October 2010 Issue 427

Dedicated Followers of Fashion!

The flamboyant designer and her larger-than-life leading man – Fourth Doctor Tom Baker and June Hudson celebrate their extraordinary collaboration.

Interview by BENJAMIN COOK Photographs by DYLAN THOMAS

June Hudson is a bit of a legend. If pushed, she admits as much herself. June designed the costumes for eight Doctor Who serials during Tom Baker’s seven-year reign – starting with The Ribos Operation in 1978, and ending with Tom’s swansong, Logopolis, in 1981. Her greatest assignment was redesigning Tom’s costume for his final season. “Any change in his clothing was really unthinkable,” states June. “It was my assignment to think the unthinkable.”

Now, Tom Baker needs no introduction – but needless to say, he’s a legend too. Last summer, a mere 28 years after Logopolis, he reprised the role that made him a household name and international star, for a series of five BBC Audio plays written by Paul Magrs under the umbrella title Hornets’ Nest. This was Tom’s first outing as the Doctor in an original, full-length story since 1981. True to form, the fans lapped it up – so the Beeb commissioned a second run of five, titled Demon’s Quest, the first instalment of which, The Relics of Time, was released in September 2010. The Demon of Paris followed in October, and part three, A Shard of Ice, in November.

 

In a fitting twist, the CD cover for A Shard of Ice – depicting the Fourth Doctor confronting a mutating Ice Queen (“I do gesture like that,” exclaims Tom, examining the artwork, “even in the recording studio. They have to put me on a special microphone, otherwise I knock over the other actors”) – is designed by none other than June… which brings us to this DWM interview. The Commissioning Editor at BBC Audio, a man called Michael Stevens, wondered whether we might be interested in reuniting Tom and June for an exclusive, two-hander chat. In conversation with the Fourth Doctor and his favourite costume designer!

We said yes.

It was Tom who suggested doing it in two parts: the first part just with him, the second with June to make a double act. “June is a perfect darling of exquisite manners and discretion,” he reasoned, “whereas I… I mean, I am none of those things, as well you know.” In the end, DWM meets up with Tom – now 76, but instantly recognisable as the Doctor – on a Wednesday morning in mid August for our one-to-one, and reconvene the following morning (Tom: “You don’t look a day older!”) with June – and Dylan, our photographer.

As you’d expect, June is impeccably and elegantly attired – a picture in blue, of both the Prussian and Tiffany shade (“I’ve always believed that a costume has a far greater impact if it’s all one colour,” she explains later) – and she’s the sweetest, giggliest lady. She offered her South London flat for the interview, but Tom prefers “neutral territory in Soho” – a Pret a Manger on Wardour Street. “He does like Soho,” June muses, “so I rather thought he’d go for that.”

The Pret is Tom’s suggestion. He adores Pret. Thirty years ago, he’d have opted for one of Soho’s less reputable drinking dens – he spent half his life in them, with Francis Bacon in the French House, or Jeffrey Bernard in the Coach & Horses – but not today. Today, it’s Pret. His 40-year-old self, suggests DWM, would be shocked and appalled. Tom laughs, a hearty, open-mouthed chuckle, but doesn’t dispute it.

Before we begin, a couple of pointers. Firstly, be warned: Tom likes to exaggerate. He’s lived one hell of a life… but not all of it’s entirely true. Take the following exchange about seagulls:

Tom Baker: “In Hastings, there are signs everywhere that say, ‘Do not feed the seagulls’.”
June Hudson: “Well, they feed themselves, Tom. They help themselves.”
TB: “Darling, not only that, but all those chavs out there, they can’t read anyway, so they throw them chips. I saw a seagull about as tall as that girl over there, maybe taller, stealing chips, and then sandwiches, like in India, like when the buzzards come down.”
JH: “They take the ice creams, don’t they?”
TB: “They do. I saw one fly away with an old lady’s hat once, one of those ones with fruit on it.”
JH: “[Laughing] Oh Tom!”
TB: “The sad thing is – I know you’re laughing cruelly – it hadn’t only got away with her hat, but also her wig.”
JH: “Ha! Now, that is cruel.”
TB: “Yes, but I’ve gilded that story a bit for you. [He grins] It nearly happened like that. What actually happened was, this old bag – this dear old lady – produced a repeating rifle and shot the seagull. There were feathers all over the chips.”

And so it continues.

Pointer number two: talking with Tom is like trying to keep hold of a slippery, jumping salmon. In other words, conversation can veer wildly off course. A discussion of June’s cover for A Shard of Ice can turn, in 30 seconds flat, into a symposium on the Bible:

TB: “It’s very vivid, this cover.”
JH: “Yes, the horns bursting out of the Ice Queen’s beautiful forehead –”
TB: “Look, there’s a wonderful space for my autograph there.”
JH: “– and her great leathery wings unfurling –”
TB: “When I became an actor, the first thing I practiced was my autograph.”
JH: “You see, I followed the description in the script completely, because Paul’s descriptions are so strong. It’s such a great script.”
TB: “It is a great script. He’s a nice man as well, Paul Magrs. He accepts some of the changes I offer.”
JH: “Well, he’s creative, isn’t he? He likes creativity, Tom.”
TB: “But actors always want to leave their mark on a script.”
JH: “It was written for you, though, wasn’t it?”
TB: “Darling, I read the opening of the Bible and think that was written for me! [Laughs] I’m thinking of trimming it, actually.”
JH: “The Bible?”
TB: “The Book of Genesis. I think it’s too long.”
JH: “Our generation knows the Bible extremely well, don’t you think? It gives us one up on the rest of the population.”
TB: “Hmm…”
JH: “We have a great wealth of beautiful language and images to draw from. We can always come up with that wonderful proverb or saying, can’t we?”
TB: “But it’s full of paradoxes, darling. It’s full of BBC language. No-one knows what it means. You know Jesus said, ‘I came not to bring peace, but a sword’…? What does that mean?! He said, ‘He that finds his life shall lose it, and he that loses his life [for my sake] shall find it.’ Christ! It’s Monty Python, isn’t it, darling? It’s ‘blessed are the cheesemakers’.”

Religion is one of Tom’s favourite topics of conversation. It comes up a lot, often in well-rehearsed -– but very funny – diatribes. (Tom was a Roman Catholic monk for five long years, from the age of 15, before losing his faith and becoming an actor.) Back to the interview: in Pret a Manger, Tom has an announcement to make that will delight fans of the Doctor Who audio dramas:

TB: “I’m going to do some more. I’m doing some for Big Finish.
I think I should make it a condition, June, that you do the cover of my first one. If you like, I’ll make that a condition, because Nicholas Briggs [executive producer] is a very obliging guy.”
JH: “I would love to, Tom. That would be absolutely terrific. Your performance, Tom – you’re magnificent in these. It creates unforgettable pictures, with your voice rising and falling like the sea, whispering and roaring –”
TB: “You listen to them, then?”
JH: “Don’t you?”
TB: “Of course I don’t. I know what I sound like. Anyway, I might be disappointed. I’m only doing them to please the audience. I didn’t watch Doctor Who when I was in it.”
JH: “You scrutinise it, don’t you? I find it very difficult to watch my own work.”
TB: “If someone says afterwards, ‘I liked it,’ that’s fine. If they say, ‘I don’t like it,’ that upsets me. But I never used to go to the editing for the same reason.”

You’ve recorded DVD commentaries, though, Tom. Is that a painful experience?
TB: “I can get in all sorts of invented things. I deliberately make mistakes, because the fans adore putting me right.”
JH: “It’s the same with me. At conventions, they say, ‘There were ten buttons on that, not eight.’ If you want to know anything, ask the fans. They know everything.”
TB: “Yes. They live it. They absolutely live it. But darling, your costumes were always fascinating, weren’t they? You have a sense of extravagance and fantasy. Most supporting characters in sci-fi, whatever they wear, they look like dental students, in their terrible white trousers and white tops. Sometimes they even have clipboards. They’re so dreary.”
JH: “I know what you mean. It’s got to be, above all, interesting. And fun. Especially in science-fiction.”
TB: “It’s all to do with the presentation. It’s rather like religion and mythology. You couldn’t have the Pope coming in here dressed like him! [He’s pointing at your intrepid DWM reporter] You’d say, ‘Who’s that German tosser over there? Get him out.’”

Okay. Bit insulting. What’s wrong with my look?
JH: “You look lovely, Ben.”
TB: “No, no, you and your generation, you’ve got the right look – although a haircut wouldn’t go amiss – but the Pope, priests, and bishops, to have credibility, have to dress up. When I was a Catholic boy – I mean, no wonder I was a believer in God, I was off my head all the time, sniffing incense. I’d be swinging the incense ball, gulping the incense, and hallucinating from the age of about eight-and-a-half – then I’d promptly feel guilty, and invent sins to confess. I made my first confession at six.”

That’s not true. Is that true?
TB: “Well, I think it’s true. [Grinning] I know that I confessed to murder when I was eight. I was trying to oblige the priest, because basically I’m a crawler. I’m a servant. I said, ‘It’s been a week since my last confession. Since then, I’ve done murder.’ The priest put out his cigarette – they all reeked of Capstan Full Strength – leaned in and said, ‘How many times?’ I said, ‘Twice, father,’ because I was flattered that he believed me. ‘Two murders since last week?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Anyone we know?’ I remember it so clearly, caught out in a lie, inventing the way that children do, I said, ‘No, father, they’re from Saint Teresa’s Parish.’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s all right, then!’ He was the nicest priest.”
JH: “You see, this is it, this fantasy world – it was there in you, Tom, from the very beginning, as it was in me.”

Dylan suggests moving to a more “picturesque” establishment than Pret (Tom: “What’s wrong with Pret?!”), so we take a stroll down Old Compton Street, and turn right onto Greek Street, where there’s a little French patisserie called Maison Bertaux. We sit at a pavement table, and order coffee – and a ham croissant for Tom. “Just the one?” asks the owner. “Sorry, cock,” replies Tom, “but I’ll leave you a good tip. Anyway,” he says, turning to June, “you can’t be having photos taken with a mouthful of croissant.”

As Dylan starts snapping away – “I don’t smile for photographers,” Tom teases, before adding: “Actually, I’ve never stopped smiling.” His Doctor’s manic grin is nearly as famous as his 20-foot scarf. Tom flashes another toothy one for Dylan. Did Tom ever get fed up, wonders DWM, of photo calls as the Doctor, grinning like a loon for the press?

TB: “No, I – well, I did, but I tried to hide it, because I realise how powerful it all is. Even today, there’s no point in Dylan getting moody, grainy stuff of me looking like a bloody shagged-out old Sherlock Holmes. No-one wants to see that. The fans don’t want to see that. When I do these colossal signing sessions, sometimes for seven or eight hours non-stop, the queue is out to the horizon, and at five pounds a go – or, if you’re Patrick Stewart, it’ll be 20 pounds – I could make more money if I signed faster, and that’s the temptation, but that’d ruin the whole thing. Even for less money, I like there to be a little encounter.”
JH: “You always were very generous to your fans, Tom. You take enormous trouble with them, and they love you for it.”
TB: “Ahh, you know what makes an old man happy.”
JH: “The fans know that you have enormous respect for them. You want to make every fan happy. You bend over backwards.”
TB: “But the fans created me.”

DWM asks June about her background as a designer. She trained in theatre design at the Royal College of Art, and designed costumes for some of the most acclaimed TV productions of the 1970s and 80s. As well as Doctor Who, she designed for sci-fi classics Survivors and Blake’s 7, and was the original designer on Till Death Us Do Part, Are You Being Served?, The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin, and EastEnders. She left the BBC in 1990 to diversify her portfolio further, and her designs have been exhibited at the National Theatre, and hang in the private collections of the BBC and the House of Commons…

TB: “How you dress people is incredibly important, isn’t it?”
JH: “Oh, it is. People are archetypes. If someone says to you ‘a king’ or ‘a queen’, you don’t think of our queen, you think of a playing card queen or king. They have their place, the king, the queen, the knave, the servant, the master, the lord… The audience recognise them. You design those archetypes, in all their richness, because it’s part of the mythology, isn’t it?”
TB: “It begins – or used to when I was young, in the last millennium – with fairy stories. Of course, fairy stories aren’t allowed nowadays, because most are about child abuse. I’m thinking Hansel and Gretel, children getting lost in the forest… Those tales provide imaginative excitement for children, but also suggest that life isn’t always perfect; there are such things as evil witches and wizards, and monsters that eat children. Later on, my parents, who were not educated [his mother was a cleaner, and his father a sailor], used to threaten me with a policeman instead. Or the priest. Yeah. My mother used to say, ‘If you don’t clean those shoes, I’ll tell the priest.’”

Little did your mother know that you’d already confessed to multiple murders.
TB: “Exactly! Bloody exaggeration.”
JH: “Later on, though, you love the fear, don’t you? A fear that you can switch off when you want to. That’s the thing: we like to be frightened.”
TB: “Yes, we like the frisson.”
JH: “You can sit, as we all have, on the edge of your seat, watching something incredibly thrilling, and you know that it’s just a TV show, but you buy into that, don’t you?”

Did Doctor Who ever go too far?
TB: “It never went nearly far enough, as far as I was concerned. I wanted it to go much further.”
JH: “Me too. More extravagant, maybe.”
TB: “When we were faced with, say, 20 extras closing in on us, I used to have to say, ‘Run!’ – and it was very silly, whereas I wanted to seize a sword off one of them and dive in. You’d cut to Elisabeth [Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith], who’s saying, ‘Doctor, duck!’ – and shielding her eyes, and you’d hear the extras’ terrible screams, and she’s getting more and more frightened. Finally, you’d cut over to me… and they’re all dead. I’d killed them all, in about 20 seconds!”

Isn’t the Doctor anti-violence?
TB: “The thing is, if the violence is heightened enough, it doesn’t really frighten people. It is theatrical. The children know what world they’re in. They know that it’s extravagant. Because horrid realism is pretty unbearable, isn’t it? The ultimate is in snuff movies for perverts who actually want to see some poor trollop killed on screen.”
JH: “It was pretty innocent, Doctor Who, wasn’t it?”
TB: “Oh, very innocent.”
JH: “It was innocent fun. There was fear, and there was excitement, but it had an element of purity. That’s why Doctor Who is so great. That’s why it’s survived. When I did Doctor Who, it was classed as a children’s show, wasn’t it? But I recognised its quality, and that’s why I wanted to do it. I asked to do Doctor Who. It’s a designer’s dream. It’s the most wonderful show imaginable for a designer, and for performer. That’s why I got onto Doctor Who. And I wanted to work with Tom.”
TB: “There’s never been anything like it. And nobody’s ever failed in Doctor Who. Some haven’t stayed for long – that very powerful actor Christopher Eccleston only did it for a year, I think, but he’d have had enormous success had he gone on.”
JH: “I think so, too. I liked Christopher Eccleston.”

Are some leading actors easier to design for
than others?
JH: “Well, Tom, naturally. He was marvellous, because –”
TB: “It was because we were each other’s biggest fans.”
JH: “Yes! Yes!”
TB: “I was never disappointed with what June chose for me.”
JH: “You were – you are – wonderful to design for, because having the height and the presence, you’re not inhibited. Every designer loves that. When you get a powerful electrical storm, like Tom Baker, it disturbs everything. It’s lovely.”
TB: “June went much further than me in campery. We used to buy hats at Herbert Johnson, didn’t we? No bloody second-rate hatters! It was Herbert Johnson velour hats. Very expensive.”
JH: “You deserved it, Tom. You did.”
TB: “And all those lovely shirts you used to buy me – those green shirts from Harvie & Hudson, in Jermyn Street. I went to a party in Shepherd’s Bush once, a dresser’s party, and some of my lovely green shirts were stuck up on the wall with drawing pins! It was a kind of trophy. Somebody had nicked them, because my name was on the collar.”

So, was designing for Tom a collaborative process?
JH: “It was, because I wanted Tom to express himself. Whatever I designed was to enhance what was already there. Tom told me, memorably, that he’d wear anything I designed, which was one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever been paid. Therefore, I didn’t have to worry. I could design things that would swamp anybody else. The costume mustn’t wear the actor, and that could never be true of Tom. He towers over any costume.”

How did your Doctor Who costume affect your performance, Tom?
TB: “It kind of grew, in the first few weeks. Jim Acheson [who designed Tom’s first serial, Robot, in 1974] was young, and he enjoyed being with me, so we drank beer and went round all the costume houses, gradually, higgledy-piggledy, like going round Oxfam shops. We got a kind of eternal studenty idea, it was a complete mishmash, and I think Jim was right on that, because that liberated all the designers that followed him. Even by the time I had lovely, expensive things, I still wore them recklessly, not at all smart. I realised that if you’ve got fabulous gear on, especially as a man who’s an alien, you can wear it terribly casually. The very casualness of it draws attention to it. If you’re wearing cashmere or silk, the buttons don’t need to be done up right.”
JH: “This is why John Nathan-Turner [producer, 1980-89] wanted me to redesign your costume. He didn’t want scruffy. He wanted you to have a completely new image. In a way, it found itself, by a process of elimination. Green, no. Navy, no. White, no. Black, no. Black is for the Master. And then – red? Not red-red, but I thought of that wonderful maroon, which looked fabulous on Tom. I did the whole thing in shades of maroon. This is something I’ve always believed, that a costume has a far greater impact if it’s all one colour.”

Asked to redesign Tom’s costume, many designers would have satisfied their egos by throwing out Jim Acheson’s original design completely, and starting from scratch. It was a brave thing for you to say, “Actually, I’m not going for a completely new look.”
JH: “But I was thinking of Tom. Okay, all our egos love to do something completely different. But I thought, no, I can’t do that to Tom, because I’ve got to put the show first – and design with integrity. My integrity demanded that I keep the scarf. To have taken away the scarf would have been a bore for Tom. That scarf was a prop. Tom used it. The scarf that I did was 20-foot long and made of Chenille – whereas the original scarf was made of wool, so it was very heavy, because it was so long.”
TB: “We didn’t like John’s vision, did we? I mean, not many people admired John Nathan-Turner’s artistry. Do you remember the question marks on the collar?”
JH: “Oh, I hated them.”
TB: “That was so common, I always felt, because the idea was that the BBC would turn it into a commercial thing.”
JH: “Well, John wanted to, Tom. He persuaded me to agree. I said, ‘No gentleman would wear a question mark. The only way he’d wear it is if it were very small, and the same colour [as the shirt], so that you only saw it when it caught the light.’ He said, ‘But June, we want to market this, to make some money.’”
TB: “One of the difficulties in television is, everyone has a boss. Everyone has a vested interest. All these egos. Everyone trying to put their mark on it. It’s very rare that they say, ‘Darling, you’re the designer, do whatever you like.’ Or sometimes they say, ‘Do whatever you like… but whatever you do, don’t listen to Tom Baker! Pretend you’re listening, write it down, and then ignore him.’ They say that.”
JH: “But Tom understood Doctor Who like no-one else. I listened when he said things to me. Before I left, John asked me to design Peter Davison’s costume. I put him in cricket whites, because he was born to wear them, wasn’t he? But the designer after me – with apologies to whoever that was -– put a red edge on his coat, and gave him ridiculous pyjama-striped trousers…”
TB: “It was odd, wasn’t it?”
JH: “Why can’t they leave things alone? To some people, a bare edge
is an invitation to put a piece of braid on it. Why?! The simplicity, I thought, worked far better, and put the actor sharply into focus. Tom comes sharply into focus no matter what, but –”
TB: “Well, Peter, because he was so slim and youthful, did look elegant in that romantic, cream costume, rather like those old-fashioned boys’ annuals, but –”
JH: “He would have looked better in it if they’d stuck to just cricketing gear.”

It’s starting to rain, so DWM settles the bill, and we wander down to the Berwick Street Cloth Shop for a few final photos. This is one of London’s leading fabric retailers, and they didn’t know that we were dropping by. To be fair, neither did we until five minutes ago, when Dylan had a brainwave. But this is Soho, and Tom is welcome anywhere. Time Lord privileges. The shop assistants dig out some burgundy cloth, to match Tom’s Season Eighteen garb, and he and June strike some poses against a dazzling backdrop of taffetas, brocades, jacquards and drapes.
Afterwards, we pop next door to Silk Studios, where Tom was recording Demon Quest yesterday, and commandeer some seats in reception to conclude our interview…

TB: “Darling, how many stories did you do?”
JH: “Eight.”
TB: “Eight with me?”
JH: “Yes. I didn’t do any after you left.”
TB: “I did 178 episodes, someone told me.”
JH: “In which case, I did… four eights would be 32. The Ribos Operation was my first story. I designed Mary Tamm [Romana I]’s costume.”
TB: “It was like a wedding dress, wasn’t it? Really Hollywood. Do you remember George Spenton-Foster [the director], a lovely, camp old thing? He adored your designs for Mary Tamm.”
JH: “It was a marriage made in heaven, really, George Spenton-Foster and the sweep of The Ribos Operation, because we all wanted that marvellous reach – imaginative and glorious costumes. Yes, he was smashing.”
TB: “He’d lean into me, you know, and say, ‘I love what you’re doing, Tom, but now – it’s just come into my mind – shall we sneak off for a scotch?’
And he’d lead the whole company out to the pub!”
JH: “He told me that he always had a bottle of whisky in the house.”
TB: “Yeah, he slept with it under his pillow.”
JH: “He said, ‘I don’t want to drink it. I just like to know it’s there. The BBC turned out marvellous programmes. Perfection and excellence came as standard. You were expected – weren’t you, Tom? – to do magnificent shows. We produced shows cheaper than anybody else could do. I had a small budget on Doctor Who. You had to be clever.”

I suppose those limitations nurture creativity.
JH: “Yes, because you can’t buy yourself out of trouble. You go into the byways and highways, and have another idea that is fantastic or original. Artists are notoriously poor. Creativity isn’t hampered by lack of money.”
TB: “Quite the opposite. Fashion that hits the headlines, the stuff that ends up in Vogue, didn’t start there. It started in the gutter. Fashion comes from poor people -– poor boys and girls who’ve got nothing except their wits. People who have nothing have to be inventive to look good. The next thing is, the predators of the fashion houses steal it.”
JH: “They’re like vampires.”
TB: “It’s all pillaging, but it comes from the bottom.”
JH: “Your last one, Tom – your sad departure, Logopolis – cost so much money, with that big radio telescope, we didn’t have much left for the costumes. Do you remember those gold robes [worn by the Argolins] in The Leisure Hive? Well, I poached a few [for the Logopolitans], dyed them a different colour, gave them black velvet capes, and it really worked.”
TB: “We could have used all those racks of clothes. We could have seen the Doctor shaving, maybe, and then getting dressed – and there are thousands of costumes going right back to Jon Pertwee. I’d pick up a frilly shirt, grimace, and drop it on the floor. It would have been very funny.”
JH: “I begged the BBC not to scatter the clothes when I left, but they did.”
TB: “So, which other episodes did you do?”
JH: “Hang on, I’ve written them down. [She produces a notebook] After The Ribos Operation, I did Destiny of the Daleks, The Creature from the Pit –”
TB: “Yes, I remember that strange creature.”

Erato?
TB: “Is that what it was called?”

It looked a lot like a male member.
JH: “That’s the one! Yes! They had to amputate it. It was a little bit suggestive. They didn’t mean it to be.”
TB: “[Laughs] It looked horrific.”
JH: “Then I did The Horns of Nimon.”
TB: “That one was fun.”
JH: “A Nimon sold at auction recently. The horns were missing, but I didn’t mention it. I didn’t want to stir things. Poor old battered Nimon. It didn’t go for a lot of money. The Leisure Hive was my next one, then Meglos, then Warriors’ Gate, and finally Logopolis.”
TB: “That’s quite a legacy, darling.”
JH: “I suppose it is. [Laughs] We’re legends. I think, really, it was one of those magical things that can happen between an actor and a designer, where the creative ideas were fusing and sparking off each other in the most extraordinary way. It was like throwing a six, really. I was inspired by Tom, by Tom’s personality, by the role – it had every ingredient that would spark creativity.”
TB: “Oh God, you are kind.”
JH: “Well, it was the most exciting time of my life. I’m still a working designer, but the excitement I had designing for Tom was one of the greatest points in my life, and one that has inspired me ever since.”
TB: “People say to me all the time, ‘What did it feel like when you stopped being Doctor Who?’ But I’ve never stopped, because people won’t let me stop – and I’ve seen no reason to stop. Some actors are boring and say, ‘Look, I have done other things.’ But nobody’s interested. People didn’t see other things. So, why would I stop being Doctor Who? I’d like to say that I wear my costume in the house.”
JH: “[Laughing] Oh Tom!”
TB: “Perhaps I could say that.”

You say it, we’ll print it. Let’s see if anyone believes it.
TB: “Yes! Okay! Well – as a matter of fact, when it’s a special occasion, like a wedding anniversary, my wife says, ‘Put on your Doctor Who costume.’ She does! I come in dressed as the Doctor, with a tray full of champagne, followed by my dog Poppy. [Laughs] There you are, cock. That’s enough for today, I think.”
JH: “I would just like to say –”
TB: “Darling, you can’t top what you’ve just said. You’ve said sublime things.”
JH: “[Grins] You’re right.”
TB: “And if you need anything else – just make it up, like any good journalist would.”

All photos on this section are shown courtesy of Doctor Who Magazine and are the copyright of photographer Dylan Thomas.

Click here to view some of June Hudson’s designs for Doctor Who

Click here to read June’s own description of working with Tom