for all of us." | 0:08:48 | 0:08:54 | |
I'm not quite convinced, because if you've spent all these years being the not quite smart enough sidekick, | 0:08:54 | 0:09:01 | |
how do you suddenly acquire the extra brain cells? | 0:09:01 | 0:09:04 | |
But the great British sidekick usually knew his place. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:10 | |
He was there to serve his master. | 0:09:10 | 0:09:13 | |
The top men, Holmes, Wimsey, Morse, | 0:09:16 | 0:09:21 | |
were supermen, as far as brains were concerned, of solving crimes, | 0:09:21 | 0:09:25 | |
they really were supermen, | 0:09:25 | 0:09:27 | |
far superior to anybody in the street. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:30 | |
And all these sidekicks | 0:09:30 | 0:09:33 | |
were able to make their superiors' knowledge | 0:09:33 | 0:09:38 | |
understandable to the audience. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:42 | |
Lafontaine was right, eh, Bunter? | 0:09:42 | 0:09:44 | |
-Bunter? -Bunter, who is Lord Peter Wimsey's sidekick, he's actually his butler. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:51 | |
And this is a tradition as well. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:53 | |
Devilled kidneys, my lord? | 0:09:53 | 0:09:55 | |
Jeeves in the PG Wodehouse stories is the great valet sidekick. | 0:09:55 | 0:10:00 | |
And the other avatar of this mode is Alfred in the Batman stories, | 0:10:00 | 0:10:05 | |
who is at once a father and a sidekick. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:09 | |
And maybe it's a relationship that isn't possible to depict any more | 0:10:09 | 0:10:13 | |
because people just don't have butlers. | 0:10:13 | 0:10:15 | |
Excuse me, my lord, but having seen this morning's copy of the Times, | 0:10:15 | 0:10:19 | |
-I had no doubt your Lordship would wish to return to Riddlesdale at once. -Riddlesdale? | 0:10:19 | 0:10:24 | |
Captain Cathcart has been found shot dead. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:27 | |
He had the ability to spot things and point them out. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:31 | |
"Police suspect foul play." | 0:10:31 | 0:10:34 | |
He wasn't just the servant, he could also make suggestions, and did. | 0:10:34 | 0:10:40 | |
You could send him off on any errand and make absolutely certain it was done properly. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:46 | |
Bunter had brains, brawn and could make a mean breakfast. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:49 | |
And, crucially, he'd never cross the boss. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:52 | |
I mean, they were both born and bred into their own particular class. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:56 | |
Bunter never overstepped the mark, never called him Peter or anything like that. | 0:10:56 | 0:11:02 | |
All right, constable, Peter Wimsey. | 0:11:02 | 0:11:05 | |
I'll look after the lady. | 0:11:05 | 0:11:07 | |
This is something about the British class system embodied here. | 0:11:07 | 0:11:10 | |
And I think really what it does, it crystallises the idea that these are unequal relationships. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:17 | |
The relationship between Holmes and Watson is unequal | 0:11:17 | 0:11:20 | |
in many ways, the relationship between Wimsey and Bunter is unequal. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:25 | |
And the script of the British class system is written into it. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:28 | |
Bunter! | 0:11:29 | 0:11:32 | |
Bad night, my lord? | 0:11:32 | 0:11:34 | |
Characters like Bunter, Jeeves and Alfred would be very difficult to sell in a modern way. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:40 | |
Maybe somebody who's a female Bridget Jones type executive | 0:11:40 | 0:11:45 | |
with a super smart PA, probably a younger gay man | 0:11:45 | 0:11:48 | |
who would solve all her problems, maybe that's a development of the Jeeves, the butler character | 0:11:48 | 0:11:56 | |
that does still have currency in modern fiction. | 0:11:56 | 0:12:00 | |
Right, let's fire up the Quattro. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:03 | |
And when it all kicks off, the sidekick has a vital function, to supplement the machismo of the lead. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:11 | |
Where Watson had his service revolver, Gene Hunt's sidekicks go toe-to-toe with the bad guys. | 0:12:11 | 0:12:17 | |
This is the police! You're surrounded. | 0:12:17 | 0:12:21 | |
I do a lot of the action stuff in this series, a lot of the running about and the diving and the rolls | 0:12:25 | 0:12:31 | |
and be shot at and all that sort of thing, so in this case, the sidekicks are used for that, | 0:12:31 | 0:12:36 | |
and then Gene can come out and just finish them off with one shot and look cool. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:43 | |
Although I think, deep down, Gene has a love for Chris. | 0:12:45 | 0:12:48 | |
He obviously has because Chris is quite useless. | 0:12:48 | 0:12:51 | |
Chris, give us the gun. | 0:12:51 | 0:12:54 | |
Oh, shit, I must have left it in the car. | 0:12:54 | 0:12:57 | |
To have him on the team, he must be there for a reason, even if it's just to laugh at. | 0:12:57 | 0:13:02 | |
But that's one of the best reasons of all. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:04 | |
The sidekick doesn't just provide the muscle, he also provides the laughs. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:09 | |
The comedy relief sidekick is sort of important and it's interesting | 0:13:09 | 0:13:14 | |
how almost all sidekicks are allowed to be funnier than heroes. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:18 | |
-Go on then, say it. -Do you want a hand, mate? | 0:13:18 | 0:13:22 | |
The only exception I can think of is Bertie Wooster, | 0:13:22 | 0:13:24 | |
who's the funny character and Jeeves is the clever character. | 0:13:24 | 0:13:28 | |
But all the way back to Shakespeare's fools, you had the character who comes on and does the jokes. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:35 | |
Miss James, Miss James! | 0:13:35 | 0:13:37 | |
Sometimes people think you're a bit stupid because you play stupid all the time, you know, | 0:13:37 | 0:13:44 | |
and you can get treated a bit as if you are a bit of a numpty at times, | 0:13:44 | 0:13:48 | |
but that's part of the game and obviously you're playing your character well. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:52 | |
-Drama's full of lovable foul-ups. -Oh, Rigsby! | 0:13:52 | 0:13:57 | |
But the natural home of the stupid sidekick is the sitcom. | 0:13:57 | 0:14:02 | |
I think modern television understanding of the sidekick | 0:14:02 | 0:14:06 | |
is much more like the very ancient pantomimic, Commedia dell'arte way of understanding the sidekick | 0:14:06 | 0:14:13 | |
as being a complete lunatic, a nutcase, a mad person, the village idiot, you know, the fool. | 0:14:13 | 0:14:20 | |
Baldrick was a great example of that, somebody who was so absurd and so comically slappable | 0:14:20 | 0:14:26 | |
that every time he appeared with his ridiculous suggestions, the audience just roared. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:33 | |
I think the character of Baldrick is one of those archetypes | 0:14:33 | 0:14:38 | |
that have been around as long as storytelling has been around. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:43 | |
People in the streets will say to me, "Is Baldrick really that thick or is he just pretending?" | 0:14:43 | 0:14:49 | |
The awful answer is that I'm so stupid I don't know. | 0:14:49 | 0:14:54 | |
The use of the idiot sidekick is something that comes again and again in comedy. | 0:14:54 | 0:14:59 | |
Look at the Vicar Of Dibley with Alice. | 0:14:59 | 0:15:02 | |
In Father Ted, you know... | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
Father Ted isn't the sharpest, but Father Dougal is incredibly stupid. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:10 | |
And if you look at Blackadder, you can look at Baldric as very much the sidekick to Blackadder. | 0:15:10 | 0:15:16 | |
But also, the others, the Prince, the Queen, all play foil to Blackadder's funny guy. | 0:15:16 | 0:15:23 | |
Blackadder was certainly an ensemble piece. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:26 | |
We were all thinking, "How do be serve this show best?" | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
Rowan serves it by being at its apex, | 0:15:29 | 0:15:33 | |
Hugh Laurie is here, Stephen Fry is there, I'm down there somewhere, but still serving the totality. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:39 | |
That's your job, that's what you do. | 0:15:39 | 0:15:40 | |
It doesn't feel like being a sidekick, it just feels like doing a job. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:44 | |
But even within the ensemble piece, a supporting character can become an iconic comic hero. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:52 | |
-Manuel. -Si. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:54 | |
-The bottle? -Yes. | 0:15:54 | 0:15:57 | |
-Where is it? -Que? -Donde est... | 0:15:57 | 0:15:59 | |
Oh, I take it. I take it, I take it. | 0:15:59 | 0:16:01 | |
Come here. You're a waste of space. | 0:16:01 | 0:16:04 | |
The audiences tend to feel sympathy for Manuel. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:09 | |
They think, "Oh, poor Manuel, he's always in trouble." | 0:16:09 | 0:16:12 | |
I think Manuel himself is a very happy man. | 0:16:12 | 0:16:14 | |
I think he probably has qualities that I'd enjoy having. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:19 | |
I would imagine he'd make a wonderful husband and father. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:23 | |
He'd love it, eight children, beautiful, if he ever had them. | 0:16:23 | 0:16:27 | |
But he's not married, and I hope one day he does get married. | 0:16:27 | 0:16:31 | |
He's loyal, I'm sure he'd give you the shirt off his back for generosity. | 0:16:31 | 0:16:35 | |
And he'd be faithful to the death to that family. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
He thinks they're great, it's the best hotel in the world, and he's one of the greatest waiters in the world. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:42 | |
In modern comedies, on television, in film, where there is a sidekick, | 0:16:44 | 0:16:48 | |
that's actually drawing on a really old tradition, in the British novel especially. | 0:16:48 | 0:16:54 | |
The very earliest novels, the kind of novels that were written by people like Henry Fielding | 0:16:54 | 0:16:59 | |
or Daniel Defoe, you know, had sidekicks as their central characters. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:06 | |
They come together in a little comedy like Fawlty Towers. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:09 | |
You think you're just watching a madcap, absurd adventure going on | 0:17:09 | 0:17:13 | |
in a hotel in Torquay, but actually it's connected to some brilliant long tradition of the sidekick. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:20 | |
It's one of its best manifestations, I think. | 0:17:20 | 0:17:23 | |
Andrew Sachs's Manuel has got to be one of the greatest comic creations since the Sixties. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:31 | |
He's a creation absolutely and completely in his own right. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:36 | |
And in a sense the secret of Manuel is the fact that he is so much in his own world, | 0:17:36 | 0:17:43 | |
and Andrew, being such a skilful actor, has created this world that nobody can impinge on. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:50 | |
No, No. This is Table 1. | 0:17:50 | 0:17:52 | |
It's Wednesday. | 0:17:52 | 0:17:54 | |
Room seven is Table 5. No, please, here. Come here. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:59 | |
Fawlty Towers was tightly scripted, but the little we know of Manuel's background comes from Sachs himself. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:05 | |
There wasn't a sort of Stanislavsky feeling of, "What was his mother like? | 0:18:05 | 0:18:10 | |
"Where did he come from?" and all that. Not even that he came from Barcelona. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:13 | |
I invented that somewhere along the line. Things were invented all the time. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:17 | |
-Yes? -Before I go... | 0:18:18 | 0:18:20 | |
What is it? | 0:18:20 | 0:18:22 | |
-It's my birthday. -Yes, I know. | 0:18:22 | 0:18:25 | |
I want to thank you for beautiful present. | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
And for your much kindness to me since I come here. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:32 | |
-Not at all, my pleasure. -On my birthday, Manuel's birthday, | 0:18:32 | 0:18:36 | |
he gives me an umbrella, I think. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:38 | |
And he's busy in the office of the hotel. | 0:18:38 | 0:18:42 | |
Since coming here from Spain, leaving my mother... | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
'I knock on the door, he bangs it shut again, something like that. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:48 | |
"Behind this door, when he's doing something, | 0:18:48 | 0:18:52 | |
"I pull out a bit of paper, and I've written a little thank you letter. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:55 | |
It's hardly heard by the audience - "Senor, thank you very, very much for my birthday present, is very nice..." | 0:18:55 | 0:19:02 | |
Since coming here from Spain, leaving my five brothers... | 0:19:02 | 0:19:06 | |
Give it to me. Thank you. | 0:19:06 | 0:19:09 | |
I invented all this, it was just ad-libbed. | 0:19:09 | 0:19:11 | |
So it kind of stayed. | 0:19:11 | 0:19:13 | |
So that's a bit of background created by Sachs. | 0:19:13 | 0:19:17 | |
The sidekick relationship with the main guy | 0:19:17 | 0:19:21 | |
is usually one that's completely dysfunctional, but based on love. | 0:19:21 | 0:19:25 | |
I mean, why doesn't he just fire Manuel? | 0:19:25 | 0:19:29 | |
Of course, he wouldn't, because something of his absurdity, | 0:19:29 | 0:19:32 | |
something of his whole life, is dependent on this dysfunctional relationship. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:37 | |
Since I come here from Spain, leaving my five mothers... | 0:19:37 | 0:19:41 | |
'They need each other in a strange way.' | 0:19:41 | 0:19:43 | |
When Basil gets angry with him or hits him or whatever, | 0:19:43 | 0:19:47 | |
it's confirmation that he's noticed and needed, and loved, perhaps. | 0:19:47 | 0:19:53 | |
But not all sidekicks play dumb. | 0:19:58 | 0:20:01 | |
You can be socially and intellectually superior to the lead. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:05 | |
The great thing about Sergeant Wilson, | 0:20:05 | 0:20:07 | |
Jimmy Perry, who wrote it, said, is that, instead of having the boss, | 0:20:07 | 0:20:10 | |
Captain Mainwaring, being a toff, | 0:20:10 | 0:20:12 | |
and the subservient sidekick being lower-middle class, they reversed it. | 0:20:12 | 0:20:18 | |
Don't sit in my chair when I'm not here, Wilson. | 0:20:19 | 0:20:22 | |
Sorry, sir, I was just writing out a notice, that's all. | 0:20:22 | 0:20:26 | |
Sergeant Wilson is a Jeeves-type sidekick. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:29 | |
He's a sidekick who's cleverer, wiser... "Do you think that wise, sir?" is his catchphrase. | 0:20:29 | 0:20:36 | |
He's the sensible one. | 0:20:36 | 0:20:38 | |
But, somehow, Captain Mainwaring actually has the authority. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:41 | |
-I am an officer. -Yes, quite, sir. -You're supposed to be an NCO. | 0:20:41 | 0:20:45 | |
-Yes, of course, yes. -Right. Very well, remember... | 0:20:45 | 0:20:47 | |
Captain Mainwaring is a bit of an oik, whereas Wilson is a toff, | 0:20:50 | 0:20:52 | |
and it really creates this great tension in the relationship. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:56 | |
It's one of the great strokes of genius in comedy. | 0:20:56 | 0:20:59 | |
This is the notice I was writing out, do you understand? | 0:20:59 | 0:21:03 | |
"Do not lean back in this chair". | 0:21:03 | 0:21:06 | |
It's that tension between the main act and the assistant that drives the narrative. | 0:21:07 | 0:21:12 | |
Now, come on, TARDIS. We are getting out of here. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:14 | |
Well, I might just have something to say about that, spaceman! | 0:21:14 | 0:21:18 | |
Whether you look at very high culture, looking at Greek drama, or arguably very low culture, | 0:21:18 | 0:21:25 | |
the relationship between Tintin and Snowy, it's essentially the same relationship. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:30 | |
The sidekick has existed all the way through cultural history, in almost every form you can think of. | 0:21:30 | 0:21:35 | |
The sidekick had a TV life that went beyond comedy and drama into light entertainment. | 0:21:35 | 0:21:41 | |
Here, the assistant gave us not just exposition, but glamour. | 0:21:41 | 0:21:45 | |
And, sometimes, even romance. | 0:21:45 | 0:21:48 | |
Traditionally, if you look at game shows, you did have a host, and then some sort of glamorous assistant. | 0:21:48 | 0:21:54 | |
The patronising attitude of TV makers was that the women would watch with the kids anyway | 0:21:54 | 0:21:58 | |
on a Saturday night show because it would be entertaining | 0:21:58 | 0:22:01 | |
and you didn't need much to keep the women interested, but you had to have some eye candy for the men. | 0:22:01 | 0:22:06 | |
Oh, you must do a twirl. I love it. | 0:22:06 | 0:22:09 | |
With the Generation Game, that assistant is completely different. | 0:22:09 | 0:22:11 | |
They become a sidekick proper. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:13 | |
Anthea Redfern becomes an important and integral part of the show. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:17 | |
Now, the nylon stockings, they still drive me mad, they really do. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
When Bruce and Anthea left, there were fears for the future of the show. | 0:22:21 | 0:22:25 | |
Salvation came with one of the most original pieces of casting in LE history. | 0:22:25 | 0:22:31 | |
Please meet Miss Isla St Clair. | 0:22:31 | 0:22:33 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:22:33 | 0:22:35 | |
They phoned up and said they wanted me to do it. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:44 | |
I was completely speechless, taken aback. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:46 | |
I still thought they must have got it wrong, because I thought, | 0:22:46 | 0:22:50 | |
"I'm so far away from what they had before. Why would they want me?" | 0:22:50 | 0:22:53 | |
Then, when I met Larry, I realised. | 0:22:56 | 0:22:58 | |
Bruce Forsyth's shtick involved the gentle humiliation of the guests on the Generation Game. | 0:22:58 | 0:23:03 | |
-You need those. -Does she need those? | 0:23:03 | 0:23:06 | |
Larry Grayson never did that. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:08 | |
Isla St Clair, I think, as a resort, took a slightly more authoritative role, in that you could imagine | 0:23:08 | 0:23:14 | |
she was Larry's carer, as well as anything else. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:17 | |
That she might help Larry sit down or find his right glasses, | 0:23:17 | 0:23:20 | |
or make sure he'd taken his pills before he went on. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:24 | |
-What's the next game? -Well, game number three... | 0:23:24 | 0:23:28 | |
In defying one stereotype, Isla helped create a new one - the hyper-competent sidekick. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:34 | |
I wasn't just presenting the car or the washing machine, | 0:23:34 | 0:23:37 | |
they were using me to introduce the games and I was more proactive. | 0:23:37 | 0:23:41 | |
Not hugely, but enough to make that difference. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:43 | |
You see, you always know everything, you do. She does. | 0:23:43 | 0:23:46 | |
She's always bossing me all the time, you know. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:48 | |
I think I was there to kind of bring a semblance of order. | 0:23:48 | 0:23:52 | |
Under Larry and Isla, the show became more successful than ever, | 0:23:55 | 0:23:58 | |
despite the apparent lack of any sexual chemistry. | 0:23:58 | 0:24:01 | |
When they chose a woman who had more about her, who hadn't come down the beauty queen role, | 0:24:01 | 0:24:06 | |
for her not to be challenging, she had to be partnered with a man who was not sexually available to her, | 0:24:06 | 0:24:13 | |
so there wasn't a sexual element possible in their relationship. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:17 | |
Shut your mouths. | 0:24:17 | 0:24:20 | |
I'll do anything, if you ask me properly, but if you start shouting, I'll not do a thing. Tell him. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:25 | |
That's right, he won't do it, I know, I've tried. | 0:24:25 | 0:24:27 | |
-Please, Airman Grayson, do it, please? -Yeah, alright. | 0:24:27 | 0:24:31 | |
And don't forget to write. | 0:24:31 | 0:24:34 | |
It was an inspired piece of casting, if not quite as original as first it seemed. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:45 | |
I would have been the principal boy, Larry, the dame, for sure, that's exactly how it was. | 0:24:45 | 0:24:50 | |
She seems like a nice girl, doesn't she? | 0:24:50 | 0:24:52 | |
But nowhere is the relationship as important or mysterious | 0:24:52 | 0:24:56 | |
as that between the magician and his assistant. | 0:24:56 | 0:24:59 | |
The whole bond between main character and sidekick | 0:24:59 | 0:25:03 | |
is based on the notion they know things the audience don't know. | 0:25:03 | 0:25:07 | |
And that's taking to a brilliant extreme | 0:25:07 | 0:25:10 | |
with the magician and his assistant, because she knows the secret of the trick, | 0:25:10 | 0:25:15 | |
and she's helping him create the illusion. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
So, that illusion that they're creating together | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
suggests an incredible bond, an almost sexual bond. | 0:25:21 | 0:25:25 | |
It was really strange how I got the job as Paul's magic assistant, | 0:25:25 | 0:25:29 | |
Paul Daniels, my husband. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:31 | |
I'd been a classical ballet dancer for the Iranian National Ballet. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:40 | |
It was the time of the revolution, when the Ayatollah created trouble, | 0:25:40 | 0:25:45 | |
and we were all imprisoned in one apartment block where they thought we were safe. | 0:25:45 | 0:25:51 | |
So before I started rehearsals with him, I had no idea who Paul Daniels was, or what he did. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:57 | |
Paul was TV's top magician, and, safely back home, Debbie landed a part in his show. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:05 | |
When I first worked with Paul, it was a matter of just carrying a prop on a tray or something. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:12 | |
We've got a lady wearing a nightie. Sorry! I thought you were ready for bed, love! | 0:26:12 | 0:26:16 | |
So, it didn't really require any skill, except to stand straight and keep smiling. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:22 | |
And we have a knot here so that Debbie won't get hung when it's pulled very tight. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:28 | |
The prop carrier was quickly promoted. | 0:26:28 | 0:26:31 | |
Paul was soon tying her up, probing her with uranium rods, and, of course, sawing her in half. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:37 | |
This is the sidekick taken to its furthest extreme. | 0:26:37 | 0:26:40 | |
"I trust you so much, Mr Authority Guy, that I'll let you chuck knives at me, and I know that I'll be OK. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:47 | |
"But I'll still be there to serve you in the following performance." | 0:26:47 | 0:26:50 | |
Tonight, my assistant gets inside the barrel. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:53 | |
They are, together, in charge of this illusion in this performance, | 0:26:53 | 0:26:58 | |
so the sidekick does have authority, but it's a silent authority. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:03 | |
She could never speak about it, it's mysterious. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:06 | |
# Put a little magic # Put a little magic | 0:27:06 | 0:27:09 | |
# Put a little magic in your life. # | 0:27:09 | 0:27:12 | |
Quite a lot of the time, you're there as a distraction. | 0:27:12 | 0:27:15 | |
You can't walk on stage in your jeans and scruffy hair and no make-up. | 0:27:15 | 0:27:21 | |
-If you don't look good, you're not going to distract them. -Thank you, Debbie. Lovely frock. | 0:27:21 | 0:27:26 | |
I think magician's assistants also give us what Dr Watson gives us - a way into the world of magic. | 0:27:26 | 0:27:33 | |
Quite often the assistant's job is to look amazed. | 0:27:33 | 0:27:36 | |
A magician can do an ordinary trick, and the assistant can sell it. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:41 | |
What you're there to do is to make it look as good as possible. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:45 | |
I can actually make Paul's applause grow, or kill it. | 0:27:45 | 0:27:50 | |
-Would you like the good news or the bad news first? -The good news. -Well, the good news is... | 0:27:50 | 0:27:57 | |
-But then a funny thing happened - the assistant became a kind of co-star. -What's the bad news? | 0:27:57 | 0:28:02 | |
They want me to take over the show. | 0:28:02 | 0:28:05 | |
I think I was quite aware of becoming a bit more | 0:28:05 | 0:28:10 | |
than just being a magic assistant in the background. | 0:28:10 | 0:28:13 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, now that I'm taking over the show, it's going to be called The Debbie McGee Show. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:19 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:28:19 | 0:28:21 | |
Behind the scenes, something magical was happening, as Paul swept Debbie off her feet. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:31 | |
So, what did first attract her? | 0:28:31 | 0:28:34 | |
Our partnership grew along with the show, I think. | 0:28:34 | 0:28:38 | |
It was just an instant, as they say, chemistry thing. | 0:28:38 | 0:28:43 | |
-But when the magician married the assistant, another funny thing happened. -Hello there. | 0:28:43 | 0:28:49 | |
People were more interested in the marriage than the magic. | 0:28:49 | 0:28:53 | |
Debbie McGee is a fascinating character. | 0:28:53 | 0:28:55 | |
I suppose like the power behind the throne, in some respects. | 0:28:55 | 0:28:58 | |
And she also allows Paul Daniels to be nasty | 0:28:58 | 0:29:01 | |
when you see them interviewed together. | 0:29:01 | 0:29:04 | |
She's the nice one, he's the grumpy, curmudgeonly, Scrooge-like one. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:08 | |
You're so bitter. Why did you suddenly get so angry about that? | 0:29:08 | 0:29:12 | |
The only time I come across people being... | 0:29:12 | 0:29:16 | |
patronising towards me or cynicism is from journalists. | 0:29:16 | 0:29:20 | |
It actually upsets some journalists, you know. | 0:29:20 | 0:29:23 | |
I know you're a journalist, and it upsets them that we're happy together, and I think, "Get a life." | 0:29:23 | 0:29:30 | |
We had a good time with Louis, but the media have tried to imply | 0:29:30 | 0:29:33 | |
that "you married the boss", or "you only got the job because you were his girlfriend". | 0:29:33 | 0:29:39 | |
I tend to just rise above it. | 0:29:39 | 0:29:41 | |
# Put a little magic Put a little magic... # | 0:29:41 | 0:29:44 | |
But it wasn't just light entertainment shows that relied on the talented assistant. | 0:29:44 | 0:29:48 | |
And it wasn't just women in the supporting role. | 0:29:48 | 0:29:52 | |
# Break or bust? Cake or crust? Yeah, That's Life! # | 0:29:52 | 0:29:58 | |
If you look at That's Life, to make a consumer show work, | 0:29:58 | 0:30:02 | |
on paper it's quite dry and boring, so you can jazz it up. | 0:30:02 | 0:30:05 | |
-Having sidekicks help you. -From the Kent Messenger, the commissioner said the wife was a neurotic woman, | 0:30:05 | 0:30:11 | |
with one leg in this world and the other in a world of her own. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:14 | |
-Between those two legs, she doesn't know quite where she is. -# Yeah, that's life. # | 0:30:14 | 0:30:21 | |
I never thought of them as co-presenters. | 0:30:25 | 0:30:27 | |
I thought of them as reporters, crucial to the success of the show. | 0:30:27 | 0:30:32 | |
Absolutely vital. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:33 | |
They're support to the main lead, and they fulfil the same criteria that sidekicks do in drama. | 0:30:33 | 0:30:39 | |
They're there to make the person like good, | 0:30:39 | 0:30:41 | |
they're there to explain, sometimes to impart information and make sure the show runs smoothly. | 0:30:41 | 0:30:46 | |
Because what we were creating on screen was a sort of family. | 0:30:46 | 0:30:50 | |
There was boring old mum sitting there! | 0:30:50 | 0:30:54 | |
And the kids. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:56 | |
The co-presenters came from all walks of life. | 0:30:58 | 0:31:01 | |
-Hello. -'We never advertised...' -Good evening. | 0:31:01 | 0:31:04 | |
People wrote to us, people phoned us, people's agents got in touch with us. | 0:31:04 | 0:31:09 | |
Doc Cox. Now what was Doc Cox's doctorate in, I wonder? | 0:31:09 | 0:31:14 | |
Did he study perhaps alongside Dr Fox in the same institution? | 0:31:14 | 0:31:18 | |
# There's tart of the house and there's ouzo with tit... # | 0:31:18 | 0:31:22 | |
Adrian Mills was an actor, wasn't he? He'd wrestled a giant snake semi-nude in Doctor Who. | 0:31:22 | 0:31:29 | |
I was working as a part-time debt collector at Earl's Court. | 0:31:29 | 0:31:33 | |
I'd been an actor for 10 years, you know what an acting life is like, | 0:31:33 | 0:31:36 | |
you're never quite sure when the next job is coming. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:38 | |
I remember phoning my parents and I said, "I'm the new presenter on BBC One's That's Life."! | 0:31:39 | 0:31:46 | |
Complete silence, and my mum said, "Does that mean we've got to watch it now?" | 0:31:46 | 0:31:49 | |
The reporters weren't just the voice of the public - on occasions, they were the public. | 0:31:51 | 0:31:55 | |
That's Life was one of the first shows to hold open auditions and let the viewers decide. | 0:31:55 | 0:32:00 | |
I was living in Edinburgh at the time working as a caravan salesman, | 0:32:00 | 0:32:04 | |
and I jumped on the sleeper train down to London on the Monday night. | 0:32:04 | 0:32:08 | |
The auditions were on Wednesday morning. I wanted to get there early | 0:32:08 | 0:32:11 | |
because they said they were only going to see 2,000 people. | 0:32:11 | 0:32:14 | |
-What made you do it? -It's That's Life, Esther. | 0:32:14 | 0:32:17 | |
You don't get a chance like this twice in a lifetime. | 0:32:17 | 0:32:20 | |
So, you've just got to go for it. | 0:32:20 | 0:32:21 | |
SHE IMITATES KATE BUSH | 0:32:21 | 0:32:24 | |
The wannabe presenters were put through their paces. | 0:32:25 | 0:32:28 | |
Who had what it takes to be a That's Life presenter? | 0:32:28 | 0:32:31 | |
Shows like the X Factor, Pop Idol, and a lot of the reality shows now have become competitions. | 0:32:31 | 0:32:38 | |
But I don't doubt for a second that when you look back at what happened in the That's Life auditions, | 0:32:38 | 0:32:44 | |
this was the model that they actually based it on. | 0:32:44 | 0:32:47 | |
And the winner is Mr Kevin Devine. | 0:32:47 | 0:32:51 | |
I really felt like I was going to start crying. | 0:32:51 | 0:32:55 | |
It was just phenomenal. | 0:32:55 | 0:32:57 | |
I was no longer the caravan salesman that had left Edinburgh that day, | 0:32:57 | 0:33:01 | |
I was going to be a presenter on a prime-time TV show on Sunday night, | 0:33:01 | 0:33:06 | |
on a show that was an institution. | 0:33:06 | 0:33:09 | |
Once ensconced, their role was clearly defined. | 0:33:09 | 0:33:14 | |
We were there to support Esther, because she was the ringmaster, | 0:33:14 | 0:33:17 | |
if you like, and we had all these great stories to tell. | 0:33:17 | 0:33:20 | |
..Then it peed on the living room floor and left. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:22 | |
Our role was very much to be the voice and the spokesperson | 0:33:22 | 0:33:26 | |
for the 10,000 letters a week that used to come in. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:28 | |
-IMITATES A CHINESE ACCENT: -But we would thend it to him for thmall pwithe, thirty perthent... | 0:33:28 | 0:33:34 | |
thirty perthent dithcount, | 0:33:34 | 0:33:37 | |
a vewy thpecial pwithe. | 0:33:37 | 0:33:39 | |
They have different slants, they bring their own personality into it, you can split up the storylines. | 0:33:39 | 0:33:45 | |
-The gentleman said... -Just to take the E to K... -..Round to the Post Office. Fine, I know. | 0:33:45 | 0:33:50 | |
You can have them answering back, you can have them playing roles. | 0:33:50 | 0:33:53 | |
It's the only way, sir, you think about it. | 0:33:53 | 0:33:55 | |
They were fantastic communicators. | 0:33:55 | 0:33:57 | |
Behaving almost like actors to bring the story to life. | 0:33:57 | 0:34:00 | |
So, I think the mechanics of That's Life make it absolutely vital to have people like that. | 0:34:00 | 0:34:06 | |
The reporters were part of the show's trademark mix | 0:34:06 | 0:34:10 | |
of veg, vox pops, and hard-hitting consumer journalism. | 0:34:10 | 0:34:14 | |
Life is light and shade, it was there to entertain as well as inform. | 0:34:14 | 0:34:19 | |
I was sent to interview the contestants for the HMV dog, | 0:34:19 | 0:34:23 | |
and I remember thinking, "Try to sing to them, that's what I'll do." | 0:34:23 | 0:34:25 | |
And they went berserk and they attacked me. | 0:34:25 | 0:34:27 | |
# You ain't nothing but a hound dog... # | 0:34:27 | 0:34:30 | |
BARKING | 0:34:30 | 0:34:32 | |
Ah! | 0:34:32 | 0:34:33 | |
'Occasionally, there'd be something I'd think, "I don't want to do that." | 0:34:33 | 0:34:36 | |
I wasn't a great fan of Get Britain Singing, leaping out at Joe public | 0:34:36 | 0:34:39 | |
and getting them to sing along used to fill me with dread. | 0:34:39 | 0:34:42 | |
Hello, Sir! | 0:34:42 | 0:34:44 | |
Can you do the Twist? | 0:34:44 | 0:34:46 | |
The amount of snobbery from some of the grey suits at the BBC about That's Life was extraordinary. | 0:34:49 | 0:34:54 | |
It was seen to be well below what they were normally pitching at, | 0:34:54 | 0:34:58 | |
but, to be perfectly frank, to hell with them. | 0:34:58 | 0:35:00 | |
It actually was about the people that were writing in. | 0:35:00 | 0:35:03 | |
It was about the millions of people that were watching, and enjoying, the programme. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:06 | |
There would be more than 20 co-presenters in the history of That's Life, but only one star. | 0:35:06 | 0:35:11 | |
Oh, yeah. You were always going to play second fiddle on That's Life. | 0:35:11 | 0:35:15 | |
Esther Rantzen was the star of the show. | 0:35:15 | 0:35:19 | |
It was Esther as this very powerful woman. | 0:35:19 | 0:35:22 | |
I think for a lot of men that's quite an enticing fantasy. | 0:35:22 | 0:35:26 | |
You can imagine her in one of those Emmanuel wicker chairs, | 0:35:29 | 0:35:32 | |
with all of those men giving her manicures and things like that. | 0:35:32 | 0:35:35 | |
There was a sense that she was kind of the matriarch of this bunch of slightly submissive men. | 0:35:35 | 0:35:40 | |
I was taking the lead role as a woman, and my reporters were men. | 0:35:40 | 0:35:44 | |
That made some male television critics uncomfortable. | 0:35:44 | 0:35:50 | |
They were pretty much castrated, | 0:35:50 | 0:35:52 | |
they had their nuts in a jar on the desk in front of them | 0:35:52 | 0:35:55 | |
because that's the role of the show. | 0:35:55 | 0:35:57 | |
Actually, I think what that revealed was sexism. | 0:35:57 | 0:36:01 | |
I never felt emasculated working for Esther Rantzen. I can honestly say that. | 0:36:01 | 0:36:04 | |
"Autocuties", "Esther's nancies", whatever you wanted to call us, | 0:36:04 | 0:36:08 | |
to be honest, it didn't matter. | 0:36:08 | 0:36:10 | |
We knew we were doing a good job, we enjoyed it, and it was really appreciated by the public. | 0:36:10 | 0:36:14 | |
That's Life bowed out after 21 seasons, | 0:36:14 | 0:36:18 | |
but if playing opposite a woman could be hard, how much tougher to play second fiddle to a puppet? | 0:36:18 | 0:36:23 | |
-It's in children's TV where the sidekicks truly tested. -What have you got there? | 0:36:23 | 0:36:28 | |
Well, it's a new mini-telly, Mr Nixon, specially built for small-minded viewers. | 0:36:28 | 0:36:34 | |
Even the transistors have got transistors. | 0:36:34 | 0:36:38 | |
People that work with puppets have a different skill set. | 0:36:38 | 0:36:41 | |
They're much closer to a double act with the live human playing the straight man to the funny puppet, | 0:36:41 | 0:36:48 | |
and none more so than in Basil Brush. | 0:36:48 | 0:36:52 | |
Wey-hey! | 0:36:52 | 0:36:54 | |
Basil started in the Sixties as sidekick to magician David Nixon, | 0:36:55 | 0:36:58 | |
but quickly became the star of his own show. | 0:36:58 | 0:37:01 | |
Though he always preferred working with an assistant. | 0:37:01 | 0:37:04 | |
Basil is a comedian who needs a straight guy. | 0:37:04 | 0:37:07 | |
He needs his gimp to humiliate and control and bamboozle. | 0:37:07 | 0:37:12 | |
And he needs somebody to turn the pages when they read the story at the end, | 0:37:12 | 0:37:16 | |
which is something he'd be incapable of doing. | 0:37:16 | 0:37:18 | |
Basil employed a series of Misters to do his bidding, including Mr Derek, Mr Howard and Mr Roy. | 0:37:18 | 0:37:26 | |
As brilliant as he was, he needed feeding, because he was a gagster doing the punch lines. | 0:37:26 | 0:37:32 | |
His main thing was interacting with humans and putting them down, | 0:37:32 | 0:37:35 | |
and always getting on top of them. | 0:37:35 | 0:37:38 | |
We'll have none of that! | 0:37:39 | 0:37:42 | |
I'm sorry. | 0:37:42 | 0:37:43 | |
I got carried away. | 0:37:43 | 0:37:45 | |
But was this another relationship founded on class? | 0:37:45 | 0:37:48 | |
Ooh! | 0:37:48 | 0:37:50 | |
Basil is posh. Basil is literally from the hunting classes. | 0:37:51 | 0:37:55 | |
Roy North is something different. | 0:37:55 | 0:37:58 | |
He's regional. He might have been the first person from Hull ever allowed on TV. | 0:37:58 | 0:38:02 | |
As a five-year-old growing up in Hull, I was sensitive, | 0:38:05 | 0:38:08 | |
very sensitive, that Roy North was somehow my representative on stage. | 0:38:08 | 0:38:13 | |
What are you dressed like that for? You do look a right Charlie! | 0:38:13 | 0:38:17 | |
-I'm a jester! -A right Charlie jester! | 0:38:17 | 0:38:21 | |
Other puppets, even though they're a bit naughty, generally they're controlled by their puppet-master, | 0:38:21 | 0:38:27 | |
whereas Basil Brush is there just to insult his handlers, who treat him in this kind of wary manner | 0:38:27 | 0:38:33 | |
because they know that their wages depend on his anarchistic activities. | 0:38:33 | 0:38:37 | |
Outside, on the five-acre lunch... launching pad... | 0:38:37 | 0:38:40 | |
-Lidge...lodge, yes. -If you had a funny accent or a dodgy eyebrow, | 0:38:40 | 0:38:45 | |
he'd always pick on that and put you down. | 0:38:45 | 0:38:49 | |
You got it wrong, didn't you? | 0:38:49 | 0:38:51 | |
-Come along. -I'd try and keep him in check, but his great thing was to always get the better of humans. | 0:38:51 | 0:38:59 | |
That was his whole drive, you know. | 0:38:59 | 0:39:00 | |
Basil Brush is a fox who wears hunting gear. | 0:39:00 | 0:39:03 | |
There's an element of self-hatred, I think, in that character. | 0:39:03 | 0:39:07 | |
Puppets aren't really real, are they? I mean, not really, really, really real. | 0:39:07 | 0:39:11 | |
I mean, they're not real fellas like you and me, are they? | 0:39:11 | 0:39:14 | |
He always used to to say he hated puppets, did Basil. Because he felt above it. | 0:39:14 | 0:39:17 | |
He didn't think he was a puppet, he thought he was a fella, actually. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:21 | |
People like Sooty, he used to say, "I hate puppets, can't stand puppets." | 0:39:21 | 0:39:25 | |
Basil's great rival had been going since the Fifties, and was already an established star. | 0:39:27 | 0:39:34 | |
Sooty, it's gone! | 0:39:34 | 0:39:36 | |
But, Sooty's sidekick wasn't just part of the act, he was part of the family. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:40 | |
And, in theory, the assistant had the upper hand. | 0:39:40 | 0:39:43 | |
With Sooty, there's a sense of this being a family of some kind, | 0:39:43 | 0:39:47 | |
because you've obviously got the Corbetts, who are the originators of Sooty. | 0:39:47 | 0:39:52 | |
Harry Corbett, who first did the act. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:54 | |
Oh, not a water pistol. | 0:39:54 | 0:39:57 | |
He was an older figure, and you sensed that these puppets were running rings round him. | 0:39:57 | 0:40:02 | |
They were like naughty children he couldn't quite control. | 0:40:02 | 0:40:05 | |
My father just loved that character so much. | 0:40:05 | 0:40:08 | |
He loved Sooty, and he put his heart and his life into that programme. | 0:40:08 | 0:40:13 | |
We were going on holiday when I was seven or eight years old. | 0:40:13 | 0:40:16 | |
We all piled into the car and we were going a long drive down to Dartmouth from Yorkshire. | 0:40:16 | 0:40:22 | |
My father got about three miles down the road and suddenly the car stopped, | 0:40:22 | 0:40:27 | |
and Harry said, "I can't go without him!" | 0:40:27 | 0:40:31 | |
My mother said, "Without whom?" The boys are in the back. And he said, "I can't go without Sooty." | 0:40:31 | 0:40:34 | |
So he actually turned the car round, went back, drove home, | 0:40:34 | 0:40:38 | |
and got Sooty and put him in the boot, and so Sooty went on holiday. | 0:40:38 | 0:40:42 | |
Sooty was getting troublesome, and pulling Peter's ear. | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
It was a strange childhood, in many ways, because... | 0:40:45 | 0:40:48 | |
so far back as I can remember, my father was always famous. | 0:40:48 | 0:40:51 | |
The downside was that, when you go to school, having a father who does that for a living, | 0:40:51 | 0:40:56 | |
it automatically leads to name-calling and potential bullying. | 0:40:56 | 0:41:00 | |
So that's when you develop this, "How do you get through that?" | 0:41:00 | 0:41:04 | |
So I became the funny guy in the class. | 0:41:04 | 0:41:07 | |
I don't think he's going to come out. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:09 | |
And so Peter took the stage name Matthew and took over the family business. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:16 | |
It could so easily have gone wrong. | 0:41:16 | 0:41:18 | |
The audience, the viewing public might have gone, "It's not the same." | 0:41:18 | 0:41:21 | |
Luckily, the audiences were sympathetic, probably because I was a Corbett. | 0:41:21 | 0:41:25 | |
Where are we? | 0:41:25 | 0:41:27 | |
Sooty, we've made it, this is the big one. This is the big chat show. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:31 | |
Is that Michael Parkinson? | 0:41:31 | 0:41:34 | |
I love and respect the character, but it's different, mine was much more a business approach, | 0:41:34 | 0:41:41 | |
whereas my father just did it from the heart. | 0:41:41 | 0:41:46 | |
All those years on the road took their toll, | 0:41:47 | 0:41:51 | |
and Peter and Sooty decided to go their separate ways, and Peter returned to his first love - music. | 0:41:51 | 0:41:57 | |
# The handbags and the gladrags your poor old grandad had to... # | 0:41:59 | 0:42:04 | |
25 years for my father, 25 years for me. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:06 | |
We both served the same amount of time, 50 years of sticking your hand up a teddy bear's bum. | 0:42:06 | 0:42:12 | |
Good old granddad. | 0:42:13 | 0:42:16 | |
We could have let it stay in the family, | 0:42:16 | 0:42:19 | |
but the chances of it working for me were slim, the chances of it working again are almost infinitesimal. | 0:42:19 | 0:42:25 | |
Sooty continues to entertain children to this day, but Peter has no regrets. | 0:42:25 | 0:42:31 | |
The audiences may be smaller, but they're all his. | 0:42:31 | 0:42:34 | |
It was never me that they were coming to see. | 0:42:34 | 0:42:37 | |
It was actually a one metre square of mohair material. | 0:42:37 | 0:42:41 | |
He was the star of the show. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:43 | |
Playing sidekick to a puppet, you still get some recognition. | 0:42:47 | 0:42:51 | |
But how do you become a star when they can't even see your face? | 0:42:51 | 0:42:55 | |
Robots tend to be sidekicks in science fiction. | 0:42:58 | 0:43:01 | |
You don't really want robots to be heroes. | 0:43:01 | 0:43:04 | |
We're not quite at the idea where we can surrender humanity. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:07 | |
The reason you always need a computer-generated sidekick in space | 0:43:07 | 0:43:11 | |
is exactly the same reason that a cowboy needed the horse and the dog on the range. | 0:43:11 | 0:43:17 | |
It was to combat loneliness, to have an interlocutor in circumstances where you are absolutely alone. | 0:43:17 | 0:43:24 | |
So, if you're... | 0:43:24 | 0:43:26 | |
Roy Rogers or Buck Rogers, you need this little gizmo | 0:43:26 | 0:43:33 | |
that can talk to you, that can interpret you, and can comfort you. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:37 | |
The art of the show-stealing cyber-sidekick was demonstrated in the sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf. | 0:43:39 | 0:43:45 | |
The ship's service mechanoid, Kryten, was played by a rubber-faced Robert Llewellyn. | 0:43:45 | 0:43:51 | |
In a sense, it's more like puppetry, working with that mask | 0:43:55 | 0:43:58 | |
because any subtle movements... | 0:43:58 | 0:44:00 | |
If I had the mask on and I went like this... | 0:44:00 | 0:44:03 | |
you wouldn't see it. Or that. But if I go... | 0:44:03 | 0:44:06 | |
..like that, then it shows. So you're kind of working away, | 0:44:07 | 0:44:10 | |
and unfortunately that was my greatest skill. | 0:44:10 | 0:44:13 | |
I had tried to do some serious film acting and various directors | 0:44:13 | 0:44:17 | |
basically tore their hair out and tried to beat me up because I couldn't do... | 0:44:17 | 0:44:21 | |
if I had to portray someone being sad, I'd go... | 0:44:21 | 0:44:25 | |
Which isn't what they want. So it was ideal to cover me in rubber. | 0:44:25 | 0:44:28 | |
Of course. 'It was a kind of long journey to find a way of portraying that character that wasn't... | 0:44:31 | 0:44:37 | |
'either a cliched kind of killer machine Terminator,' | 0:44:37 | 0:44:40 | |
but was also not an English butler, which is in a way what the C3PO character was, | 0:44:40 | 0:44:46 | |
the attentive butler who's terribly worried about protocol. | 0:44:46 | 0:44:50 | |
-OK, What's this? -It's an apple? -No, no, no, what is it? | 0:44:50 | 0:44:54 | |
It's no good, sir, I just can't lie, I'm programmed always to tell the truth. | 0:44:54 | 0:44:58 | |
The answer lay in Crichton's desire to be human. | 0:44:58 | 0:45:02 | |
There was something about his lack of humanity that just... | 0:45:02 | 0:45:06 | |
but his longing to be human, he admired human beings and their failings enormously | 0:45:06 | 0:45:11 | |
and there was something about that that clicked with me. | 0:45:11 | 0:45:14 | |
Don't you think I'd love to be deceitful, unpleasant and offensive? | 0:45:14 | 0:45:17 | |
Those are the human qualities I admire the most. I just can't do it. | 0:45:17 | 0:45:21 | |
I've not done enough psychoanalysis as to why that is the case, | 0:45:21 | 0:45:23 | |
-but I did find it absolutely fascinating. -Come-on, what is it? | 0:45:23 | 0:45:27 | |
It's a...it's a...it's a... | 0:45:27 | 0:45:29 | |
-small, off-duty Czechoslovakian traffic warden. -Yes! | 0:45:29 | 0:45:32 | |
You did it, you did it. What's this? | 0:45:32 | 0:45:35 | |
The character helped make the show a success, but the actor got none of the recognition. | 0:45:35 | 0:45:41 | |
No one ever looked at me or said, "Are you that bloke from that thing?" Obviously. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:46 | |
If they had recognised me when I had a head like a battered 1950s fridge, it would be slightly alarming. | 0:45:46 | 0:45:52 | |
But Crichton wasn't the first robot on British TV to be all too human. | 0:45:53 | 0:45:59 | |
In the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, we've got Marvin, the Paranoid Android, | 0:45:59 | 0:46:04 | |
a manic depressive robot. | 0:46:04 | 0:46:05 | |
Life! Don't talk to me about life. | 0:46:05 | 0:46:11 | |
He's the sort of sidekick you'd want to turn off because he's going to bring you down at every chance | 0:46:11 | 0:46:17 | |
because he's got such a pessimistic, miserable view on life. | 0:46:17 | 0:46:20 | |
Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they tell me to take you up to the bridge. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:26 | |
I mean, he's got a great brain, but actually he is depressed | 0:46:26 | 0:46:31 | |
for a good reason. | 0:46:31 | 0:46:34 | |
That he's not taken for his full value. | 0:46:34 | 0:46:38 | |
Call that job satisfaction, cos I don't. | 0:46:38 | 0:46:42 | |
He was suited for greater things really and he made it known that he wasn't very happy about it. | 0:46:42 | 0:46:49 | |
In fact, he was a very unhappy robot. | 0:46:49 | 0:46:53 | |
Here again the actor could bring something of himself to his non-human character. | 0:46:53 | 0:46:58 | |
My life took me to it. I was a natural for this part. | 0:46:58 | 0:47:03 | |
Sometimes they would say, "You're getting a bit cheerful now." | 0:47:03 | 0:47:08 | |
-HE LAUGHS -But that didn't happen very often. | 0:47:08 | 0:47:11 | |
That sunset, the two suns, | 0:47:11 | 0:47:15 | |
it was like mountains of fire boiling into space. | 0:47:15 | 0:47:19 | |
I've seen it. | 0:47:19 | 0:47:21 | |
It's rubbish. | 0:47:21 | 0:47:23 | |
It was an enjoyable miserable part. | 0:47:23 | 0:47:26 | |
# 10 billion logic functions maybe more | 0:47:26 | 0:47:30 | |
# They make me pick the paper off the floor... # | 0:47:30 | 0:47:33 | |
Marvin's misery struck a chord with early Eighties viewers. | 0:47:34 | 0:47:39 | |
Why people enjoy it I don't know, but people began, for some reason, to love that character. | 0:47:39 | 0:47:45 | |
# Solitary solenoid | 0:47:45 | 0:47:48 | |
# Terminally paranoid Marvin... # | 0:47:48 | 0:47:50 | |
I think there must be a lot of people who are under-used, | 0:47:50 | 0:47:54 | |
who understand | 0:47:54 | 0:47:57 | |
the plight that poor Marvin is in. | 0:47:57 | 0:48:00 | |
So, playing a robot can bring cult status and artistic satisfaction. | 0:48:00 | 0:48:05 | |
Ooh! | 0:48:05 | 0:48:07 | |
If I was going to do some acting, that was the role that I was born to do. | 0:48:07 | 0:48:12 | |
A sidekick. | 0:48:12 | 0:48:14 | |
I would have said my character was a star. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:18 | |
But when it comes to TV sidekicks, one man is light-years ahead. | 0:48:18 | 0:48:22 | |
Doctor Who can boast the most assistants in the history of British television. | 0:48:24 | 0:48:29 | |
Or companions. Or helpers. | 0:48:29 | 0:48:31 | |
All right, team... Oh, I hate people that say "team"! | 0:48:31 | 0:48:35 | |
Um...gang. | 0:48:35 | 0:48:37 | |
Um...comrades. | 0:48:37 | 0:48:39 | |
One of the things about the Doctor is that he goes through life | 0:48:39 | 0:48:43 | |
picking people up and moving on. | 0:48:43 | 0:48:45 | |
That's never really examined in the show. | 0:48:45 | 0:48:48 | |
If we look at Doctor Who, we are not too far away from the world of Sherlock Holmes again. | 0:48:50 | 0:48:54 | |
Sherlock Holmes is a genius that could've come from another planet, | 0:48:54 | 0:48:58 | |
he's so far ahead of the rest of the pack, | 0:48:58 | 0:49:00 | |
what we have with Doctor Who is a character that is from another planet, a Time Lord, someone alien. | 0:49:00 | 0:49:06 | |
I think it's useful to have human companions with him for the viewers, | 0:49:06 | 0:49:11 | |
for the young viewers, it gives them someone to identify with. | 0:49:11 | 0:49:14 | |
The Doctor's had more than 35 companions. | 0:49:16 | 0:49:19 | |
But their role has changed dramatically since the early days. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:24 | |
When Doctor Who started it was founded around its companions. | 0:49:24 | 0:49:27 | |
The companions are not just the people through whom we view the story, they are the story. | 0:49:27 | 0:49:32 | |
They are the people who have in fact been kidnapped by the Doctor, | 0:49:32 | 0:49:36 | |
and whisked off into time and space. | 0:49:36 | 0:49:39 | |
There must be some explanation. | 0:49:39 | 0:49:42 | |
In the beginning of Doctor Who there are at three companions, and the Doctor at the heart of the story. | 0:49:42 | 0:49:47 | |
Our sympathies are much more with the companions than the Doctor. | 0:49:47 | 0:49:51 | |
The first Doctor, played by William Hartnell, isn't always a very sympathetic figure. | 0:49:51 | 0:49:56 | |
In fact, there's a scene from the very first story, they are trapped in a Palaeolithic forest, | 0:49:56 | 0:50:01 | |
they've escaped cavemen, and they're carrying a wounded caveman, but he's clearly holding them back. | 0:50:01 | 0:50:08 | |
The Doctor picks up a stone and it looks for a moment like he's going to kill this caveman. | 0:50:08 | 0:50:14 | |
-And the senior companion, played by William Russell, restrains him. -What are you doing? | 0:50:14 | 0:50:20 | |
Well, I...I was going to get him to draw our way back to the TARDIS. | 0:50:20 | 0:50:24 | |
Now that is a scene that very soon will become impossible. | 0:50:26 | 0:50:31 | |
And so the companion defaulted to the damsel in distress. | 0:50:31 | 0:50:35 | |
The girl sidekick generally has to go, "Oh, my God, a big monster," | 0:50:35 | 0:50:38 | |
because Doctor Who is not going to go, "Look, a big monster." | 0:50:38 | 0:50:40 | |
He's met them all. Doctor Who is not that impressed, | 0:50:40 | 0:50:42 | |
whereas the girl sidekick has to be scared and also show the audience, who are children, | 0:50:42 | 0:50:46 | |
that a scary thing is happening because with the BBC props, they might just go, "What's that?" | 0:50:46 | 0:50:51 | |
A succession of actors were brought in to look good and act scared. | 0:50:56 | 0:51:00 | |
But in 1973, the arrival of a new companion seemed more like a change. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:05 | |
I'm a journalist. Sarah Jane Smith. | 0:51:05 | 0:51:08 | |
You realise this is a very dangerous place to be in? | 0:51:08 | 0:51:10 | |
I can't help that, I'm stuck now. | 0:51:10 | 0:51:12 | |
She's the first one who knows about feminism. | 0:51:12 | 0:51:15 | |
And she can stand up to John Pertwee's rather authoritarian and rather patronising Doctor. | 0:51:15 | 0:51:21 | |
You can make yourself useful. | 0:51:21 | 0:51:23 | |
We need somebody around here to make the coffee. | 0:51:23 | 0:51:25 | |
If you think I'm going to spend my time making cups of coffee for you... | 0:51:25 | 0:51:29 | |
I was given a very particular, but quite a short little list of what she was. She was a modern woman, | 0:51:29 | 0:51:36 | |
she was feisty, she was a woman who had her own mind. | 0:51:36 | 0:51:41 | |
She's given a scene where she goes to this alien planet | 0:51:41 | 0:51:44 | |
and gets to lecture the Queen of Pelodon on Women's Lib. | 0:51:44 | 0:51:48 | |
It would be different if I was a man. | 0:51:48 | 0:51:51 | |
But I'm only a girl. | 0:51:51 | 0:51:54 | |
Now, just a minute, there's nothing only about being a girl, your Majesty. | 0:51:54 | 0:51:59 | |
But being a strong woman in a Time Lord's world wasn't easy. | 0:51:59 | 0:52:03 | |
They all did exactly the same thing that girls in Bond films did, they came on at the beginning | 0:52:03 | 0:52:08 | |
and said, "I'm not going to be like all the others, I'm going to be proactive, I'm not going to scream," | 0:52:08 | 0:52:13 | |
and then, gradually, as the scripts kept coming in, it defaulted back to, "Eek, a monster." | 0:52:13 | 0:52:19 | |
The Doctor, like James Bond, is so powerful a character that you can't really take that away from him. | 0:52:19 | 0:52:25 | |
Come on, we've got about a minute to get out of here! Quick, run! | 0:52:25 | 0:52:29 | |
Pertwee's Doctor was a Doctor who loved to have smaller people to rescue. | 0:52:29 | 0:52:33 | |
When you're running along a corridor escaping, John actually liked his assistant to be quite vulnerable. | 0:52:33 | 0:52:40 | |
There was a lot of tension between Tom Baker and Louise Jameson. | 0:52:42 | 0:52:46 | |
Tom Baker deeply disapproved of her character. | 0:52:46 | 0:52:49 | |
Partly because of her violence - she was often...she killed people. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:52 | |
He kept saying, "All we need for a companion is a talking cabbage who can sit on my shoulder." | 0:52:52 | 0:52:59 | |
I'm going to materialise and take a reading. | 0:52:59 | 0:53:01 | |
-Where are we? -But arguably the most popular sidekick wasn't a woman at all. | 0:53:01 | 0:53:06 | |
-Pluto? -Pluto? -Yes, Pluto. | 0:53:06 | 0:53:09 | |
The ninth planet was, until the discovery of Cassius, believed to be the outermost body in the system. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:16 | |
Tell your tin pet to shut up. | 0:53:16 | 0:53:18 | |
-K9, you can tell me later. -Affirmative. | 0:53:18 | 0:53:21 | |
They wanted me to have a voice that sounded as if it had come through | 0:53:21 | 0:53:24 | |
a tiny little transistor speaker, | 0:53:24 | 0:53:27 | |
and yet was the repository of all knowledge at an instant. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:31 | |
Check, Master. | 0:53:31 | 0:53:34 | |
-What? -Machine mind computes mate in six moves. | 0:53:34 | 0:53:37 | |
Rubbish! | 0:53:37 | 0:53:39 | |
He is the faithful servant, but he's the faithful servant | 0:53:39 | 0:53:43 | |
who thinks he knows quite as much as the Doctor, if not more. | 0:53:43 | 0:53:47 | |
-Your move, Master. -I know it's my move. Don't flash your eyes at me. | 0:53:47 | 0:53:51 | |
Not only did K9 become a celebrity. | 0:53:51 | 0:53:54 | |
Hello, nice doggy. | 0:53:54 | 0:53:56 | |
Negative, negative, do not approach. I have offensive capability. | 0:53:56 | 0:54:00 | |
He even did a Lewis 25 years before Lewis himself. | 0:54:00 | 0:54:04 | |
-Affirmative. -K9 was so successful, especially with kids, he actually got his own spin-off show. | 0:54:04 | 0:54:09 | |
I think the title sequence of K9 and company | 0:54:15 | 0:54:17 | |
is one of the most joyful things ever to be broadcast on television. | 0:54:17 | 0:54:21 | |
Oh, don't! I don't want to talk about that. I don't. | 0:54:22 | 0:54:25 | |
You've got Elizabeth Sladen drinking white wine in the winter outside a pub in November. | 0:54:25 | 0:54:31 | |
Then there's a picture of K9 sitting on top of a dry-stone wall! | 0:54:33 | 0:54:39 | |
How did that happen? | 0:54:39 | 0:54:41 | |
Somebody booted him up the arse, I don't know. | 0:54:41 | 0:54:44 | |
It's supposed to be dynamic, like the Bionic Woman or something like that. | 0:54:44 | 0:54:48 | |
And it's got this theme tune where K9 barks his own name. | 0:54:48 | 0:54:52 | |
All I had to do was get to a microphone and go, "K9. | 0:54:54 | 0:54:58 | |
"K9. | 0:54:58 | 0:55:00 | |
"K9." | 0:55:00 | 0:55:02 | |
I left drama school as a classical actor. | 0:55:08 | 0:55:12 | |
You don't actually expect to be playing a tin dog at my age, but there you are. | 0:55:12 | 0:55:16 | |
-You are the weakest link. -Affirmative, mistress. Goodbye. | 0:55:16 | 0:55:22 | |
K9 would even pop up in the new series of Doctor Who, but this was a very different world. | 0:55:24 | 0:55:30 | |
A world of one-off companions, | 0:55:30 | 0:55:32 | |
action hero companions, and everywhere you looked, strong, mouthy women. | 0:55:32 | 0:55:37 | |
I think when the series returns under Russell T Davies, something incredibly strange happens. | 0:55:37 | 0:55:43 | |
At first sight, Billie Piper seems a baffling choice of companion. | 0:55:43 | 0:55:47 | |
But the character, Rose Tyler, and the way it was written | 0:55:47 | 0:55:52 | |
and her performance meant that she became the central character. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:55 | |
In the older show, their job was to get into trouble that the Doctor would have to get them out of. | 0:55:58 | 0:56:05 | |
Now, in the revived show, quite often they are fulfilling | 0:56:05 | 0:56:09 | |
the Sancho Panza function, of keeping the hero in check, | 0:56:09 | 0:56:14 | |
of keeping him human, keeping him grounded. | 0:56:14 | 0:56:16 | |
Don't you think I've done enough? | 0:56:16 | 0:56:19 | |
History's back in place and everyone dies. | 0:56:19 | 0:56:22 | |
You've got to go back! | 0:56:22 | 0:56:25 | |
Doctor, I'm telling you, take this thing back! | 0:56:25 | 0:56:27 | |
This is a different kind of Doctor. | 0:56:27 | 0:56:30 | |
The Doctor in the new series is this casualty of something called the Time War. He's the last Time Lord. | 0:56:30 | 0:56:37 | |
He's a scarred and slightly dangerous man. | 0:56:37 | 0:56:39 | |
That sort of demonstrates that he needs this Earthling | 0:56:39 | 0:56:42 | |
to give him a moral grounding that he might not necessarily have if he was travelling off on his own. | 0:56:42 | 0:56:49 | |
You were right. | 0:56:49 | 0:56:51 | |
Sometimes I need someone. | 0:56:51 | 0:56:53 | |
Alongside the new companions, we also saw the return of an old one. | 0:56:56 | 0:57:01 | |
Hi, nice to meet you, you can tell you're getting older, your assistants are getting younger. | 0:57:01 | 0:57:06 | |
-I'm not his assistant. -No? Get you, Tiger. | 0:57:06 | 0:57:10 | |
Like an old girlfriend, they split up, the Doctor dumped her and years later they meet up again. | 0:57:10 | 0:57:17 | |
I was there, with the Doctor again, but he was different. | 0:57:17 | 0:57:21 | |
You could have come back. | 0:57:21 | 0:57:24 | |
-I couldn't. -Why not? | 0:57:24 | 0:57:27 | |
Sarah Jane's return raised questions about the whole purpose of the companion in Doctor Who. And beyond. | 0:57:27 | 0:57:32 | |
-How many of us have there been travelling with you? -Does it matter? | 0:57:32 | 0:57:36 | |
It does, if I'm the latest in a long line. | 0:57:36 | 0:57:39 | |
As opposed to what? | 0:57:39 | 0:57:41 | |
I thought you and me were... I obviously got it wrong. | 0:57:41 | 0:57:46 | |
I've been to the year 5 billion, right, but this, | 0:57:46 | 0:57:49 | |
this is really seeing the future, you just leave us behind. | 0:57:49 | 0:57:53 | |
But maybe we shouldn't complain how the boss treats the assistant. | 0:57:53 | 0:57:57 | |
He's an alien, he can behave in any way he likes. | 0:57:57 | 0:58:00 | |
It's always been an unequal relationship. | 0:58:00 | 0:58:03 | |
As in life, some people see themselves as absolutely the main event. | 0:58:03 | 0:58:08 | |
And there's these little satellites going round them. | 0:58:08 | 0:58:11 | |
But when you start to inspect the satellites, you see that actually a lot of the drama is there. | 0:58:11 | 0:58:16 | |
It's there in this stage drama, it's there in the TV sitcom, it's there in the early British novel. | 0:58:16 | 0:58:21 | |
There will always be a perfectly reflecting little mirror | 0:58:21 | 0:58:25 | |
accompanying these great heroes and characters. | 0:58:25 | 0:58:29 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:35 | 0:58:38 |