With me, he’s always been tied with Peter Davidson as Best Doctor — PD for a Doctor who radiates compassion, TB for one who is a child in an adult’s body, relentlessly funny but also essentially serious. …Not to mention the scarf. I crocheted that scarf once. Only once. In any case, I favored the Baker Doctor enough that he turned up once in a place he very much shouldn’t have been, in my prose…well, bearing in mind some other writers’ problems in this direction, perhaps the less said the better.
However, something else has come up (as we say). UK and Irish TV-watchers know Tom Baker’s as a voice which turns up doing all kinds of commercial work.
Here are some outtakes from a recent recording session. Says Warren Ellis, that amazing creature, “Tom Baker is legendarily somewhat conflicted about doing voiceovers for ****ty-product advertising. ” (Sorry for the asterisking, but younger readers do pass through here.)
…Uh, no kidding. Warning: the linked .MP3 is not suitable for people who have trouble with the F word. Or hearing a voice like that of a slightly renegade or cranked-off Deity pronouncing it.
Thank you, Warren…
