INTERVIEW BY MARK WRIGHT
“I’m just a jobbing actor”, says John Leeson modestly. “K9 turned up and was the most surprising job I ever had in my life!” During two separate stints between 1977-79 and 1980-81, John Leeson gave voice to Doctor Who’s best-loved robot – the Fourth Doctor’s mobile computer, K9. “A crisp, self-righteous smartarse”, laughs John when describing a role he has been associated with for 40 years.
As an experienced TV actor in the mid-1970s, with roles in Dad’s Army and 50 episodes of Rainbow under his belt (playing the original Bungle), how did John come to be cast as the voice of a TV icon? “It was all down to Derrick Goodwin, a director I’d worked with in rep theatre”, he recalls. “He was a good friend, and I met him entirely by accident in the pub at the bottom of the road I live on in London. I happened to be in there one evening, and lo and behold, Derrick Goodwin was there! It turned out he was directing an episode of Z Cars for the BBC and he’d come in when he’d finished. He asked me if I was working, and I replied, ‘Well no, there isn’t a lot going on…’ Derrick said, ‘Stand by your phone and we’ll see.’
“A couple of weeks later, my agent phoned and said, ‘John, I’ve just had the most remarkable call from the BBC. They want to know whether you’d like to play not just one but two parts in Doctor Who! One is the voice of a virus and the other is the voice of a robot dog. What do you think?’ So I thought, ‘Well yes, okay, let’s go and see the producer, Graham Williams, and see what happens.”