10 Secrets We Learned From Doctor Who Season 17 Boxed Set
1. Tom's Given Up Drinking
Interviewed as he left the role in 1981, Tom Baker referred to himself as "an enthusiastic drinker". Indeed, if you read his A Day in the Life interview from that time, or indeed his autobiography, it is a litany of boozy anecdotes and nights spent in the Coach and Horses pub in Soho or the Colony Club, sleeping it off under railway arches or on the floor of a BBC rehearsal room.
Discussing the place that alcohol continued to have in his life in the Tom Talks interview, Baker mentions that after gradually reducing his intake over the decades, he has finally given up. It was a decision that he made three or four years ago, in the interests of his own health.
Rather movingly, he talks of being truly happy and no longer needing the alcohol. There's something uplifting about the way Tom, a man who bought his own gravestone years ago and has been talking of death constantly for decades, is in his mid-to-late 80s and at peace in blissful happiness. There's the feeling of spending time with a kindly old uncle who regales you with tall tales of a life well lived. "It's good to be alive," signs off Tom, and let's hope he's around for a while yet.