Born on this date in 1919: Jon Pertwee, actor best known for playing Doctor Who, the third incarnation of the Doctor from 1970 to 1974, and as the title character in the series Worzel Gummidge.
His surname is an Anglicisation of "Perthuis", "de Perthuis de Laillevault", a family of counts descended from Charlemange. Pertwee himself was born in Chelsea.
One of his childhood friends was Christopher Robin Milne.
He got expelled from several schools, once for swinging from lavatory chains, pretending to be Tarzan. He was expelled from RADA as well, although accounts differ as to the reason. Some say he wrote rude words on the toilet walls; others say it was because he refused to play a Greek wind in a play.
He was a top class scuba diver and water skier and loved fast cars and motorbikes. His love of bikes was lifelong. As a schoolboy he worked as a circus performer riding the wall of death on a motorcycle with a toothless Lion in the sidecar; and he was still riding his last bike, a Honda VT500E, at the age of 74.
He served in the Navy and British Intelligence. During his time in the Navy, he got drunk one night and got a tattoo of a cobra on his arm, and narrowly missed being a casualty on HMS Hood, sunk by the Bismark. He’d transferred off the Hood days earlier for officer training. He went on to serve in the top secret Naval Intelligence Division, reporting directly to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. One of his colleagues there was future James Bond author Ian Fleming, giving rise to rumours that he was one of the people used as inspiration for Bond.
He and his brother Michael were founder members of The Waistcoat Club, set up in 1953 as a protest against the drabness of male attire. Pertwee collected waistcoats and had a huge collection, some of which were 300 years old. Peter Cushing was also a member.
Although most famous for playing Doctor Who, his favourite role was that of Worzel Gummidge. As Worzel, he had a hit record in 1980 with Worzel's Song, and specified in his will that he wanted to be cremated with an effigy of Worzel attached to his coffin. That didn’t go entirely to plan as the effigy fell off the coffin as the curtains closed. "That's Jon for you. Always playing it for laughs", opined one of the mourners present.
His favourite Doctor Who episode was The Dæmons: Episode One (1971) and his favourite aliens were the Draconians from the 1973 story Frontier in Space. His favourite song was Georgia on My Mind by Ray Charles. His favourite animated film was Aladdin, and he would have arguments with his friend Spike Milligan over which of them was the biggest Aladdin fan.
Pertwee was considered for the role of Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army and also that of Alfred Pennyworth in a Batman adaptation starring Harrison Ford that Stephen Spielberg almost made. His son Sean would play the role of Alfred in Gotham in 2014.
He wrote two autobiographies: Moon Boots and Dinner Suits in 1984 and I Am The Doctor in 1996.
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