£5500 Celery Stick

A STICK of celery has sold for £5500 at auction.
The plastic vegetable's price rocketed as more than 60 Doctor Who fans vied to buy it.
It was worn by Peter Davison, the fifth actor to play the TV Time Lord, when he appeared opposite the current Doctor, David Tennant, in a special episode for Children In Need.
The BBC put the prop, signed by Davison, up for sale on internet auction site eBay.
After 10 days and 87 bids, it was finally sold to Dimity Telfer, 21.
Dimity, from Broome, western Australia, who only discovered the show two years ago, said: "I couldn't let an opportunity like that get away.
"I got into Doctor Who in 2005 and I've been hooked ever since - Peter Davison is my favourite."
Davison's trademark was a stick of celery on his blazer lapel during his three-year reign as the Doctor.
BBC spokeswoman Wendy Owen said: "We were excited when we were offered the prop for our auction.
"But we never imagined it would go for so much."

Time Crash

Here is the short Children in Need presentation of Time Crash, staring Peter Davison and David Tennant. Followed by the making of this short. Enjoy, but please remember to donate to Children in Need, its easy to do through paypal.

Children in Need "Tonight"

"Time Crash", the special Doctor Who scene which will air Friday night as part of the Children in Need telethon. The telethon airs on BBC One starting at 7:00. The Radio Times indicates that Time Crash will air between 8:00 and 8:30, but the Children in Need schedule is always fluid, so this may or may not be accurate."Time Crash" stars David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor. It is written by Steven Moffat and directed by Graeme Harper, who previously directed Peter Davison in his final Doctor Who story, The Caves of Androzani. The scene is expected to be between five and seven minutes long.The BBC's Doctor Who website has announced that fans in the UK will be able to view "Time Crash" online for seven days after its broadcast, as well as a special Doctor Who Confidential featurette.In addition to "Time Crash", the Children in Need telethon will include a singing appearance by John Barrowman, which is also scheduled by Radio Times in the 8:00-to-8:30 slot. And, Kylie Minogue will be singing her new single, "2 Hearts", sometime during the evening's events.On Thursday, Mark Shift of Clitheroe, Lancashire won a Children in Need auction for a day on the Doctor Who set. Shift entered the bidding for his five-year-old son Joshua (whom he describes as a "Doctor Who fanatic"), and won with a bid of 37,000 UK pounds. Shift is interviewed in The Clitheroe Advertiser, his local newspaper.
Children in Need funds are given to charity organizations which aid children in the UK. Readers can give to Children in Need online by following this link. Please give generously.

Counting down to the Children In Need special scene.

From BBC.com: It's not long now until Friday night - and Time Crash, the special Doctor Who scene starring David Tennant and Peter Davison.
As well as Time Crash, written by Steven Moffat and directed by Graeme Harper, the Children In Need telethon will also feature the vocal talents of John Barrowman, who will be singing during the evening.
In association with Children In Need, the Doctor Who website team will be doing our bit to support this historic meeting of two Doctors.
If you're in the UK, you'll be able to catch the scene online for seven days after it's shown on TV, along with a very special behind-the-scenes featurette from the Doctor Who Confidential team.
We'll also be running a mini episode guide, including galleries, a fact file and full credits.
In return, we really hope you'll appreciate all the hard work everyone on Doctor Who has given for free to make Time Crash happen, and donate generously to help those less fortunate than many of us.

Peter Davison & David Tennant Together

Can't wait for this Friday? See Peter Davison and David Tennant together in The Mrs Bradley Mysteries.

Doctor Who: A New Dimension - Fifth Doctor

Peter Davison said...

With the TARDIS opening its doors for a very special short adventure in aid of Children In Need next week, Peter Davison has been speaking to Radio Times about his return to Doctor Who on TV.
"The idea of coming back to play the Doctor was mentioned to me casually a few months ago: would I be interested? And I said, 'Yes!' I didn't really have to think about it, partly because it gives me such credibility with my children. They're huge fans of the new show.
"Before it came back, they were huge fans of the old Doctor Who videos they saw of me – but they very quickly changed their allegiance to the new Doctor!"
Peter Davison joins David Tennant for Time Crash on 16 November 2007.

Raido Times Cover

The official website of the BBC's Radio Times listings magazine has released details of its new issue, due out tomorrow in the UK, including an image of the cover. For the 15th time since the return of Doctor Who in 2005 (including multiple covers in the same week), the series is the main feature, promoting the special episode "Time Crash", due to be shown on BBC One on Friday November 16th as part of the annual Children in Need charity telethon event. The cover image, seen top, features Peter Davison and David Tennant as the Fifth and Tenth Doctors, who meet for the first time in this special episode. The preview on the Radio Times website promises an exclusive on-set report from the making of the mini-episode.

Waiting For God

Peter Davison (At Home With The Braithwaites) and Pippa Haywood (Green Wing; The Brittas Empire) star in this new sitcom from Michael Aitkens (Waiting for God).

He describes the series: "When you reach a certain age, the phrase, 'What has my life come to?' starts preying on your mind. The baby boomers are supposed to be keeping up these wonderfully dynamic lifestyles they've been slaving away at for 20 years or more, yet they're haemorrhaging cash from both ends – only to get ousted by the next generation."

They're stuck in the middle - the sandwich generation. Martin is made redundant, Julie's civil service career stagnates, their two daughters won't leave home and Martin's senile mother is costing them a fortune in a nursing home.

They try drugs, therapy and new jobs, but Martin's unerring ability to screw up absolutely everything, combined with Julie's rampant neuroses, just add to the fear, the stress and the anger.

"But despite it all, the series has a nice, warm feeling running through it. You can see that they get on really well as a couple; they love their kids (sometimes); they love his mum; they just wish they weren't paying for them all the time!" says producer Sue Vertue (Coupling, The Vicar of Dibley).

The series was filmed on location and at Twickenham Film Studios.

All Creatures Great and Small

In 1978, the BBC created a television series from the books, again using the title All Creatures Great and Small. The leading role was taken by an unknown actor, Christopher Timothy, and Siegfried Farnon was played by the well-known Robert Hardy. Tristan was played by Peter Davison (who became a household name as a result, and went on to take many other starring roles, notably as the fifth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who and as Margery Allingham's detective Albert Campion in two series of Campion). Helen was played by Carol Drinkwater in the first three series and two specials. Mary Hignett played the housekeeper Mrs. Hall, and Margaretta Scott appeared as the recurring aristocratic dog-owner Mrs Pumphrey.

With the amount of time available to it, the television series quickly became much more of an ensemble show, developing all the characters considerably. In particular, the role of Tristan was significantly increased, partly because Christopher Timothy suffered an automobile accident part-way through the first series and so was restricted to studio shooting (in at least one episode, he can be seen having visible difficulty walking about the surgery), requiring that scenes involving location filming be rewritten and given to Davison.

The programme ran for three series, but broke off in 1980 at the stage where the characters were drawn into the Second World War. Two specials were subsequently made in 1983 and 1985, and then in 1988 the programme was revived, and ran for four more series carrying on the story after the war. In the revived series, Lynda Bellingham took over the role of Helen, and Judy Wilson played a new housekeeper, Mrs. Greenlaw, as Mary Hignett had died shortly after the end of the third series. The Darrowby practice added a young vet with a liking for badgers in the form of John McGlynn playing Calum Buchannan (based upon Herriot's real-life assistant Brian Nettleton), a former classmate of Tristan's. The Herriot children, who had been introduced in the two specials, now became recurring characters, with Jimmy played by Oliver Wilson and Rosie by Rebecca Smith.

The television programme was filmed around Yorkshire, with some scenes shot at Bolton Castle. Indoor scenes were shot at the BBC's Pebble Mill studios in Birmingham. Apart from the two specials, most interior scenes were recorded on video and edited together with filmed exterior shots, as was common practice in British television at the time. The original set of the interior of the vets surgery is now located at the Richmondshire Museum in Richmond, North Yorkshire and is open to the public.

The famous theme and incidental music was by Johnny Pearson.

As of September 2007, the first four series have been released on Region 2 and 4 PAL DVDs ; on Region 1 NTSC, all seven series and the two intermediate Christmas specials are available.

In real life, the counterparts of Siegfried and James were reverse physical types from the actors who played them in the TV series. "James Herriot" (Alf Wight) was stocky, and "Siegfried Farnon" (Donald Sinclair) was of slender build. Tristan was described as having dark hair but Peter Davison has blond.

Peter Davison Interview 1983

Peter Davison Bio

Peter Moffett, now better known by his stage name Peter Davison, was born on 13 April 1951 in the Streatham area of London. In 1961, he and his family - parents Sheila and Claude (an electrical engineer who hailed from British Guiana) and his sisters Barbara, Pamela and Shirley - moved to Woking in Surrey, where Davison was educated at the Maphill School. It was here that he first became interested in acting, taking parts in a number of school plays, and this eventually led to him joining an amateur dramatic society, the Byfleet Players. On leaving school at the age of sixteen, having achieved only modest academic success with three O Levels of undistinguished grades, he took a variety of short-lived jobs ranging from hospital porter to Hoffman press operator. He was still keen to pursue an acting career, however, and so applied for a place at drama school. He was accepted into the Central School of Speech and Drama and stayed there for three years. Davison's first professional acting work came in 1972 when, after leaving drama school in the July of that year, he secured a small role in a run of "Love's Labour's Lost" at the Nottingham Playhouse. This marked the start of a three-year period in which he worked in a variety of different repertory companies around the UK, often in Shakespearean roles. He then made his television debut, playing a blond-wigged space cowboy character called Elmer in "A Man for Emily", a three-part story in the Thames TV children's series "The Tomorrow People" (1973), transmitted in April 1975. Appearing alongside him in this production was his future wife, American-born actress Sandra Dickinson, whom he had first met during a run of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Edinburgh. They married on 26 December 1978 in Dickinson's home town of Rockville in Maryland, USA. Davison spent the following eighteen months working as a file clerk at Twickenham tax office. He also took the opportunity to pursue an interest in singing and song-writing, which led him to record several singles with his wife. He later provided the theme tunes for a number of TV series, including "Mixed Blessings" (1978) and "Button Moon" (1980). Davison played the romantic lead, Tom Holland in _"Love for Lydia" (1978) (mini)_, a London Weekend Television (LWT) period drama serial transmitted in 1977. His greatest acting success came when he played Tristan in the BBC's "All Creatures Great and Small" (1978), based on the books of country vet James Herriot, a highly successful series, which ran initially for three seasons between 1978-1980. His success in "All Creatures Great and Small" brought him many other offers of TV work. Amongst those that he took up were lead roles in two sitcoms: LWT's "Holding the Fort" (1980), in which he played Russell Milburn, and the BBC's "Sink or Swim" (1980), in which he played Brian Webber. Three seasons of each were transmitted between 1980 and 1982, consolidating Davison's position as a well-known and popular television actor. He announced he was taking the lead role in "Doctor Who" (1963) on the BBC's lunchtime magazine programme "Pebble Mill at One", on 3 December 1980, when he discussed with the presenter a number of costume ideas sent in by viewers and was particularly impressed by a suggestion from one of a panel of young fans assembled in the studio that the new Doctor should be 'like Tristan Farnon, but with bravery and intellect'. His appearance in "The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy" (1981), was recorded on 19 December 1980 and transmitted on 2 February 1981, by which time the viewing public were well aware that he would soon be taking over the lead role in Doctor Who. There was in fact only a month to go before he would make his on-screen debut in the series - albeit a brief one, in the regeneration sequence at the end of "Logopolis". His first full story was in "Castrovalva", the first story of season nineteen transmitted on 4 January 1982. His final story was season twenty-one's story "The Caves of Androzani". The final episode of this story was transmitted on 16 March 1984. He became a father when on Christmas day 1984 his wife gave birth to a daughter, Georgia Elizabeth, at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London. Ten years later, however, his marriage to Dickinson broke down and they separated. Although he has taken occasional roles in theatre, radio and film, most of the actor's work has been in the medium for which he is best known: television. His credits have included regular stints as Henry Myers in "Anna of the Five Towns" (1985) (mini), as Dr. Stephen Daker in "A Very Peculiar Practice" (1986), as Albert Campion in "Campion" (1989) and as Clive Quigley in "Ain't Misbehavin" (1994) all for the BBC, and as Ralph in Yorkshire TV's "Fiddlers Three" (1991). In addition, he has reprised his popular role of Tristan Farnon on a number of occasions for one-off specials and revival seasons of "All Creatures Great and Small". He has also returned several times to the world of Doctor Who. In 1993 he appeared as the fifth Doctor in "Dimensions in Time", a brief two-part skit transmitted as part of the BBC's annual Children in Need Charity appeal, and in 1985 he narrated an abridged novelisation of the season twenty-one story "Warriors of the Deep" for BBC Worldwide's Doctor Who audio book series. In addition, he has appeared in a number of video dramas produced by Bill Baggs Video. In 2003 and 2004 he appeared as quiet and unassuming detective 'Dangerous' Davies in "The Last Detective" (2003), the Meridian TV adaptations of Leslie Thomas's novels.

Thanks to imdb.com

November is Peter Davison Month!

With Peter Davidson returning (only slightly) to the role as the Doctor, the Galifreyian Gazette is making November "Perter Davidson month". Read and watch moments from Peter's era when he played the 5th Doctor all leading up to November 14th and the children in need special.