The mention of her name sends Doctor Who fans into a dreamy trance. Bradford-born actress Mary Tamm’s four-decade career spans some of the nation’s most popular TV dramas, and films including Nazi thriller The Odessa File.

Last year she appeared in EastEnders as Charlie Slater’s mysterious Russian companion.

But she’ll always have a place in the hearts of Doctor Who fans thanks to her role as Romana, ‘Time Lady’ assistant to Tom Baker in the 1970s. Mary meets fans at conventions around the world. “As well as older fans we get kids coming along who watch the earlier shows on DVD. Many of them seem to prefer them, they were more story-driven. And there’s a lot of affection for those wobbly sets!” she smiles. “I prefer the new ones, they’re so slick. I’d love to return to Doctor Who.”

Mary chats about everything from partying in the fast lane with Richard Burton and Tony Curtis to her love of libraries. “People can’t believe I use libraries, but I’ve loved them since I borrowed my first book at Lilycroft Juniors,” she says.

She speaks fondly of her childhood in Bradford and she recently returned to the city, promoting her autobiography, First Generations. Among those queuing at her book-signing was an old school friend, Helen Porter, of Wrose. “I went to school with her at Lilycroft Primary and her dad worked at Lister’s Mill when my dad worked there. I hadn’t seen her since we were 11, but I have followed her career,” says Helen. “I brought a school photo for her to look at. I remember she could draw anything, but horses were her real passion. she used to draw them all the time.”

Tracing her life from growing up in an Eastern European family in Bradford to working the Swinging London scene as a 1970s film star, Mary’s autobiography is peppered with delicious anecdotes, from playing bridge – a game she learned at Bradford’s Estonian Club – with Doris Speed on the Coronation Street set to the time her art student sister brought David Hockney home for tea. “He’d dyed his hair tartan, my mother didn’t know what to make of him,” recalls Mary. “He sketched her. After he left she said it was “bloody rubbish” and tried to light the fire with it!”

Mary’s parents came to Bradford from Estonia as refugees in 1945. They settled in Manningham and family life was based around the Estonian Club.

“Men reminisced about the old times, the women gathered in the kitchen making piroshki (Russian cakes) and we children played in the grounds,” Mary recalls. “There was music, dancing, lively discussion, drinking. My mother conducted the choir, its sublime harmonies expressing the pain and frustration of a small people suffering injustices over centuries.”Mary’s family fell victim to Stalin’s brutal regime in Eastern Europe. “My father lost four brothers to Stalin’s Gulags. The fifth returned emaciated and mute, dying from tuberculosis. Like many refugees, my father left his country, never to see his family again,” she says. “He worked in Lister’s Mill, toiling long hours among mathematicians, surgeons, scientists – the finest brains in Estonia – packing wool.”

Mary’s parents carried a sadness at leaving their homeland. “They spoke incessantly of ‘the old country’; the countryside, music, literature,” she says. In later years she made an emotional journey to Estonia. “I didn’t feel Estonian but felt I owed it to my ancestors to go back. I kept diaries during my visit which I used for this book,” she says. “When I’m overseas the place I miss is Yorkshire. That’s where I’m rooted.”

Mary won a scholarship to Bradford Girls’ Grammar School. “I had the best education,” she says. “I was a bit of a bluestocking, my friends and I did the Times crossword before lessons. I had such an appetite for learning, I went home with six hours of homework and loved it.

“We had a broad spectrum of subjects, so different from the schoolwork my daughter was given, which I despaired of. Everything is so dumbed-down these days. I can’t believe all these kids getting five A-star A-levels; it used to be unheard of to take so many because they each required a lot of study. It wasn’t all on a computer.”

On Saturdays she went to Estonian school, albeit reluctantly. “We were taught the language we already spoke fluently at home, I couldn’t see the point,” she says.

Her book is a snapshot of life in an industrial city in post-war northern England. Frequent fog is a particular memory. “The natural elements combined with the polluted air to produce a thick miasma which we referred to as ‘killer smog’. It was thick, smelly, nasty and dangerous. People would rush out to the chemist to buy special masks, smeared with unctuous, pungent salve, and wear them until the threatening cloud had cleared, which sometimes took two or three days. I loved these times. Walking home from school became a new, exciting experience; you literally could not see a hand in front of your face and no sound was heard, except the muffled screams of the giant oblong snails that were the trolley buses, their horns attached to overhead wires that guided them, headlamps glowing eerily through the smog.”

Mary’s mother, a Russian-born opera singer who taught singing in Bradford, introduced her to the theatre. “She was a culture vulture and took us to the opera, ballet and plays,” says Mary. “She wanted me to be a classical pianist. I had other ideas. I remember playing with a little girl in the street ‘out back’, when I was six. She said she was going to be an actress and I decided I wanted to be one too!”

Aged 11, Mary joined Bradford Civic, now the Playhouse. “It was a fantastic, semi-professional theatre. I was there the day Kennedy was assassinated, we stopped rehearsals when we heard the news,” she says. “I went back a few years ago for a fundraiser when it was facing closure.”

She later joined a theatre company with Bradford actors Duncan Preston, Edward Peel and Polly Hemingway. “I learned a great deal those Wednesday evenings, gathering in a dingy room above a shop on Toller Lane. We produced plays at Bradford University. Bradford was a great place to be in the Swinging Sixties; I went to clubs like the Mecca on Manningham Lane, grooving to the Moody Blues, Kinks and Small Faces.”

In 1968 Mary left Bradford for RADA. “London was overwhelming,” she says. “It was an exciting time, but acting was so much about diction. I found it difficult to lose my accent. Now, if I go for northern roles, nobody believes I’m a genuine northerner!”

Mary’s break came with 1974 film The Odsessa File, starring opposite Jon Voight. “I never wanted a film career, I was more into theatre, but it was the way things turned out. I’ve done more film and TV than anything,” she says.

She played Hilda Ogden’s daughter-in-law in Coronation Street and in the 1990s she was Penny Crosbie in Brookside. “Soap is incredibly hard work; you’re learning 12 episodes a time. It was good training for EastEnders. I was nervous joining such a big show but everyone was so welcoming. They cast me because my mother was Russian, it was only a short run but I’m hoping to return.”