William Hartnell | Patrick Troughton | Jon Pertwee | Tom Baker | Peter Davison | Colin Baker | Sylvester McCoy | Paul McGann | Christopher Eccleston | David Tennant

Sylvester McCoy
1987 - 1989

McCoy was born James Kent-Smith in Dunoon, Scotland in 1943. His father had been killed in the war a couple of months before he was born and his mother suffered from mental health problems and he was brought up by his grandmother and aunts. He went to Blair College and trained as a priest between the ages twelve and sixteen. He applied to join a Dominican order as a monk but was turned down because he was too young. He then went to Dunoon grammar school where he met several female pupils and soon gave up the idea of becoming a monk. When he finished grammar school, he moved to London and worked with an insurance company until age twenty-seven when he decided it wasn't for him. The pop music and theatre was booming by this time and he decided that this was for him. He managed to obtain a job selling tickets and keeping box office records at London's Roundhouse Theatre where he met director Ken Campbell and agree to join The Ken Campbell Roadshow. It was Campbell who devised the name Sylveste McCoy for a stuntman character in a show that they were preforming. Later he decided to keep the name when a critic misunderstood it to be his real name. After several years the name finally evolved to Sylvester McCoy. McCoy's stunts in Campbell's show soon gave great success in the roadshow and soon were touring all over Europe. It gave McCoy the opportunity to break into theatre. Soon he found himself invited into musicals and plays. It was while he was starring at the National Theatre in the The Pied Piper, a play written specically for him that he heard that BBC were looking for a new lead actor to replace Colin Baker in Doctor Who. He had applied for the position before when Peter Davison had the role and discovered Baker had already gotten the role. McCoy telephoned John Nathan-Turner to put himself forward at once for the role and by strange coincidence, BBC producer, Clive Doig, who had worked with McCoy, also telephoned Nathan-Turner to suggest that McCoy would make a good Doctor. Nathan-Turner was intrigued and went to see McCoy in the The Pied Piper in January 1987. Nathan-Turner was impressed and offered McCoy the role of the seventh Doctor. Companions: Bonnie Langford, Sophie Aldred Season 24 Time and the Rani Paradise Towers Delta and the Bannermen Dragonfire Season 25 Remembrance of the Daleks The Happiness Patrol Silver Nemesis The Greatest Show In the Galaxy Season 26 Battlefield Ghost Light The Curse of Fenric Survival

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Updated 10/13/07