I had that wonderful line [in Genesis of the Daleks, 1975], ‘Have I the right?’ I was about to connect those wires and destroy all the Daleks. David Maloney [the director] joked, ‘Don’t connect those wires, Tom, or Terry Nation [the writer who created the Daleks] will sue us!’

John [Nathan-Turner] had waited a long time to be producer, and suddenly he had the power, and he wanted to make his mark on it. We had some ferocious disagreements about scripts and scenes. Management would say, ‘But Tom is the star of the show, and we’ve got ten million viewers,’ and John would say, ‘Yeah, but I’m the f***ing producer!’

I never thought of the role as a commercial product, because I was… well, I was playing this slightly messianic alien. He isn’t violent, he doesn’t get his leg over the girl, he doesn’t steal, and he’s rather wry, and adorable, and mysterious. He’s lived for 900 years or something. He lives the life of the old patriarchs of the Old Testament. That’s not commercial. He’s special.

She adored me. She found me funny. I loved her. She used to say, ‘Listen to Tom. Tom will know how to do this,’ which filled me with confidence – because, underneath that sweetness, Lis is deadly precise. But she didn’t stay long. She got out while the going was good.