Meanwhile, here’s some music!

Andrew and I were and still are huge fans of the Doctor Who theme in all its forms, and we decided that we wanted to record our own version which was not unusual as we had attempted to recreate every other aspect of the show up to this point. Some versions were our own unique arrangements, along the lines of the Variations On A Theme album which was released a few years afterwards. There were varying degrees of success with these recordings, but most of them were not something we would have wanted anyone else to hear. We also attempted to create our own versions of the four television arrangements of the theme, utilising various electronic keyboards to try and recreate the original sounds as best we could. Again, it’s difficult to see now what the point of this particular exercise was, other than it being great fun at the time, but as far as I’m aware the recordings of these are long since lost. I do recall the middle eight section of the Peter Howell arrangement being particularly hilarious, as our version of the main melody instrument sounded more like a bicycle bell……

We also had countless copies of the authentic theme on numerous audio cassettes, most of which were chopped and edited, though again I have no idea why. Some of the copies had been made on an Amstrad multi-track recorder/mixer, which meant that when you played back the other side of the tape you could hear the recording backwards! It was interesting listening to the different versions of the theme the wrong way round, and I always remember the Peter Howell version sounding really good! Incidentally, this is how we discovered that the TARDIS de-materialisation sound effect was in fact the materialisation sound played backwards. How tight the BBC budget must have been back in 1963. For some bizarre reason, with our new-found backwards recording facility, we decided that we would record ourselves saying he names of all the actors that have played the Doctor backwards, and then listen to them on the tape backwards so we could hear them the right way round (this was in the days before we started drinking, I assure you). I have also recently discovered a tape from a similar vintage featuring Andrew and myself singing the different TV arrangements of the Doctor Who theme tune – myself producing the bass line and Andrew singing the melodies. As you have probably guessed, Andrew and I didn’t seem to spend much time on planet Earth during this period; I’m sure we were living on some far and distant world where there was very little oxygen…..

Years later I was playing at the Aberystwyth Jazz Festival and the pianist from one of the other bands turned out to be none other than Roger Limb. I had read somewhere that Roger had played bass guitar in various jazz bands in the late sixties, but it was a real surprise when I discovered him in deepest darkest Wales. When I finally realised who he was, I couldn’t help introducing myself (this wasn’t particularly difficult as our saxophone player was also in his band and was thus a mutual acquaintance), and I then chatted to him for at least ten minutes on the subject of Doctor Who, and particularly his score for The Caves of Androzani. He was very enthusiastic and indeed surprised that he was so fondly remembered from the series, but on the subsequent occasions that I was with him I purposely didn’t mention the subject again for fear of annoying him, even though I could have talked to him for hours about it!

I happened to have had the pleasure of playing a few gigs with Roger since then, though these were with him playing double bass rather than piano. Andrew was our resident pianist in the band by this point, and we would both become embarrassingly excited for no other reason than we were in the company of some bloke who wrote a few scores for Doctor Who twenty years ago. *Swoon*

Next Episode: A Growing Friendship and Our Lives As Doctor Who Fans