Statistics


On This Day (USA) - 20 August



Doctor Who Greatest Moments: The Doctor premiered on BBC Three in 2009 at 8:03pm BST, watched by 0.42 million viewers.
David Tennant, John Barrowman, David Morrissey and the League of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss look back at the Time Lord's greatest moments.


 Birthdays
Andrew Garfield will be 41 - credited as Frank in Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks

Andrew Russell Garfield is an American-English actor who has appeared in radio, theatre, film, and television. His early roles include the films Lions for LambsThe Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and Boy A, which garnered him the 2007 BAFTA Television Award for "Best Actor".

Garfield achieved wider recognition and critical acclaim for his role as Eduardo Saverin in the 2010 film The Social Network, for which he received two BAFTA nominations and a Golden Globe nomination. Garfield is a dual citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom. He will be portraying the title character in the upcoming 2012 superhero film The Amazing Spider-Man, a reboot of the Spider-Man film series.

Biography from the Wikipedia article, licensed under CC-BY-SA 


Jamie Cullum will be 45 - credited as Participant in Never Mind the Buzzcocks(Related)

Jamie Cullum is an English jazz-pop singer-songwriter. Though he is primarily a vocalist/pianist he also accompanies himself on other instruments including guitar and drums. 

Since April 2010, he has been presenting a weekly jazz show on BBC Radio 2.


David Walliams will be 53 - 7 credits, including Gibbis in The God Complex

Walliams firstTV appearance was as "Lesley Luncheonmeat" on Sky1's show Games World in 1993. He appeared alongside Alex Verrey, who played Big Boy Barry, every Tuesday evening. He went on to be "The Lift" on the first series of the CBBC gameshow Incredible Games in 1994. 

He appeared with The League of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss, who wrote and appeared in Doctor Who parodies The Pitch of Fear, The Web of Caves and The Kidnappers for BBC2's "Doctor Who Night" in 1999. He later performed in the Big Finish Productions Doctor Who audio play Phantasmagoria, written by Gatiss. Walliams appeared with Matt Lucas in the video of the Fat Les song Vindaloo (the unofficial anthem for the England national football team at the 1998 FIFA World Cup) and had a cameo role in a 1999 episode of Simon Pegg's Spaced (1x3 "Art") as Vulva, an artist/collaborator from Brian's past and now a self-proclaimed artist of impressionism.

In 2000, he played Jake Plaskow in the BBC's Attachments, set in an internet start-up company. In 2001 he was one of the leads in Cruise of the Gods. In 2003 he appeared in EastEnders and Marple.

From 2003 to 2005 Walliams co-wrote and co-starred in three series of the BBC TV character sketch show Little Britain with Matt Lucas, which first aired on BBC3 before moving to the more mainstream BBC1. A successful live stage show of the series, Little Britain Live, was produced in 2006. A number of seasonal and charity specials followed, up to 2009. A spin-off series produced in the USA by HBO, Little Britain USA, followed in 2008, a second series of which is due to air in 2010.

Walliams has also appeared in Series 7, Episode 6 of the BBC 2 show Top Gear.[2][3]


Barnaby Edwards will be 55 - 116 credits, including Dalek Operator in Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways

Barnaby Edwards is a British actor, writer, director and artist. He is known as a performer for Doctor Who, in the role of a Dalek operator, often alongside his partner Nicholas Pegg. He has also directed Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories.

Edwards graduated from the University of Exeter in 1991 with a degree in Fine Art and French. He subsequently went on to train at the Guildford School of Acting, where he won the Postgraduate Award for Acting in 1992.

Since then Edwards has worked in the theatre, television, radio and audio plays, as a director and writer. Edwards is also an artist and his pictures hang in galleries and private collections across Europe as well as being exhibited widely within the UK. Following a successful show at the Blue Lias gallery in Lyme Regis, Barnaby was asked to form one third of the Three West Country Artists exhibition in 1998. The Kingfisher Gallery in Devon held a major exhibition of his work encompassing nearly thirty new paintings, and in 2006 he exhibited a selection of pieces at the FSA Summer Exhibition.

Barnaby regularly lectures on art history and art techniques, both in Britain and farther afield. He has given talks on subjects as diverse as European Narrative Painting, Pastel Techniques, Victorian Sea Paintings, Life Drawing, and Greek and Roman Myths in Western Art. He also gives practical tuition both to individuals and to groups, including art workshops on landscape, figure and still life.

In 2010, Barnaby set up Textbook Stuff, specialising in audio-books of classic short stories and poems. Readers include Miriam Margolyes, Peter Guinness, John Sessions, Nicholas Pegg and David Soul. The company distributes via iTunes, Lulu and Big Finish.


Matthew Chambers will be 56 - credited as Hal Korwin in 42

Matthew Chambers is an English actor and director. 

He is most popularly known for his role as Dr. Daniel Granger in the successful BBC daytime soap opera Doctors.

Chambers began his television career in 2001 with a role in the BBC2 version of the comedy People Like Us opposite David Tennant. From 2003 he had a recurring role in the Sky One series Mile High. The same year he also appeared in the TV film Final Demand and an episode of the BBC1 drama series Holby City.

Over the next couple of years he went on to appear in popular series such as As If, Family Affairs. Since 2007 Chambers has played Dr. Daniel Granger in the BBC daytime soap opera Doctors. 


Sophie Aldred will be 62 - 95 credits, including Ace in Dragonfire

Sophie Aldred is an English actress and television presenter, best known for her portrayal of Ace alongside Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy.

Aldred was born in Greenwich, London, but grew up in nearby Blackheath. She attended Blackheath High School from 1973 until 1980, before enrolling as a drama student at University of Manchester. She graduated in 1983 and decided to embark on a career in children's theatre.

In 1987, she was cast as Ace in Doctor Who. Her tenure on the show spanned the last nine stories of the programme's original run, which ended in 1989.

Both before and since Doctor Who, Aldred has had a varied and busy television career, particularly in children's programming, where she has presented educational programmes such as Corners, Melvin and Maureen's Music-a-grams, long-running BBC series Words and Pictures and also CITV paranormal show It's a Mystery in 1996. She also played the character Minnie The Mini Magician from Series 8 onwards on CITV's ZZZap! between 1999 and 2001. Aldred has presented and sung in several BBC Schools Radio series, including Singing Together, Music Workshop, Time and Tune and Music Box. 

She has also performed on radio and in the theatre. She has also reprised her role as Ace in the charity special Dimensions in Time and the Doctor Who audio plays produced by Big Finish Productions. Throughout the 2000s she has worked extensively as a voice-over artist for television advertisements, and has also provided voices for animated series such as Bob the Builder and Dennis & Gnasher.

Sophie Aldred married Vince Henderson on 12 July 1997. They have two sons, Adam and William.


James Marsters will be 62 - 4 credits, including Captain John Hart in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang(TW)

James Marsters is an American actor and musician. 

Marsters first came to the attention of the general public playing the popular character Spike, a platinum-blond yobbish English vampire in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off series, Angel from 1997 to 2004. Since then, he has gone on to play other science fiction roles, such as the alien supervillain Brainiac on the Superman-inspired series Smallvilleand terrorist Barnabas Greeley in Syfy's Caprica. Marsters appeared in a supporting role in the 2007 movie P.S. I Love You and as the main antagonist, Piccolo, in the 2009 fantasy adventure filmDragonball Evolution.

He played the omnisexual time traveller Captain John Hart in the second series of Torchwood,


Sylvester McCoy will be 81 - 152 credits, including The Doctor in Time and the Rani

Sylvester McCoy was in Dunoon, Scotland on the Cowal peninsula, to an Irish mother and English father. 

His father was killed in the Second World War a couple of months before he was born, and he was brought up by his mother, his grandmother and aunts. 

McCoy joined Blair's College, a seminary in Aberdeen, and between the ages of twelve and sixteen trained to be a priest.

On finishing his education moved to London, working in the City for an insurance company. He stayed in this job until he was twenty-four before deciding that it wasn't really for him. 

While working in The Roundhouse theatre box office he was discovered by Ken Campbell who offered him a role as part of The Ken Campbell Roadshow. His best known act was as a stuntman character called "Sylveste McCoy" in a play entitled An Evening with Sylveste McCoy where his stunts included putting a fork and nails up his nose and stuffing ferrets down his trousers, and setting his head on fire.

 Notable television appearances before he gained the role of the Doctor included roles in Vision On (where he played Pepe/Epep, a character who lived in the mirror), an O-Man in Jigsaw and Tiswas. He also appeared in Eureka, often suffering from the inventions of Wilf Lunn. 

McCoy also portrayed, in one-man shows on the stage, two famous movie comedians: Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton. He also appeared as Henry "Birdie" Bowers in the 1985 television serial about Robert Falcon Scott's last Antarctic expedition, The Last Place on Earth. 

While starring at the National Theatre in "The Pied Piper", a musical play written especially for him, he learned that the BBC was looking for a new Doctor, following the departure of Colin Baker from the series.

McCoy became the Seventh Doctor in 1987, cast by producer John Nathan Turner, and remaining on the series until it was cancelled in 1989. He resumed the role in 1996 for the TV movie. 

McCoy's television roles since Doctor Who have included Michael Sams in the 1997 telemovie Beyond Fear, shown on the first night of broadcast of Five. He has also returned to play the Seventh Doctor in a series of audio plays by Big Finish Productions.He has acted extensively in theatre. 

He played Grandpa Jock in John McGrath's A Satire of the Four Estaites (1996) at the Edinburgh Festival. He played the role of Snuff in the macabre BBC Radio 4 comedy series The Cabaret of Dr Caligari. He appeared as the Sheriff of Nottingham in a musical version of Robin Hood that featured songs by British composer and lyricist Laurence Mark Wythe at the Broadway Theater, Lewisham in London He also appeared as the lawyer Dowling in a BBC Production of Henry Fielding's novel, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling. McCoy has appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and in King Lear in 2007, playing the Fool to Ian McKellen's Lear.

 In May 2008 he performed with the Carl Rosa Company in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, playing the title role. He has made guest appearances in the television series The Bill, Rab C. Nesbitt Casualty. and the BBC soap opera Doctors, playing an actor who once played the time-travelling hero of a children's television series called The Amazing Lollipop Man. The role was written as a tribute to McCoy.

McCoy plays Radagast the Brown in the Peter Jackson Hobbit films.



Anthony Ainley (died 2004 aged 71) would be 92 - 12 credits, including The Master in Logopolis

Anthony Ainley was an English actor best known his role as the Master in Doctor Who.

He was born in Stanmore, Middlesex, the illegitimate son of the actor Henry Ainley(1879-1945) and Clarice Holmes. Known as Tony, he was brought up in the Actors Orphanage alongside his elder brother Timothy, but showed little interest in acting at an early age, with his first career instead being as an insurance clerk. He also showed a keen interest in sports, engaging in rugby and - his major passion in life - cricket.

He adopted his father's surname when his interest in acting grew (perhaps to raise awareness of himself through his that respected name). Having graduated from RADA, he had an early regular role as Det. Sgt Hunter, sidekick to William Mervyn's Chief Inspector Rose in the second series of It's Cold Outside in 1966. Other notable roles include a subaltern in the 1969 film version of Oh! What a Lovely War, Dietz in the 1975 film version of The Land That Time Forgot, Fallowfield in the Tigon film Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), Henry Sidney in Elizabeth R (1971), Clive Hawksworth in Spyder's Web (1972), Rev. Emilius in the BBC's adaptation of The Pallisers (1974), Johnson in the first episode of the BBC programme Secret Army (1977), and Sunley in The Avengers episode "Noon Doomsday" (1968). He was also one of the Hong Kong policemen who discover James Bond's supposed corpse in the opening sequence of You Only Live Twice (1967).

Ainley played the role of the wealthy young peer Lord Charles Gilmour in the ITV series Upstairs, Downstairs (1973).

Reportedly, it was his performance as Rev. Emilius (in The Pallisers) that led to him being offered the role of the Master by John Nathan-Turner, who had worked on The Pallisers seven years before becoming producer of Doctor Who.

Ainley first appeared in The Keeper of Traken alongside Tom Baker - the two got on well as the latter was a friend of his half-brother Richard Ainley(1910-1967, also an actor). Becoming the Master at the end of that story, he went on to reprise the role in some nine further adventures, appearing at least once in every series to 1986, and in the very last story of the series' original run, Survival in 1989. He returned to the role once more to provide the links for the1997 BBC computer game Destiny Of the Doctors.

By the 1980s he had effectively retired from acting, except for his occasional Doctor Who appearance, living on private means. Instead, he continued to engage in his love of cricket right up until his death in 2004.



Bernard Archard (died 2008 aged 91) would be 108 - 2 credits, including Bragen in The Power of the Daleks

Bernard Joseph Archard  was an English actor.

Born in FulhamLondon,he was a tall, imposing actor with a distinctive face. He was a conscientious objector in the Second World War and worked on the land. During the summer of 1939 he appeared in the Open Air Theatre production of "Twelfth Night" in London.

He appeared in over fifty films, including Village of the Damned (1960), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), Play Dirty (1968), The File of the Golden Goose (1969), Run a Crooked Mile (1969), The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), Roman Polanski's Macbeth (1971), Dad's Army (1971), The Day of the Jackal (1973), The Sea Wolves (1980), Krull (1983), and King Solomon's Mines (1985).

Archard's first major television role was playing Lt Col. Oreste Pinto in the BBC wartime drama series Spycatcher, which ran for four seasons between 1959 and 1961. His TV guest appearances represent some of the most popular shows broadcast in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s: two notable roles in Doctor Who; as Bragen in The Power of the Daleks and as Marcus Scarman in Pyramids of Mars, a regular role in Emmerdale; plus appearances in Upstairs, DownstairsRumpole of the BaileyBergeracThe AvengersCallanDanger ManZ CarsPaul TempleDixon of Dock Green, and The Professionals.

Archard and his long term partner, Jim Belchamber, ran a touring repertory company, based in Torquay, which included Hilda Braid among its players.

Biography from the Wikipedia article, licensed under CC-BY-SA


André Morell (died 1978 aged 69) would be 115 - credited as Marshal Tavannes in The Massacre

André Morell  was a British actor. 

He appeared frequently in theatre, film and on television from the 1930s to the 1970s.  

His best known screen roles were as Professor Bernard Quatermass in the BBC Television serial Quatermass and the Pit (1958-59), and as Doctor Watson in the Hammer Film Productions version of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959).

 He also appeared in the Academy Award-winning films The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Ben-Hur (1959), in several of Hammer's well-known horror films throughout the 1960s and in the acclaimed ITV historical drama The Caesars (1968). 

His obituary in The Times newspaper described him as possessing a "commanding presence with a rich, responsive voice... whether in the classical or modern theatre he was authoritative and dependable.


 Deaths
Penny Rigden (died 2008 aged 63) - 3 credits, including Colonist in Frontios

Penny Rigden was an actress, known for The Benny Hill Show (1969),  and The Good Old Days 


Sydney Arnold (died 1993 aged 93) - credited as Perkins in The Highlanders

Sydney, (also sometimes credited as Sidney, was a comedy actor in the English theatre and on television. Although small in statue, (he was under 5'), he had an abundance of energy that saw him working well into his 90's. At the age of eighty he received rave notices for his performance as Estragon in Waiting for Godot for the Causes Theatre Company. He was a stalwart of the light comedy series with regular guest appearances on the Benny Hill show. Committed to the profession at all levels he was one of the founding fathers of British Actors Equity.


Betty Bowden (died 1991 aged 86) - credited as Meg in Spearhead From Space

Betty Bowden was born in Wallington Surrey, and was an actress active in the 50's, 60's and 70's. She died in Fulham in 1991.