Brother

Baker

many takes, too much hanging about

between scenes of Granada TV's new

medical drama series.

They were filming in a sectioned-off

part of a NHS hospital while the real human dramas

were being played out beyond the ropes. Or so it

seemed to Baker. Before anyone could yell 'arrest that

imposter', he had hijacked his fictional role as an

overbearing consultant in Jermyn Street pinstripes

and taken him on a ward round.

"I thought I'd go and see the real sick people. And do

you know, the real ones aren't nearly as convincing as

the actors,' he says. 'People would bounce up in bed

and look brave at my approach. It went straight to

my head. I was tapping their knees, laying my hands

on all sorts of innocent people, and saying: "How are

you this morning?" They would all say: "Much, much

better doctor." '

No television role, with the arguable exception of Dr

Who, has ever tapped Baker's talents better. His com-

manding manner and relish for the macabre have

proved well-suited to a larger-than-life consultant who

flirts over post-mortems and cracks questionable jokes

at the operating table.

The success of the second, totally revamped series of

Medics, which starts on ITV this Tuesday and co-stars

Sue Johnston, will largely depend on Baker. It returns

with blacker humour and a furious cutting pace.

More upmarket than the BBC's Casualty, it should

nonetheless give its rival a decent rating run for its

L2million cost.

Baker keenly anticipates that 'millions are going to

believe I am a doctor. One consultant I met recently

looked so amateur, obviously didn't spend any money

on his suits. Lets hope his neurology was better than

his dress sense.' This from a man who owned only one

shabby overcoat and one suit the day he landed the

role of the fourth Dr Who. During that phase, he

'By the end, I was worn

out by my sexual urges'

lived on people's floors and claims he

was obsessed with a secret desire to

end up in the gutter. 'I wanted to be

the most abject, the most despised of

men. Probably because of something

in my crazy, mixed-up background.'

Since childhood, Tom Baker has

been drawn to the grandiloquent,

dramatic gesture. He warns you

early on that, although he enjoys

excellent physical health, his grip on

reality is tenuous.

Certainly his life seems to be con-

ducted as though he is the fatally-

flawed hero of some continually un-

folding Greek tragedy.

His home in Kent, where he lives

with his third wife, is a dramatically

converted old schoolhouse, bordered

by a graveyard that features a 5ft

6in upright gravestone etched deep

in classical English script. 'Tom Baker,

1934 to --', it says.

reer in graveyards. 'They

catapult me back to my

childhood in Liverpool

when I was an alter boy attending

sometimes three or four funerals a

day. I remember actually weeping

from the cold at a funeral once. Af-

terwards, a man slid his arm down

mine and pressed a two-shilling piece

into my freezing hand. I was in-

stantly corrupted. After that, while

the other alter boys were getting mis-

erable threepenny bits, I was full of

snot and passion and copping up to

half-a-crown for my tears.'

His mother, a Roman Catholic bar-

maid, swaddled his early years in reli-

gious ritual. He recalls watching by

his grandmother's deathbed while she

'fearlessly sank, ablaze with ecstasy,

as a priest intoned about Jesus and

holy angels'. Religion sharpened his

taste for the theatrical; he spent most

of his childhood longing for early

death and a ticket to Heaven.

He vividly remembers one of his

first confessions, at the age of six

when he told the priest: 'Father, I

have done murder.' The priest, whose

breath smelled of communion wine,

leaned forward and quizzed him pa-

tiently on the quantity and timespan

of these dreadful deeds. ('Three, in a

week'.) The punishment was only a

few Hail Marys but Baker's slightly

bulbous eyes still fizz with delight at

the memory.

craving to be the centre of

attention. When he was

eight, his father - a poor,

uneducated sailor - offered to give

him to a childless couple he'd

met in Fremantle, Australia. Tom was

happy to go, but his mother cuffed

him for saying so.

She was perfectly happy to lose him

at the age of 15 to the brothers of the

order of Ploermel in Jersey. For six

years, he shaved his head and wore a

drab soutane as a noviciate and then

monk. It was an ascetic existence,

bound by strict rules that forbade

him to touch anyone, smile or look in

their eyes. Conversation was rationed

to what he calls 'meaningless rhetoric

from the New Testament'.

'Those years were terribly exciting

and demanding,' he says. 'I enjoyed

the suffering and deprivation and si-

lence, although I haven't stopped

talking since. I enjoyed the hysterical

self-indulgence of feeling unworthy.'

His sense of unworthiness began to

crumble when a beautiful young man

called Olivier-Jean joined the brother-

hood. 'I am absolutely certain that

when men are together and deprived

of women, they become homosexual,'

confesses Baker. 'I wanted to embrace

Olivier-Jean so much that my bones

used to crack.

'When you're that young, it's very

difficult to think about anything but

lust. By the end of the six years, I

was absolutely worn out by my sex-

ual urges, and a priest advised me to

get out. Once I was doing my Na-

tional Service and encountering girls,

I discovered sex, started practising it

in a frenzy and rejected the Church

very swiftly.

'It left me with a huge residue of

guilt. Sometimes God knocks on the

side of my head now and says: "Let's

get back together." But I prefer guilt,

lust, anxiety, lies, and confusion. I

prefer the uncertainties of life.'

His life post-monastery encom-

passed a spell as a medical orderly

stitching up corpses - useful

experience for his new role - before

he slipped into acting and mid-life

fame as Dr Who.

His private life has been more prob-

lematical. A five-year first marriage

produced two sons whom he did not

see for seven years and then only out

of 'curiosity and a vestigial sense of

duty'. His second marriage, to actress

Lalla Ward, ended quickly in divorce.

Seven years ago, he married televi-

sion director Sue Jerrard. Some-

times, he says, he 'deludes' himself he

is happy.

This is clearly not intended as an

insult to Sue. Nearly everything he

says is laced with bombast and rheto-

ric, which challenges you not to take

him at face value. It is perhaps

enough to know his daily Bible read-

ings have now been substituted with

Dickens, whose more eccentric char-

acters he savours with unalloyed de-

light. Interviews are treated as

substitutes for the confessional; occa-

sions to whip up a bit drama and

talk about his favourite subject. In

confessional mode, he tells you: 'I

wouldn't say I'm close to my chil-

dren. I wouldn't say I'm close to any-

one, except my wife. I don't have

much capacity for friendship because

of my self-centredness. I'm not gener-

ous enough to give to individuals.

These things are heightened in actors

when you are thinking about yourself

all the time and worrying about

where the next round of applause is

coming from.

sometimes I think I've lost

everything in life because I'm

a great betrayer. The title of

my autobiography is going to be All

Friends Betrayed. That's made me

more anxious to hold onto my dear

wife. I used to be very fragmented,

and I do need to be adored. I feel

this overriding security in her affec-

tion; she reassures me constantly.

Now that I've located admiration, I'm

hanging onto it for grim death.'

Dr Who, of course, provided a

pretty bottomless well of admiration

and he still relishes the 100 or so fan

letters he receives a month. The past

decade has been less kind, although

he created a minor stir as a priest in

The Life And Loves Of A She-Devil

and in the BBC2 play Law Lord.

He has not succeeded in 'support-

ing' himself from acting - largely,

he believes, because casting agents

typecast him as the Doctor. There

has been plenty of spare time to

mow his graveyard, do corporate

work and organise house-parties, for

which he is renowned as a generous

host.

What is he like at home, you won-

der? 'I think I'm a difficult person to

live with, rather domineering and

bossy, like lots of people uncertain of

their identity,' he says.

In conversation, he is an accom-

plished raconteur who performs all

his stories as if the curtain had just

lifted on a full house. You may sus-

pect he's listening with only half an

ear to what anyone else has to say,

but he's delightful company all the

same. He's a great point-scorer, too,

capable of spending hours searching

the Bible for an awkward quotation

with which to confound persistent

Jehovah's Witnesses.

already been carefully or-

chestrated; L2,000 in a spe-

cial fund to pay for cham-

pagne, strict orders forbidding

gloomy faces at the graveside, and

that 150-year-old granite gravestone

awaiting its second date.

'There is a kind of implacable logic

in my life,' he muses. 'My early

memories are of graveyards, I live by

a graveyard and I want a good

gravestone as a sign that I existed. I

might be frightened to die. But if

there were two cameras there, I

might make an effort.'

Why two? 'One for close-ups and

one for wide angles.' He laughs, but

he may not be joking.

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Midi file this page: "The Memory of Trees."