Ronnie Scott’s and boozing with Francis Bacon: Doctor Who’s day in Soho
In 1974, audiences fell in love with Tom Baker as the titular time-travelling, scarf-wearing Doctor in Doctor Who. There was a charming quirk to his version, who wore a ridiculously long scarf and was fond of jelly babies, and as his infamous day in the life column proved, the quirks extended through the space-time continuum and into Baker’s real life. Baker, who, before breaking into acting, spent six years as a monk in Jersey, brought a genuine neurotic edge to a fairly run-of-the-mill newspaper format, moving readers through the minutiae of his day in London‘s Soho at the peak of his Doctor Who fame.
The opening train of thought alone echoed the dramatic brilliance of the Shakespearian productions he rose up performing. “I woke up at 5.15am in a cork-lined room in Soho and then got into bed. But where am I? I dreamt about a tall, thin woman, but who is she?” he wonders. “I suffer recurring images of tall, skinny ladies. They look so good and really release all those fantasies. I woke up again, and it was 6.10am. I was hit by terrible waves of anxiety. The feeling of loneliness that smacks of self-pity.”
Baker, who in the adjoining photograph that ran with his Times ‘Day in the Life‘ column, was pictured with a toothbrush in his pocket, gingerly felt around for a toothbrush and then took a “sly” bath. The self-pity is momentarily defeated when he discovers £114 in a pocket, which puts a confident spring in his step. After sneaking out of the strange house, he heads out to Old Compton Street for some coffee and a crossword, then on to do some voiceover work.
What follows is a “vaguely lunatic afternoon” of drinking. Baker’s usual haunts were the Carlisle Arms, the Coach and Horses, the Swiss Taven or the York Minister, where there was a “constant stream of hallos, nods and autographs – all very good medicine for anxiety”. After cashing a cheque for ten pence and chowing down calf liver and bacon, Baker was off for a rehearsal at the BBC. “It’s Kafkaville,” he writes. “I worked for a bit as a paid fantasist, and it went quite well.”
Although the autographs dampened his woes for a bit, they soon crept back in on his train back to town. He tried learning some lines but got distracted by a girl sitting opposite him playing ‘I Am Your Automatic Lover’ on a transistor, which embarrassed him for reasons unknown. At teatime, he arrives at the Colony Room Club, where Francis Bacon plies him with large gin and tonics, and the anxieties evaporate.
The piano was played, and a bunch of drunks sang ‘Home on the Range’, and then it was back to the York Minister. Once his way, he pops into Gerry’s Club, plays a game of pool and loses, and launches into serious discussions about cancer with a stranger. To break up the sombre tone of the cancer conversation, he spoke to a Welsh teacher who was delighted to have met the real-life Doctor Who.
“We shook hands,” recalled Baker, “And he promptly had a heart attack”. Luckily, there were two doctors in the house (three, including him, as he quips), and he was carried out into an ambulance. Heart attacks replaced cancer as the hot-button medical topic in the pub that day.
Somehow still able to walk, Baker goes on to watch the cabaret at Madison’s, then back to Gerry’s one last time, where: “As usual, there was someone there with whom to discuss crumpet and the meaning of life”. He continues weaving around Soho, even finding time to pop into the infamous jazz haunt Ronnie Scott’s, where Baker was “sat at the bar affecting a knowledge of jazz that I haven’t got”. As the end of the night drew closer, the recurring image of the tall, skinny ladies came back, either signalling that it was time to sleep or that no volume of alcohol would get rid of them.
Which is not to say Baker didn’t try. “I went back to Gerry’s for another drink, and after I’d cadged a Valium from someone, I went home to my padded cell,” he concludes. “I thought about Harriet Waugh and fell asleep.”
