Over time Andrew O'Day has had his photo taken with many Doctor Who-related stars: with his kind permission many of those pictures appear here, spaced over several pages. Text below by Andrew is contained within quotation marks inside text boxes.

(Click on pictures to enlarge)

“It would be very repetitious of me to provide comments on each and every one of these celebrities, other than to say that off-stage in a convention environment they are extremely lovely people to the fans, while on-stage many of them show that they are not only actors but entertainers too, giving attendees their money’s worth. This is the case whether we think of Tom Baker who does a humourous one-man hour-long speech on stage (refusing to be interviewed in the fashion of the other guests), of Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred bouncing off one another when jointly-interviewed, with their affection for one another clearly evident, of Ant Ainley and his stories about cricket, and his continuous jokes, of Michael Sheard partially adopting the persona of Mr. Bronson, of Paul Darrow with his sardonic wit, of the bubbly Debbie Watling hosting a celebrity version of The Weakest Link in Anne Robinson style, as part of an evening’s entertainment, or of the larger-than-life Colin Baker auctioning off highly-sought after merchandise at the typical convention ‘Celebrity Charity Auction’ (a development of the Longleat 1983 auction) with his witty comments to the audience. It is probably best to conclude by recalling a convention held at the Playhouse Theatre at Weston-super-Mare: here Debbie Watling performed a rendition of “Hey Big Spender”, this was the first (but certainly not only) time I heard Ant Ainley’s humorous song about the Doctor Who characters to the tune of Auld Lang Syne, and this was the time that Mark Strickson gave attendees a mini-acting class of how to perform horror by getting on the ground of the stage and screaming ‘Tractators’ as he rolled about in torment. And where better to hold this than at the Playhouse? After all, this was sheer theatre.”

“Colin Baker’s cousin has run a number of Doctor Who conventions. An absolutely irrelevant fact that has nothing to do with the story I am about to relate, but a way of telling this story (for which no photographs exist) next to a picture. And it’s an important story because it just goes to show how adventurous some Doctor Who conventions became in the early 2000s, and the opportunities that there were to organise activities which would have been quite impossible to do at Longleat 1983. At Longleat, the main game one plays is getting lost in the garden maze, which I used to enjoy doing on other occasions as a child. But at this later convention, we went on a Treasure Hunt. To sum up the rules: teams were assembled which included a driver and we were all given an identical list of things to collect from a number of locations used in the original Doctor Who series (e.g. locations for “The Stones of Blood”, at the Rollright Stones, “The Android Invasion” in East Hagbourne, Oxfordshire, and “The Daemons” in  Aldbourne, Wiltshire). The Treasure Hunt took a good part of a day (thankfully a warm one) and there was time for many to enjoy the village pub in Aldbourne (the last stop) before returning; we were more interested in getting back first but still did not win.”

Photos © Andrew O'Day and used with his kind permission.    This page was compiled by Tim Harris.

Doctor Who, The Tardis © BBC. All images on this site are © their respective copyright holders.