In celebration of Doctor Who’s looming 60th Anniversary (on 23rd November, of course) I thought I’d post one of my favourite Professor Stanley Unwin quotes.
Who? (no pun intended)
Professor Stanley Unwin (not a real Professor I hasten to add, his picture graces this post) was a British comic actor and writer from the 1940’s up to the late 1990’s. He invented his own comic language (called Unwinese) which he used to great comic effect throughout his 50 year career in the UK.
You can read more about him on the Wikipedia
Deep Joy
I am indeed a fan of the late Professor Unwin’s work. Unwinese always made me (and still does make me) laugh just out of the sheer silliness of it. Although Stanley worked predominantly for the BBC for most of his working life, he did appear regularly in guest spots on TV programmes and voiced his (Unwinese) opinion on myriad things from Elvis Presley to the budget of the day.
For me, I first stumbled upon him in the Gerry Anderson created series: Secret Service, which ran for 14 episodes in 1969. Based on the Joe 90 puppets used in 1968, the series was about the adventures of an elderly vicar and his gardener, secret agents for B.I.S.H.O.P, who combat criminals and terrorists from overseas in the year 1969.
The elderly vicar (Father Unwin) was of course Stanley. I was about 6 or 7 years old when this first aired, I loved it and used to squeal with delight when Father Unwin used his “gobbledegook speak” (Unwinese) to escape a tricky situation. From there, my love of Professor Stanley Unwin began.
What’s that got to do with Doctor Who?
Stanley recorded many little bits and pieces, where he would voice Unwinese opinions on various things (Rotatey Diskers with Unwin, for example) and appeared as a guest on various shows in the UK (some are available on YouTube).
One of his brief audio clips must have been his answer to the question “What do you think of Doctor Who?” (I’m guessing). Unfortunately, I have no idea of the origin of the interview, where it was from and in what context, I just have an mp3 of Stanley’s answer (and yes, I’ve looked extensively!). Given that he name drops The Second Doctor, it must have been post The Tenth Planet, which dates it from 1966 on.
Happy 60th Anniversary, Doctor Who
So here it is – transcribed by me from the audio (which took a while!) Professor Stanley Unwin on Doctor Who:
Well I think it was the uh, uhhh, I don’t like messing about people’s names, there was a chap called Patrick Troughton, oh good Troughty-troughty-ho, he was a great fundermoldner in that Police Box. [cluck cluck] on the dorm and entrymode and then [fff] suddenly, well, where the visuold does an evanescent thrucus fadeo, n fff uptup the nearest bloody thorkus. That was a good one.
Naaaaaa-diddly-daaaa oh that thundermolder music, they gather up the imaginakers and get the brainbok all rotatey-rotatey and suddenly, because of the entrancymus you got almost building the cathode ray tube from the telephoto visibold. Oh a real suffery, I’ll tell ya. Especially extra, extra-terrestrial thorkus that we all have to suffer from, from time to time.
Oh yes.
“Professor” Stanley Unwin, sometime after 1966