DOCTOR HO-HO!

Robert Ross takes a swift spin through some of the comedy stars who have stumbled into the Tardis

Doctor Who has always worn its sense of humour on its sleeve. The very first television parody of the series saw Clive Dunn adopt a William Hartnell wig for Michael Bentine’s pioneering surreal sketch show It’s a Square World. Fellow founding Goon Spike Milligan presented the Pakistani Daleks in his Q5 sketch show. Terry Nation, the creator of the scourge of Skaro, had been part of Spike’s Associated London Scripts cooperative, so happily approved the pastiche.

In the 1970s, Crackerjack (Crackerjack!) spoofed the series with Don McLean as a Tom Baker-like Doctor, Jan Hunt as Sarah, and Peter Glaze as the Brigadier. It wasn’t Glaze’s first brush with Doctor Who, however, having encountered the original Doctor, William Hartnell, in the 1964 story The Sensorites. Bemasked and bewhiskered, the clown is unrecognisable, save for that throaty whine… and the fact his girth stretches the monster costume.

The buxom figure of Faith Brown was equally impossible to conceal behind the wistful effervescence of Flast in the Colin Baker adventure Attack of the Cybermen; and while Alexei Sayle is recognisable as the DJ, in another Colin Baker story, Revelation of the Daleks, fellow Young One Christopher Ryan was encased in rubber as the Mentor Kiv in The Trial of a Time Lord: Mindwarp; and again as Sontarans General Staal and Commander Stark opposite David Tennant and Matt Smith respectively.

Actor and comedian Peter Butterworth appeared in The Time Meddler, opposite William Hartnell. As the Meddling Monk, Butterworth was the first actor to play a villainous member of the Doctor’s own race. By the time he joined forces with the Doctor’s deadliest foe, in The Daleks’ Master Plan, he had also joined the Carry On team.