One of the sadder duties of working at The Stage is occasionally having to report on the death of an actor whose work you have loved. But when it’s someone who evidently was adored, not just as a character, but as a person by just about everybody who ever met them, the loss can be immeasurable.
If we devoted as much space to the recently departed, their legacy and a commemoration of the lives they touched as those people deserved, we wouldn’t have the time or space to devote to anything else. So I think it’s only right that we should commend another publication for producing a marvellous tribute to a man who, as actor, Equity councillor, husband, drinking partner or friend, has left a profound hole in the acting profession by leaving us: Nicholas Courtney.
This month’s Doctor Who Magazine devotes most of its 100 pages to remembering the man whose portrayal of Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart came to define him in the eyes of the public, and who ensured him a fanbase that would continue to adore him offscreen as well as on. But it also shows that there was far more to Nicholas Courtney than just a uniform, a stuck-on moustache and a line in dry wit.
In the magazine, which hit the newsstands earlier this week, Marcus Hearn writes a nine-page potted biography of Courtney’s personal and professional life, which shows that while his role in Doctor Who came to be a core part of both, there was much more to him. That is backed up by pages of actors, directors and producers sharing their personal reminiscences of meeting, working and socialising with him. Benjamin Cook has also conducted a hugely moving interview with Tom Baker, who is still clearly shaken by losing a tremendous friend.
Some of the magazine’s regular features also pay tribute. A season-by-season look at the show’s development from 1963 onwards has serendipitously reached 1970-1, the season in which Courtney’s Brigadier became a Doctor Who regular, and another regular feature which looks at an individual story in depth focusses on a serial from that same year, Inferno, which was one of the actor’s personal favourites.
The highlight for me, though, is a personal tribute from actor Nicholas Pegg. Intermingling a narrative from Courtney’s funeral with reminiscences of Pegg’s first meeting and subsequent friendship with the man, it also shines a light on Nicholas Courtney’s lifelong love of Shakespeare, and his particular love of the advice Polonius imparts to his son Laertes in Hamlet.
While in the play, Polonius proves himself to not live up to the idealism he espouses, it’s clear that Nick Courtney placed great stock in those ideals, did his best to live by them, and encouraged others to do so too. Says Pegg:
Another sign of a really good actor is generosity, and I’m not talking now about buying the drinks. I’m talking about an actor’s attitude to his colleagues. Let’s not beat about the bush: you know as well as I do that acting is a profession famously riddled with insecurity, rivalry, hierarchy, jealousy, hubris and ego. But not all actors behave like that — and those who do tend not to have particularly long careers. There’s another, more widespread side to the profession that doesn’t get quite as much coverage: the side that’s full of kindness, supportiveness, humility and respect. Nick was that sort of an actor.
Nicholas Courtney was not a man I ever met, but thanks to Doctor Who Magazine and its team of writers and researchers led by editor Tom Spilsbury, one gets a small portion of the love and affection he bestowed upon those who met him. It also demonstrates how the generosity and kindness that made him the man he is can be an inspiration to others in the entertainment industry.
If we go to bed each night content that, that day, we have lived our lives a little bit more as Nicholas Courtney lived his, it will have been a good day.
He was a man. Take him for all in all:
I shall not look upon his like again.
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