Statistics


On This Day (USA) - 15 May



The Space Museum: The Final Phase premiered on BBC One in 1965 at 5:40pm BST, watched by 8.50 million viewers.

Colony In Space: Episode Six premiered on BBC One in 1971 at 6:12pm BST, watched by 8.70 million viewers.

In the underground city, the Doctor and the Master confront the guardian of the Doomsday Weapon. The miners make their last move to force the colonists to leave the planet.


Amy's Choice premiered on BBC One in 2010 at 6:24pm BST, watched by 7.55 million viewers.

Arthurian Legend premiered on BBC Three in 2010 at 7:10pm BST

Redacted: Interrogation premiered on BBC Online in 2022 at 8:00pm BST

 Birthdays
Scarlett Murphy will be 26 - credited as Julie in Prisoner of the Judoon(SJA)

Scarlett Murphy played Julie in The Sarah Jane Adventures story Prisoner of the Judoon.


Sophie Raworth will be 56 - credited as Herself in The Power Of Three

Sophie Raworth is an English newsreader and journalist who works for British broadcaster the BBC. She is the main presenter of the BBC News at One, presenting Tuesday to Friday, and regularly appears on the BBC News at Six and occasionally on BBC News at Ten.


Paul Shelley will be 82 - 4 credits, including Persuasion in Four To Doomsday

Paul Shelley is an English actor from Leeds in Yorkshire. He appeared in the 1982 story Four to Doomsday.

Shelley trained at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) and has mainly worked in the theatre as a classical actor. He has worked extensively with the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company and has appeared in several West End productions.

His work for television includes Secret Army (1978–79) as Major Nicholas Bradley, Special Branch (1974), Blake's 7 (1979), A Tale of Two Cities (1980), Inspector Morse (1990), Paradise Postponed (1986) based on book by John Mortimer (audiobook-recorded by Paul Shelley as well) and its sequel Titmuss Regained (1991, also audiobook), The Fourth Arm (1983), Revelations (1994–95), Heartbeat (2002) and Crossroads (2003). In the popular ITV detective drama Midsomer Murders episode "The Creeper" (2009) Shelley performed as Inspector Barnaby's boss, Chief Constable Richard Lovell and appeared as Jed Gray in several episodes in BBC TV series Doctors (2010).

Films include: Oh, What a Lovely War! (1969), It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet (1975), Polanski's Macbeth (1971) and God's Outlaw (1986).

Shelley played Duncan in Rupert Goold’s production of Macbeth (“the Macbeth of a lifetime” according to critics) which after its sell out runs at Chichester Festival Theatre in summer 2007 was transferred to the West End in the autumn and then to New York from February to May 2008. During the Chichester season 2007 he also played Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night.

Other notable roles are: at Shakespeare’s Globe: Julius Caesar (title role), Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, three Tom Stoppard plays in the West End The Invention of Love (Oscar Wilde), Arcadia (Bernard), The Real Thing (Henry), at Royal National Theatre: The Secret Rapture (Tom French), Hedda Gabler (Tesman), The Crucible (Hale), Lady in the Dark (Kendal), at Royal Shakespeare Company: Romeo and Juliet (Tybalt), King Lear (Edmund), The Winter’s Tale (Leontes), Troilus and Cressida (Achilles), Les liaisons dangereuses (Valmont). Shelley has also often worked at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, as an actor and director, on such plays as Uncle Vanya and King Lear. For nine months he played Arthur Kipps in the thriller The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre (2006/07).

Shelley played Elyot Chase in Noël Coward’s Private Lives at the York Theatre Royal and returned to York to direct Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons, in June 2008. He played the Duke of Norfolk in A Man For All Seasons, on tour and at Haymarket in 2005/2006. In a Donmar Warehouse production of T. S. Eliot's The Family Reunion he played Colonel Gerald Piper in a run from November 2008 to January 2009. At York Theatre Royal from 30 May - 20 June 2009 Paul played Max in Harold Pinter's The Homecoming. A Voyage Around My Father, by John Mortimer, with Paul Shelley playing the Father, was a Salisbury Playhouse production in autumn 2010. Rose Theatre, Kingston in March 2011 showed Shakespeare's As you like it with Paul Shelley in the dual roles of Duke Frederick and Duke Senior. After that he played Ralph in Harold Pinter's 'Moonlight' at Donmar Warehouse. "Earthquakes in London" by Mike Bartlett and directed by Rupert Goold is on UK tour until 12 November 2011 with Paul Shelley performing as the father, Robert.

He is also an audiobook narrator and has recorded some thirty audiobooks, among them John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim, several of Robert Goddard’s novels, Nicholas Crane’s Two Degrees West and Staying On by Paul Scott. He has been called “the best reader there is” and has three times won the Audiofile Earphones Award.

Paul Shelley has toured and taught at universities in the USA. He is married to actress Paula Stockbridge and has two sons from his previous marriage. His elder brother Francis Matthews is also an actor.



Roy Stewart (died 2008 aged 83) would be 99 - 2 credits, including Toberman in The Tomb of the Cybermen

Roy Stewart originally from Jamaica, began his career as a stuntman and went on to work in film and television, at a time when there were few working black actors.

In 1954 founded Roy Stewart's Gym in Powis Square, North Kensington, and ran the Caribbean club and restaurant the Globe, in Talbot Road until his death. Stewart played Quarrel Jr. in the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die. Other film appearances include:Carry On Up the JungleTwins of Evil and Stand Up, Virgin Soldiers. He was also active ontelevision, with credits including: Out of the UnknownAdam Adamant Lives!Doctor Who(in the serials The Tomb of the Cybermen and Terror of the Autons), DoomwatchUp Pompeii!The TroubleshootersSpace: 1999 andI, Claudius.

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


 Deaths
Bartlett Mullins (died 1992 aged 87) - credited as Second Elder in The Sensorites

Appeared in the 1964 story The Sensorites

Appeared in many British TV productions during the sixties and seventies.


Peter Grimwade (died 1990 aged 47) - 13 credits, including Production Assistant for Spearhead From Space

Peter Grimwade was a British television writer and director, best known for his work on the Doctor Who in the early eighties.

Grimwade joined the BBC in the late 1960s. He first worked on Doctor Who as a Production Assistant on Jon Pertwee's first serial, Spearhead from Space (1970). 

In 1977 he got his first chance to direct, being asked to film some model shots for the serial The Robots of Death while the serial's actual director, Michael E. Briant, directed the rest of the serial in the studio. Tom Baker, meanwhile, used Grimwade's name to replace the scripted "Grimwold's Syndrome" illness mentioned in the script.

The serial's Production Unit Manager, George Gallaccio, would later allow him to make his full directorial debut on the episode "Out of Body, Out of Mind" in the series The Omega Factor (1979). Grimwade was also at this time Production Assistant on the BBC's serialised dramatisation of John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979).

Grimwade next directed some episodes of the drama series All Creatures Great and Small (1978) before returning to Doctor Who as a director. After directing the serial Full Circle (1980) Grimwade was given the task of directing Tom Baker's final serial, Logopolis. 

When Peter Davison became the Doctor, Grimwade first directed him in the serial Kinda (1982) and then directed Earthshock, featuring the return of the Cybermen to the show after eight years and the death of the character Adric.

Earthshock would prove to be the last time he was a director on the series. A year later, Grimwade was scheduled to direct the serial The Return (which would ultimately become Resurrection of the Daleks). Industrial action initially prevented the serial from being filmed. 

Prior to this, Grimwade had written two serials - Time-Flight and Mawdryn Undead (1983). Afterwards, Grimwade was asked to write Davison's penultimate story, which would become Planet of Fire. Because the story's requirements were in constant flux, mainly due to uncertaintly over the filming location and cast changes, he eventually became frustrated and allowed script editor Eric Saward to finish the serial.

Outside of Doctor Who, Grimwade wrote and directed The Come-Uppance of Captain Katt for the ITV children's drama series Dramarama. The play was about events behind-the-scenes on a low-budget television science fiction series, which Grimwade openly acknowledged was inspired by his experience working on Doctor Who.

When the BBC gave the publisher W. H. Allen the rights to use Vislor Turlough in the novel Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma, W. H. Allen offered Grimwade a chance to publish an original novel. 

Afterwards, Grimwade left the BBC and mainly worked in producing industrial training videos. He died in 1990 of leukemia.