BARNABY EATON-JONES meets GRAEME GARDEN, RUFUS HOUND and GEMMA WHELAN – three actors continuing a long tradition of time-travelling mischief.

Stretching back nearly 60 years now, another Time Lord, in addition to the Doctor, has graced both the BBC television series and numerous Big Finish audio dramas. A Time Lord with a nose for comedy.

It was in The Time Meddler, in July 1965, that another of the Doctor’s kind first appeared. Even more impish than the Doctor, the so-called Monk had a naughty habit of tampering with history whenever he could. In this story and The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965-66), the Doctor’s whimsical adversary was played by Peter Butterworth, a brilliant comic actor who would become well-known for his regular appearances in the Carry On films. Then, when Big Finish brought the character back, the Monk regenerated into Graeme Garden – another brilliant comic actor (and writer), probably best known as one of the three leads in the hugely popular comedy series The Goodies.

Graeme Garden in The Goodies (1970-82).

The Goodies appeared on the cover of the Radio Times in 1975

Graeme first played the Monk in the Eighth Doctor audio adventure The Book of Kells (Big Finish, 2010).

Garden was just 20 when Doctor Who first went out in 1963. “I was a medical student and I didn’t have much access to television,” he says, “so I missed quite a lot of the early episodes. But I’d cut my sci-fi teeth at the age of ten with The Quatermass Experiment [1953], which terrified me. So the Doctor and the Daleks didn’t disturb me unduly. I don’t recall watching Peter Butterworth as the Monk, though I may have seen the odd episode he featured in. However, I’ve watched clips on video and it’s easy to see why he appealed to the fans.”

Nicholas Briggs, creative director of Big Finish, was at the helm when the Meddling Monk was revived in 2010. “I was probably too young to be watching when the Monk first appeared in Doctor Who,” he says. “But I do remember catching up with him on fuzzy VHS. I think my first impression was that he was a brilliantly funny Master. A ‘what if the Second Doctor were naughty?’ scenario – and Peter Butterworth’s performance was priceless.”

The Monk’s Big Finish reappearance, in a story called The Book of Kells, starred Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor. Alan Barnes was overall script editor and Barnaby Edwards was directing, writing and, alongside Nicholas Briggs, producing.