Statistics


On This Day (USA) - 28 January



The Underwater Menace: Episode 3 premiered on BBC One in 1967 at 5:51pm GMT, watched by 7.10 million viewers.

The Doctor hatches a dangerous plan to kidnap Professor Zaroff and encourages the Fish People to revolt against their masters and put a stop to the production of food.


Underworld: Part Four premiered on BBC One in 1978 at 6:29pm GMT, watched by 11.70 million viewers.

 Birthdays
Catherine Morris was 55 - credited as Nurse in Fragments(TW)

Kathryn Morris is an American actress, best known for her lead role as Detective Lilly Rush in the CBS series Cold Case.

Morris' first role was a minor one in the 1991 tele-movie Long Road Home. Several other small parts followed, including a bit part as a psychiatric patient in the Oscar-winning As Good as It Gets. Her breakthrough role came as Lt. Annalisa "Stinger" Lindstrom in the television series Pensacola: Wings of Gold in 1997 for two seasons. Morris continued to work in films (notably ones directed by Rod Lurie) and had a brief stint on the Xena series in 1999.

After seeing her in the film, The Contender (which DreamWorks distributed), Steven Spielberg cast her in two successive films. Her scenes as a rock star in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, which required Morris to take intensive singing and guitar lessons were cut by the director, which was particularly agonizing for her. In Minority Report, she portrayed the tormented wife of Tom Cruise's character.[1][2]

In 2003 Morris won the lead role of detective Lilly Rush in the CBS dramatic series Cold Case. She also appeared in the 2004 films Mindhunters and Paycheck, opposite Ben Affleck, and more recently as the journalist wife of Josh Hartnett in Lurie's drama Resurrecting the Champ (2007). Morris appeared in the film Cougars, Inc which was distributed in 2011.


Lara Goodison was 35 - credited as Caroline Lake in The Next Doctor

Lara Goodison is an English actress.

Goodison is from Oxshott, Surrey, and was educated at St Teresa's School and Hurtwood House.

 She first gained public attention when she became a contestant on Shipwrecked in 2008, aged 18.  

She appeared in the Doctor Who episode "The Next Doctor", before being cast alongside Samuell Benta, Matt Kane, Connor Scarlett and Tosin Cole in a main role as 17-year-old Marla Mackinnon in the BBC series The Cut.


Frank Skinner was 67 - 5 credits, including Perkins in Mummy On The Orient Express

Christopher Collins was born in West Bromich in 1957, and grew up in Oldbury. He graduated from Birmingham Polytechnic with a degree in English, followed by gaining a Masters in English Literature at Warwick University. He worked as a lecturer at Halesowen College before deciding in a change of career in 1987.

As well as performing as a stand-up comedian, he co-wrote and starred in Channel 4's variety show Packet of Three in 1990, becoming known by his professional name Frank Skinner. A year later he one Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe. Partnering up with David Beddiel, the pair worked on Fantasy Football League between 1994 and 2004, and then on Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned between 2000 and 2005. In 1996 the pair wrote and performed Three Lions alongside The Lightning Seeds, a football song that became a number one hit in the UK for both that year's European Cup and the following World Cup in 1998, by which time it had become the unofficial England football anthem. Skinner and Baddiel continued their football association in 2006, providing a podcast for that year's World Cup for The Times newspaper, which also gained them a nomination at the 2007 Sony Radio Academy Awards.

In more recent years he has been a presenter for Absolute Radio, wrote and performed the Radio 4 comedy series Don't Start, and from 2012 has been the presenter of Room 101. Meanwhile, he has continued his stage career with a long tour in 2007, and in 2014 is undertaking another tour with Frank Skinner: Man in a Suit.

He has a long term partner, Cath Mason, and they have a son, Buzz.

He received an honorary degree from the University of Central England in 2006.


Christopher Coll (died 2021 aged 83) would have been 86 - 2 credits, including Stubbs in The Mutants

Christopher Coll  played Phipps in the 1969 story The Seeds of Death and Stubbs in the 1972 story The Mutants.

He played Mr. Malcolm in the first series of Grange Hill and had roles in Z-Cars and Coronation Street


John Normington (died 2007 aged 70) would have been 87 - 3 credits, including Morgus in The Caves of Androzani

John Normington was an English actor who appeared widely on British televisionfrom the 1960s until the year of his death. Normington was also a member of the Royal Shakespeare Companyperforming in more than 20 RSC productions.

He played Morgus in the 1984 classic story The Caves of Androzani and Trevor Sigma in the 1988 story The Happiness Patrol

Normington trained as an opera singer at the Northern School of Music. 

He appeared in programmes such as Murder Most English; The Caesars; Softly, Softly; Nearest and Dearest; The Edwardians; Crown Court; Upstairs, Downstairs (in the episode "Such A Lovely Man"), and ITV Playhouse.  Normington also appeared in the 1978 film The Thirty Nine Steps.

During the 1980s, he appeared in Play for Today; Yes, Prime Minister (in the episode "One of Us");Inspector Morse; My Family and Other Animals and Agatha Christie's Poirot. The following decade, Normington played roles in programmes such as The New Statesman; Peak Practice; Hetty Wainthropp Investigates; Coronation Street; The Bill, and David Copperfield. In 2001 John Normington appeared in Love in a Cold Climate.

In 2004, Normington appeared in King Lear in Stratford. 


 Deaths
Nicholas Parsons (died 2020 aged 96) - credited as The Rev. Mr. Wainwright in The Curse of Fenric

Nicholas Parsons OBE is a British radio and television presenter and actor.

Parsons is best known as the host of the BBC Radio 4 panel game Just a Minute since it was first broadcast on 22 December 1967. The show continues to be transmitted and Parsons has been heard in every edition. 

He played Reverend Wainwright in the Doctor Who serial The Curse of Fenric.

Parsons was in GranthamLincolnshire, the middle child, with an older brother and a younger sister.

He started his career while training as an engineering apprentice; he was found by Canadian impresario Carroll Levis, doing impressions and working in small repertory theatres in Glasgow.

Parsons made his film debut in Master of Bankdam in 1947. He continued his stage career in small parts in West End theatre shows, then did two years in repertory at Bromley, Kent and later WindsorMaidstone and Hayes. After becoming a resident comedian at the Windmill Theatre in 1952, Parsons became well known to TV audiences during the 1950s as the straight man to comedian Arthur Haynes. After the pair appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1961, the partnership broke up at Haynes request allowing Parsons to return to the stage, before he became a regular on The Benny Hill Show from 1969 to 1974. After Haynes' sudden death, Parsons appeared as a personality in his own right, culminating in the long-running Anglia Television game showSale of the Century, broadcast weekly from 1971 to 1983.

He was the non-singing voice of Tex Tucker in the TV series Four Feather Falls at the suggestion of his then wife, actress and voiceover artiste Denise Bryer. During the late sixties he presented a satirical programme on Radio Four called Listen to This Space, which by the standards of its time was very risqu�. Also, in the late 1960s, he portrayed "David Courtney" on the short-lived American sitcom The Ugliest Girl in Town.

In 1988 he appeared as himself in The Comic Strip Presents episode "Mr Jolly Lives Next Door", in which he had the misfortune to encounter two incompetent escort agency directors (Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson in their usual cheerfully-violent, dipsomaniac personas) followed by the psychopathic and misnamed Mr Jolly himself (played by Peter Cook).  Another guest role in 1989 was in The New Statesman, where he played host to a daytime quiz show. He has also taken the role of the narrator in the stage musical The Rocky Horror Show. In 1993 he appeared in the final fourth series of the UK TV show Cluedo as Reverend Green. In 2010, he made a brief appearance as Father Gorman in Marple: The Pale Horse but was killed off three minutes into the show.


Kenneth Waller (died 2000 aged 72) - credited as Hedges in The Invisible Enemy

Kenneth Waller was an English actor.

He played Hedges in the Doctor Who story The Invisible Enemy.

Born in HuddersfieldWest Riding of Yorkshire, his first role was in the 1959 production Room at the Top, but it was not until 1981 when he played the part of "Old" Mr. Grace in Are You Being Served? that he found real fame. He played the elder of the Grace brothers, after the departure of "Young" Mr. Grace (Harold Bennett). Waller was actually 28 years younger than Bennett.

He went on to play the part of Grandad in Carla Lane's comedy Bread, the part he is most remembered for. He made a brief appearance in Coronation Street as Curly Watts' father in 1988.

His last role was a voiceover for the animated film Romuald the Reindeer.

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


James Mellor (died 1976 aged 37) - 2 credits, including Sean Flannigan in The Wheel In Space

James Mellor  appeared in two Doctor Who stories: as Sean Flannigan in The Wheel in Space and Varan in The Mutants.