40 Fun Facts About Tom Baker

Tom Baker's Doctor Who scarf ended up absurdly long because knitter Begonia Pope did what?

Used all the wool sums it up: costume designer James Acheson, who knew little about knitting, had handed her huge quantities in many colours.

Where was Tom Baker working between acting jobs when he was cast as the Doctor in 1974?

A building site was paying his wages after three planned films collapsed, so he wrote to a BBC executive asking for acting work.

Tom Baker left school at 15 and spent six years training to become what before he took up acting?

A religious brother was his way out of becoming a labourer: he joined an order in Jersey as a novice, then resigned on the advice of a visiting priest.

Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor, known for his long scarf, had a famous fondness for which sweets?

Jelly babies and the scarf made him instantly recognisable, and viewing figures returned to levels not seen since the Dalekmania of a decade earlier.

Tom Baker earned two Golden Globe nominations for playing which Russian figure in a 1971 film epic?

Rasputin was his first major film role, in Nicholas and Alexandra, and the nominations were for supporting actor and most promising newcomer.

Tom Baker's booming voice narrated which sketch show created by Matt Lucas and David Walliams?

Little Britain was made by two comedians who grew up admiring his Doctor, and he credited the series with re-inventing his image.

In 2006, Tom Baker recorded 11,593 phrases so BT landlines could read out what in his voice?

Text messages sent to BT landlines were spoken in his voice, and when the service returned that December two pence from each went to the charity Shelter.

Which Lord of the Rings film role did Tom Baker reportedly turn down to avoid months in New Zealand?

Gandalf went instead to Ian McKellen, who was cast in 1999 while he was filming the first X-Men film.

Tom Baker was raised a devout Catholic, and served as an altar boy, in which English port city?

Liverpool was where his mother, a barmaid and cleaner, raised him while his father was often away at sea as a Merchant Navy steward.

Tom Baker took over as the Doctor in 1974 from which actor, who had played the Third Doctor?

Jon Pertwee handed over at the end of Planet of the Spiders, where his successor appeared only in the closing moments.

Which All Creatures Great and Small star replaced Tom Baker as the Doctor in 1981?

Peter Davison, aged 29, was the youngest actor cast as the Doctor, a record he held until Matt Smith's casting in 2009.

Tom Baker married which Doctor Who co-star, who played the Time Lady Romana, in December 1980?

Lalla Ward was the second actress to play Romana, taking over in 1979, and the marriage ended in divorce after 16 months.

Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elisabeth Sladen beside Tom Baker's Doctor, worked in which profession?

Journalist Sarah Jane was a dogged investigator who had already travelled with the Third Doctor before she stayed on with the Fourth.

Which scientist, the creator of the Daleks, made his debut opposite Tom Baker's Doctor in 1975?

Davros arrived in Genesis of the Daleks, one of several early Tom Baker stories now considered classics.

Which comic novelist wrote The Pirate Planet for Tom Baker's Doctor, then script-edited Doctor Who?

Douglas Adams, creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, had two earlier story ideas turned down by the series before this one was accepted.

City of Death, a 1979 Tom Baker story, was the first Doctor Who serial filmed abroad, in which city?

Paris gave the series its biggest night: the fourth episode drew over sixteen million viewers, the highest UK audience any Doctor Who episode has reached.

Tom Baker made a surprise cameo in the 2013 special The Day of the Doctor as which character?

The Curator looks after the National Gallery and is implied to be a future incarnation of the Doctor who has taken on the Fourth Doctor's form again.

Tom Baker guest-starred as the legless sea captain Redbeard Rum in which Rowan Atkinson comedy?

Blackadder II put him at sea in the episode Potato, where Rum confesses he has no idea how to reach the Cape of Good Hope.

Soon after leaving Doctor Who, Tom Baker played which famous detective in a four-part BBC serial?

Sherlock Holmes reunited him with Barry Letts, the producer who had cast him as the Doctor, for The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Tom Baker returned as the Doctor in 1993 for Dimensions in Time, a special for which charity appeal?

Children in Need got a two-part crossover with EastEnders, filmed in 3D on the soap's Albert Square set.

Which stage legend auditioned Tom Baker for the National Theatre and recommended him to Sam Spiegel?

Laurence Olivier first gave him small parts and understudy duties, then cast him as the Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice.

In The Travails of Sancho Panza, Tom Baker's early stage role, Rocinante, was what kind of creature?

A horse: Rocinante is Don Quixote's steed, and it was one of his bigger early roles, in a production directed by Joan Plowright.

Tom Baker played the sorcerer Koura in a 1973 Sinbad film with effects by which stop-motion pioneer?

Ray Harryhausen's The Golden Voyage of Sinbad changed his career: the Doctor Who producer and script editor were so impressed by his villain that they cast him.

Tom Baker's Doctor Who costume was based on posters of singer Aristide Bruant by which artist?

Toulouse-Lautrec painted his friend Bruant, a nightclub owner, in the black cloak and long red scarf that were the singer's trademark.

Tom Baker's Doctor fell from a radio telescope and regenerated at the end of which 1981 serial?

Logopolis ends with the Doctor tearing out a power cable to stop the Master, which drops him hundreds of feet to the ground.

Which campaigner's complaint about violence in Tom Baker's Doctor Who won an apology from the BBC?

Mary Whitehouse won that apology from the Director-General after The Deadly Assassin in 1976, and the series' tone was lightened under its next producer.

Tom Baker declined to appear in which 1983 anniversary special, so old Shada footage stood in?

The Five Doctors also used a Madame Tussauds waxwork of him in its publicity photos, because the producer suspected he would not turn up.

Why was Shada, a Tom Baker serial partly filmed in Cambridge in 1979, never completed?

A technicians' strike at the BBC stopped studio recording, and the gaps were finally filled in 2017 with animation voiced by the reunited cast.

Tom Baker's Doctor spent the whole 1978 season of Doctor Who hunting six segments of which artefact?

The Key to Time was a cube-shaped cosmic artefact scattered across space, an idea producer Graham Williams had pitched in his application for the job.

Louise Jameson played which warrior of the Sevateem tribe as a companion to Tom Baker's Doctor?

Leela was conceived as an Eliza Doolittle figure: a bright but unsophisticated outsider who would learn from the Doctor.

Which honour was Tom Baker awarded in the 2025 New Year Honours for services to television?

MBE: he was 90 when the honour was announced, and he wore his Fourth Doctor scarf to the investiture at Hole Park in Kent the following November.

Tom Baker played the gloomy Marsh-wiggle Puddleglum in the BBC's 1990 version of which Narnia book?

The Silver Chair came as directors who had grown up watching his Doctor began to cast him, and as his older looks eased the typecasting.

Tom Baker voiced the Bendu, a powerful Force-sensitive being, in which animated series in 2016?

Star Wars Rebels introduced the Bendu in its third season as a being at the centre of the Force, between the light side and the dark side.

Tom Baker played which board-game character in the 1992 series of the television game show Cluedo?

Professor Plum was one of two academics he took on that year: he also began a long run as Professor Hoyt in the hospital drama Medics.

Tom Baker joined which BBC drama set on a Scottish Highland estate as patriarch Donald MacDonald?

Monarch of the Glen brought him in for its sixth and seventh series, the final two, which followed a new laird trying to modernise Glenbogle.

Tom Baker toured with the RSC as the tutor Frank Bryant in which Willy Russell play?

Educating Rita pairs a young working-class hairdresser with a middle-aged lecturer who has taken on the tutoring to pay for his drink.

Tom Baker's darkly comic 1999 book, illustrated by David Roberts, is called The Boy Who Kicked what?

Pigs are the target of young Robert Caligari, and the horror comedy opens by announcing that this is the day he will die.

At Soho's Colony Room Club, Tom Baker became close friends with which painter, a founding member?

Francis Bacon walked into the private drinking club the day after it opened, and the columnist Jeffrey Bernard was another close friend made there.

Tom Baker's novel Scratchman grew from a 1970s film script he wrote with which Doctor Who co-star?

Ian Marter played the companion Harry Sullivan and wrote several Doctor Who novelisations; their film would have pitted the Doctor against the Devil.

During his national service, Tom Baker worked as an army hospital orderly in which country?

Germany was a posting he sought out of boredom after running a Royal Army Medical Corps museum, and the corps' amateur dramatics sparked his interest in acting.