Statistics


On This Day (USA) - 3 July



The Time Meddler: The Watcher premiered on BBC One in 1965 at 6:54pm BST, watched by 8.90 million viewers.

The TARDIS lands on the English coast in 1066, but the travellers are puzzled to find modern day artefacts. A monk observes the arrival of the TARDIS, but seems unsurprised.


The Graham Norton Show: Series 3 Episode 12 premiered on BBC2 in 2008 at 9:45pm BST
Graham Norton presents celebrity chat, eccentric stories and characters, and home-grown weirdness from the great British viewing public. Joining Graham for the final programme in the series are versatile actress Catherine Tate and actor James Nesbitt with music from Brighton band The Kooks.

The Dead Line premiered on Radio 4 in 2009 at 2:15pm BST

When a Cardiff hospital is inundated with patients who have fallen into coma-like trances, the Torchwood team investigates. The trances appear to have been triggered by phone calls, all received on retro phones and made from a number that hasn't been active for more than 30 years.


 Birthdays

Emma Cunniffe will be 51 - 3 credits, including Claire in Night Terrors

Emma Cunniffe  is a British film, stage and television actress.

She appeared in the 2011 Doctor Who story, Night Terrors

Her television credits include The Lakes (BBC 1997, 1999), "Biddy" in a TV adaptation of Great Expectations, All the King's Men, Clash of the Santas, alongside Robson Greenand Mark Benton, an ITV adaptation of Appointment with Death, Clocking Off (BBC), and Flesh and Blood with Christopher Eccleston. 

On stage she won the Barclays Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in The Master Builder in 1999. Her other stage work includes Tales from Hollywood, Losing Louis at the Trafalgar Studios in London and in 2006 Women Beware Women for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon.


Susan Penhaligon will be 75 - 2 credits, including Lakis in The Time Monster

Susan Penhaligon  is a British actress and writer, she is probably best known for her appearances in the 1976 drama Bouquet of Barbed Wire.

She appeared in the 1972 Doctor Who story The Time Monster.

She acted in several feature films including Under Milk Wood (1972); No Sex Please, We're British (adapted from the stage farce, 1973); The Last Chapter (1974) with Denholm Elliot; The Land That Time Forgot (1975); House Of Mortal Sin (1976); Soldier of Orange (1977), Leopard in the Snow (1978) and the Australian-made horror film Patrick (also 1978).

Other television appearances have been as Lucy in the 1977 BBC adaptation Count Dracula starring Louis Jourdan, Bianca in a 1980 TV adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew and A Kind of Loving (1982). She had a regular role in the UK television situation comedy, A Fine Romance (1981–84), as the more glamorous sister of Judi Dench's character.


Richard Kerley (died 1994 aged 52) would be 82 - 2 credits, including Yeti in The Abominable Snowmen

Richard Kerley appeared in two Doctor Who stories: as a Cyberman in The Tomb of the Cybermen and a Robot Yeti in The Abominable Snowmen.

Also worked on ColditzPlay for TodayRandall and Hopkirk (Deceased)The Caesars


Robert Robertson (died 2001 aged 70) would be 94 - credited as Collinson in The Ambassadors of Death

Robert Robertson was a Scottish actor and director. He was best known for playing Doctor Stephen Andrews in the television show Taggart.

He was born in St. Andrews, Fife. 

He appeared in 1970 Doctor Who story The Ambassadors of Death. 

He died after suffering a heart attack while reading a Robert Burns poem on stage in Perth.


Michael Barrington (died 1988 aged 63) would be 100 - credited as Sir Colin Thackeray in The Seeds of Doom

Michael Barrington was a British actor best known for his television work.

He appeared in the Doctor Who story The Seeds of Doom, as Sir Colin Thackeray.

His most famous role was as the ineffectual Governor Venables in the popular sitcom Porridge alongside Ronnie Barker and Fulton Mackay.

He also appeared on the TV programmes Z-Cars, The Avengers, Private Schulz, Adam Adamant Lives!, and in 

He died of a heart attack aged 63


 Deaths
Earl Cameron (died 2020 aged 102) - credited as Williams in The Tenth Planet

Earl Cameron, CBE  is a Bermudian actor.

He appeared in the 1966 Doctor Who story The Tenth Planet

Cameron was born in Pembroke, Bermuda. His first stage experience came in 1942 when he talked his way into a West End production of Chu Chin Chow. He went on to act in a number of plays in London, including The Petrified Forest. 

He has appeared in the films Pool of London, Simba, The Heart Within, Sapphire (1959) in which played Dr Robbins; and The Message (1976) - the story of the Prophet Muhammad.

Other film appearances have included: Tarzan the Magnificent (1960), in which he played Tate; No Kidding (1960); Flame in the Streets (1961), in which he played Gabriel Gomez; Tarzan's Three Challenges (1963), in which he played Mang;Guns at Batasi (1964), in which he played Captain Abraham; Battle Beneath the Earth (1967), in which he played Sergeant Seth Hawkins; The Sandwich Man (1966), in which he played a bus conductor; and the James Bond movie Thunderball (1965), in which he played Bond's Caribbean assistant Pinder Romania.

His most recent film appearances include a major role in The Interpreter (2005), playing the fictitious dictator Edmond Zuwanie. 

One of Cameron's earliest TV roles was a starring part in the BBC 1960 TV drama The Dark Man, in which he played a West Indian cab driver in the UK. The show examined the reactions and prejudices he faced in his work. In 1956 he had a smaller part in another BBC drama exploring racism in the workplace, Man From The Sun, in which he appeared as community leader Joseph Brent.

He appeared in a range of popular television shows including five episodes of the TV series Danger Man (Secret Agent in the US) alongside series star Patrick McGoohan. 

His other television work includes Emergency - Ward 10, The Zoo Gang, Crown Court (two different stories, each 3 episodes long, in 1973), Jackanory (a BBC children's series in which he read five of the Brer Rabbit stories in 1971), Dixon of Dock Green, Neverwhere, Waking the Dead, Kavanagh QC, Babyfather, EastEnders (a small role as a Mr Lambert), Dalziel and Pascoe, and Lovejoy.

He also appeared in a number of other one-off TV dramas, including: Television Playhouse (1957); A World Inside BBC (1962); ITV Play of the Week (two stories � The Gentle Assassin (1962) and I Can Walk Where I Like Can't I? (1964); the BBC's Wind Versus Polygamy (1968); ITV's A Fear of Strangers (1964), in which he played Ramsay, a black saxophonist and small-time criminal who is detained by the police on suspicion of murder and who is also racially abused by a Chief Inspector Dyke played by Stanley Baker; Festival: the Respectful Prostitute (1964); ITV Play of the Week � The Death of Bessie Smith (1965); Theatre 625: The Minister (1965); The Great Kandinsky (1994); and two episodes of Thirty-Minute Theatre (Anything You Say 1969 and another in 1971).


Leonard Kingston (died 2014 aged 84) - 6 credits, including Prisoner in The Mind of Evil

Leonard Kingston is an actor, known for The Three Princes, Maigret and ITV Play of the Week.


Delia Derbyshire (died 2001 aged 64) - 116 credits, including Title Music Arranger for The Creation of Doctor Who

Delia Derbyshire was born in Coventry, England

Educated at Coventry Grammar School and Girton College, Cambridge, where she was awarded a degree in mathematics and music.

In 1960 Delia Derbyshire joined the BBC as a trainee studio manager. Within a matter of months she had created her recording of Ron Grainer's Doctor Who theme, one of the most famous and instantly recognisable TV themes ever. On first hearing it Grainer was tickled pink: "Did I really write this?" he asked. "Most of it," replied Derbyshire.

Thus began what is still referred to as the Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop. Initially set up as a service department for Radio Drama, it had always been run by someone with a drama background. Derbyshire was the first person there with any higher music qualifications, but as she wasn't supposed to be doing music, much of her early work remained anonymous under the umbrella credit 'special sound by BBC Radiophonic Workshop'.

Derbyshire soon gained a reputation for successfully tackling the impossible. When asked to "make some TV title music using only animal sounds" - much thought and ingenuity resulted in Great Zoos of the World. Delia always managed to soften her purist mathematical approach with a sensitive interpretative touch - 'very sexy' said Michael Bakewell on first hearing her electronic music for Cyprian Queen.

Derbyshire also worked with the composers Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Roberto Gerhard (on his 1965 Prix Italia winning 'Anger of Achilles'), and Ianni Christou, doing sound treatments of their orchestral music. She was also assistant to Luciano Berio at the 1962 Dartington summer school.

Delia's works from the 60s and 70s continue to be used on radio and TV some 30 years later, and her music has given her legendary status with releases in Sweden and Japan. She is also constantly mentioned, credited and covered by bands from Add n to (x) and Sonic Boom to Aphex Twin and The Chemical Brothers.

A recent Guardian article called her 'the unsung heroine of British electronic music'. She had exploratory encounters with Paul McCartney, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Martin, Pink Floyd, Brian Jones, Anthony Newley, Ringo Starr and Harry Nilsson.

Derbyshire returned to music in the late nineties after having her interest renewed by fellow electronic musician Peter Kember and was working on an album when she died aged 64 of renal failure while recovering from breast cancer surgery.

The composer is played by Sarah Winter in the 50th Anniversary drama An Adventure In Space And Time.