Dying Is Easy. Surviving Is Hard.

Coming this week on Cadmium2…

Forthcoming Doctor Who DVDs

Infomation from the BBFC website indicates the titles of four more stories due to be released on DVD in 2009.

From the First Doctor’s era The Rescue and The Romans, both transmitted in 1965, will be released as a double set. If you’re a regular listener to the podcast you’ll have heard our verdicts on these two stories – now you’ll be able to share yours!

From the Sixth Doctor’s era we have The Twin Dilemma which was Colin Baker’s debut story, shown in 1984 and Attack of the Cybermen, first shown in 1985.

Celia Gregory

An obituary from MediaGuardian released today, following the recent passing of actress Celia Gregory, better known to cult TV fans as Ruth Anderson, from the original series of Survivors.

Celia Gregory

An accomplished and dedicated actor, she was a familiar TV face

• Cherie Lunghi and Allan Corduner, Friday September 26 2008

In the 1970s Celia Gregory, who has died aged 58, appeared on the Sunday Times list of Britain’s most promising actresses. During the ensuing 20 years, her talent and dedication carried her career from strength to strength.

She appeared on the West End stage with Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright and Frank Finlay in 1973 in Eduardo de Filippo’s Saturday, Sunday, Monday, directed by Franco Zeffirelli. In 1978 she starred opposite Paul Scofield in Ronald Harwood’s play A Family. On television, she appeared as Ruth Anderson in the 1976 BBC series Survivors and played opposite Sam Neill in Reilly: Ace of Spies in 1983.

Her copious TV work also included Hammer House of Horror, The Professionals, Bergerac, Tales of the Unexpected, Ruth Rendell Mysteries and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, with Jeremy Brett in the title role. Her films included Agatha (1979), with Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave, The Inside Man (1984), with Dennis Hopper, and Peter Greenaway’s The Baby of Mâcon (1993), her last film role.

We first met Celia when we joined the Tyneside Theatre Company, Newcastle in 1973. For us, fresh from our respective drama schools, Celia seemed the “seasoned pro”, having by then completed a season at Lancaster rep. When she walked into the room on our first day, all heads turned. Celia radiated beauty effortlessly, inside and out. Hers was a sensual beauty not unlike Ava Gardner’s, with dancing eyes, and an earthy, naughty laugh.

She was born in London but her parents divorced and her mother remarried, to a German industrialist, so she grew up in Switzerland, Germany and Holland. She learned German, French, Portuguese and Italian. As well as her two sisters, she gained three stepbrothers who had been raised in Brazil. Their love of all things Latin inspired Celia’s guitar-playing and wonderful singing.

She and her sisters were sent to boarding school at Moira House in Eastbourne, Sussex. Celia went to finishing school in Italy before training at Studio 68 drama school in London. Despite her privileged background, she loved the freedom of the actor’s life and the company of creative people. She was equally comfortable dining at the Ivy or picnicking in the rain.

She seemed to us so exotic and such a woman of the world, with innate elegance and taste. She loved the fine things in life and always dressed with great flair, half jet-set and half Gypsy. Friends had to be careful not to admire something Celia was wearing because she would take it off there and then and hand it over. Her heart was huge and her generosity was boundless, qualities that suffused her acting roles.

She was not a technical actor; her brilliance was born out of raw intelligence, understanding of people and an appetite for life. She possessed that rare quality, stage presence. During our year in Newcastle, she played Masha in The Three Sisters with insight and experience beyond her 24 years, and her Gertrude to Jack Shepherd’s Hamlet was maternal and passionate.

After marrying Keith Bender and having two children, Charles in 1984 and Peter in 1987, Celia continued to work occasionally until 1993, when she chose to devote more time to her family. Family meant everything to her. Christmas at her home followed the German tradition of being celebrated on Christmas Eve, and even if times were lean, she would lay a beautiful table with the family linen and silver, gather her loved ones around her and pamper everyone. The evening would usually end with her playing her guitar and belting out her beloved Brazilian songs.

She is survived by her sons, her sisters Leyla and Yvonne, and her brothers, Klaus, Uli and Andreas. Her marriage ended in divorce.

Jan Sargent writes … From the very first time I worked with Celia, it was her ability to transform that impressed, from the plaintive, funny, innocent and complex Jo in A Taste of Honey, to the ravishing, passionate Masha in The Three Sisters, devouring Vershinin with a glance. She was incapable of false delivery and lived every part as if it were her last.

She became my muse as a director, and when I moved to TV, whether it was the mother of a lost child in the Ruth Rendell Mysteries, a sophisticated fraudster in Perfect Scoundrels or other parts in Casualty or Juliet Bravo, she was always my first choice. Her translucent beauty, loved by the camera, her grace on stage and her husky voice remain vivid, and the generosity she lavished on her friends was, like her talent, wholehearted and uncompromising.

· Celia Christine Gregory, actor, born September 23 1949; died September 8 2008

The Writer’s Tale

Well, I got my copy of RTDs book last night. Will it change my opinions of the man and his works? We’ll have to see. After the wonderful Series 4 (‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ excluded) I’m prepared to be flexible…

Gently Does It

Okay folks, some proper audio news for a change! Starting next week on Radio4 is the second book in Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently series, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.

Harry Enfield returns to BBC Radio 4 for the second series featuring Douglas Adams’ quirky and enigmatic Holistic Detective, Dirk Gently. This time he’s pitted against a sinister team headed by the Fifth Doctor Who – Peter Davison – as Simon Draycott and Jan Ravens (Dead Ringers) as his wife Cynthia.

Dirk has fallen on hard times and when a frantic client claims he is being stalked by a goblin and a hairy, green-eyed, scythe-wielding monster, things have hit rock bottom. He is forced to desperate measures – reading palms in a tent, dressed as an old gypsy woman.

But when Detective Superintendent Gilks (Jim Carter, The Golden Compass) decides the headless body of Dirk’s client is the result of a particularly irritating suicide, Dirk is plunged into a mystery where the interconnectness of all things is tested to the limit.

Odin, Father Of The Norse Gods (Stephen Moore, Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy) signs away his powers for 24-hour nursing care under the strange Dr Standish (John Fortune, Bremner Bird & Fortune). A Nurse who treats eagle wounds (Morwenna Banks, Absolutely) without anaesthetic. Dirk’s old friend Richard Macduff (Billy Boyd, Lord Of The Rings) finds himself working for a sinister new employer. A canned drinks machine claims to be Dirk’s ex-secretary (Olivia Colman, Peep Show). And an American journalist (Laurel Lefkow, Douglas Adams’ Starship Titanic) finds herself being stalked by Thor The God Of Thunder (Rupert Degas, The Brightonomicon).

This is the second six-part series from Above the Title Productions based on the Dirk Gently novels. The executive producer is Sioned Wiliam. The producer is Jo Wheeler.

The director is Dirk Maggs, originally chosen by Douglas Adams to adapt and direct the award-winning radio conclusion to The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy.

The series begins on BBC Radio 4 at 6.30pm on Thursday 2nd October and will be released in extended form on CD and online from BBC Audiobooks in November.

Go to the official website for all the details!