Tom Baker, the 4th actor to play the BBC perennial Doctor Who (as long as you don’t count Peter Cushing in the two Hammer films).
I can’t recall how we heard that Tom was going to make an appearance at Roselands, NSW, but somehow I did, and it was inevitable that I was going to convince my mum to take myself and younger brother David, to meet the man.
I don’t know what I was expecting, and I have no recollection of the actual meeting, but we did walk away with a few signed Target paperback books, and this photo.
Other things I can recall, we were quite close to the front of the line, possibly even nearly the first people there.
while we were waiting they were playing on loop episodes from The Horror of Fang Rock. This had not screened in Australia yet, so that should put Toms visit around the time of mid-1977. And pretty sure this was a Saturday.
The only other thing I remember was that my mum was talking to another lady in line with us, who wasn’t there wither her kids or for doctor Who at all. She was a bit of a Pier Paolo Pasolini, and was there because Tom appeared in I racconti di Canterbury (The Canterbury Tales) 1972. She told my mum that Tom was naked in the film, which was a touch scandalous and maybe a bit titillating.
This signing may have taken place in Grace Brothers or a similar department store.
Not so the next visit.
Possibly a year later Tom returned, and this time it was huge.
It was a weekday, and so we had to rush straight from school to the event. This time is was defiantly Roselands shopping centre, and it was in an open public area where they had these sorts of events.
And rather than being some of the first people here, there was a multitude.
We had brought my school friend Colin Andronis, and a school assignment where we had to design and build a board game. I had made Doctor Who board game. I remember there were loops within loops on the board, each for a different regeneration (there had been only 4 at that point) and my Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks LP (maybe to sign).
We waited for a while. I don’t recall if we were told that there was a cut off and that we were not going to make it, or if we just gave up. Which ever way it was, I did give my school assignment game (which I may have just been going to show off) to a security person to pass on to Tom.
They must have got my name and address too, because a week or so later I received a post card from Tom Baker. It thanked me for the lovely present (deliberately generic). It must have been post marked with the hotel they were staying at, because I remember one lunchtime at BB High School, calling the hotel from the front reception and asking to be put through to tom. They told me (probably recognising my childish voice) that he was not staying there. I replied that I knew that he was, and they said he had checked out. and so went my dreams of having a doctor as a pen friend