8:33am Monday 21st September 2009
By Emma Clayton
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, 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. There’s a lot of affection for those wobbly sets!” she smiles. “The old shows were more story-driven, but I prefer the new ones – they’re so slick. I’d love to return to Doctor Who.”
Mary is delightful; chatting 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, next week, she returns to the city, promoting her autobiography, First Generations. Tracing her life from Bradford’s Estonian community to swinging London, it’s peppered with delicious anecdotes, from playing bridge 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 in 1945. They settled in Manningham and 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. 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 dumbed-down. 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.”
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,” she says. “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 Theatre, now the Playhouse. “It was a fantastic, semi-professional theatre. I was there the day Kennedy was assassinated. We stopped rehearsals,” 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, in which she starred 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.”
Here’s hoping that Mary’s Tardis makes its way back to Walford, via Bradford...
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