A Look At Longleat

A Look At Longleat

I'm not entirely sure when I first went to the 'Doctor Who' exhibition at Longleat. It might have been 1975, after 'Genesis Of The Daleks', because I remember drawing a picture at school of the main control room section, with my attempt at Davros and the Daleks. I haven't been able to track the picture down in recent years, but I know I didn't attempt to draw the TARDIS console, just the surrounding banks of assorted knobs and switches.

I do remember a Dalek ride outside the nearby amusement arcade, which was an unexpected bonus.
Also, I can clearly recall being very scared on one visit when I unexpectedly came face to face (as it were) with the Krynoid, which didn't encourage me to go any further. Put we'd paid for the tickets, so I was persuaded to inch my way past it.

The opportunity to buy the odd Poster Magazine and pick up a Target book or two almost seemed like the reward for having braved the terrors within.

But there seems to be a bit of a gap in the late 70s and early 80s, as the nearest I seemed to get to the exhibition was seeing the 1980 report on 'Blue Peter' where the console and monsters get a touch-up from Tina Heath's trusty feather duster and John Nathan-Turner uses the phrase 'some rather startling flying creatures that attack human beings' when the simple word 'bats' would do.

I never made it to the Easter Weekend do in 1983, being forced to listen to Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart on location on the radio instead. I do wonder whether I would have joined the DWAS there and then if I'd managed to make it, but it would be another year before I took the plunge in that department.

But by 1986, I'd joined the Salisbury Local Group and so trips to Longleat under my own steam became more common. I've recently dug out some photos from 1988 where the horrors on display including Kane in mid-melt, a Tetrap head with movable parts, me in a tasteless sun hat which I doff in a half-hearted tribute to Sylvester McCoy and a bloke in the TARDIS console room wearing shorts that a just a little TOO short for my peace of mind.

With 'Doctor Who' off the air in the 1990s, our group would make a yearly pilgrimage to Longleat and by this point there would be the odd special 'Doctor Who' day on a slightly more realistic scale than 1983. I even remembered bidding for Nick Courtney's hairpiece from 'Mawdryn Undead', intending to use it as a monster in Paul Chandler's 'Sutton Park' series, but sadly it quickly went beyond the reach of my wallet.

With tape recorders and camcorders within our grasp by this point, there are some audio and video recordings of us running through the maze and doing daft voices. Episode 137 of 'The Shy Life Podcast' even has some Longleat silliness about 56 minutes in and can be heard here.

Perhaps our Longleat sketches are more terrifying than any Krynoid, though, so be warned...

Update: Thanks to Paul Chandler for reminding me that some Longleat material from 1989 features in Episode 106 of 'The Shy Life Podcast' just about here.

(By Andrew Trowbridge)