Ncuti Gatwa will take over from Jodie Whittaker as the star of Doctor Who, the BBC has announced. The twenty nine-year-old will become the fourteenth Time Lord on the BBC's popular long-running family SF drama. (Or, the fifteenth if you include John Hurt. Or the sixteenth if you include Richard Hurndall. Or, the seventeenth if you include David Bradley. Or, the eighteenth if you include Jo Martin. Et cetera, et cetera.) And, the first non-white performer to play the lead role. (Or, the second if you include Jo Martin. Which you really should.) So, not David Tennant, then? Or, Huge Grant? Or Danny Dyer for that matter (another triumph for Plymouth Live, there).
The actor, who was born in Rwanda and raised in Scotland, is best known for starring in the Netflix sitcom Sex Education. This blogger has never watched it, personally, but he has been told - by people he respects who have - that it is 'very good' and that Ncuti is 'the best thing in it.' So, that all augers well (the last Doctor whose work this blogger was, broadly, unfamiliar with was Matt Smith and he did all right!) Ncuti (it's pronounced 'Shoo-tee' this blogger has been assured) told BBC News: 'It feels really amazing. It's a true honour. This role is an institution and it's so iconic.' Speaking on the red carpet before Sunday's BAFTA TV Awards, where he has been nominated for Sex Education, Ncuit said that the role of The Doctor 'means a lot to so many people, including myself.' He added: 'I feel very grateful to have had the baton handed over and I'm going to try to do my best.' Russell Davies said that Ncuti had impressed him in a 'blazing' audition. 'It was our last audition. Our very last one,' the writer and producer said. 'We thought we had someone and then in he came and stole it. I'm properly, properly thrilled. It's going to be a blazing future.' Big Rusty, who is returning to Doctor Who after a decade doing other stuff, posted a selfie with Ncuti on the BAFTA red carpet.
The actor has been nominated for the BAFTA for best male performance in a comedy programme for the third year in a row for Sex Education. Ncuti will also present an award at Sunday's ceremony. He has already won a Scottish BAFTA and a Rose d'Or Award for Sex Education. Ncuti said that he was 'definitely going to do my own thing' with the role rather than modelling himself on any previous Doctor. In a statement, he added that the prospect of working with Big Rusty was 'a dream come true,' adding: 'His writing is dynamic, exciting, incredibly intelligent and fizzing with danger - an actor's metaphorical playground. The entire team have been so welcoming and truly give their hearts to the show. And so as much as it's daunting, I'm aware I'm joining a really supportive family. Unlike The Doctor, I may only have one heart but I am giving it all to this show.' The BBC's chief content officer Charlotte Moore said: 'Ncuti has an incredible dynamism, he's a striking and fearless young actor whose talent and energy will set the world alight and take Doctor Who on extraordinary adventures under Russell T Davies' new era.'
Ncuti moved to Scotland as a toddler when his family fled the Rwandan genocide. He attended Boroughmuir High School and Dunfermline High School and graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow with a BA in Acting in 2013. In Sex Education, he plays Eric Effiong, a young gay British-Nigerian who is best friends with Otis, the show's lead character. He has also appeared in a BBC adaptation of Iain Banks' novel Stonemouth and the 2021 film The Last Letter From Your Lover. Ncuti began acting with a brief role in the 2014 sitcom Bob Servant. In 2015, he performed in The Kneehigh Theatres production of 946, which was adapted from Michael Morpurgo's The Amazing Story Of Adolphus Tips about the rehearsals for the D-Day landing in Devon. He played Demetrius in the 2016 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Shakespeare's Globe, directed by Emma Rice. He will also appear in the upcoming mini-series Masters Of The Air. All of us at From The North wish Ncuti all the very best for the forthcoming 'having your entire world rocked to its very core' which the media and fan attention will, no doubt, bring.
From some very good news to a much sadder item. Dennis Waterman, familiar to millions for his roles in Minder, The Sweeney and New Tricks, has died, his family have said. He was seventy four. A statement said: 'We are deeply saddened to announce that our beloved Dennis passed away very peacefully in hospital in Spain.' He died on Sunday afternoon with wife Pam at his side, they added. 'The family kindly ask that our privacy is respected at this very difficult time.' Waterman found fame in his teens in the BBC children's drama William and became one of the best-known faces on British television in the 1970s when he played Sergeant George Carter opposite John Thaw in ITV's award-winning police drama The Sweeney.
He enjoyed more success in Minder from 1979 to 1989 as Terry McCann, the ex-boxer and bodyguard to George Cole's wheeler dealer Arthur Daley. Waterman went on to star in the comedies On The Up and Stay Lucky, before another popular and long-running role as another Cockney detective in New Tricks, which ran from 2003 to 2015.
Waterman was the youngest of nine children to Rose and Harry in Clapham. The family, which included siblings Ken, Peter, Stella, Norma, and Myrna, lived in Elms Road, Clapham Common. Harry Waterman was a ticket collector for British Railways. Two older sisters, Joy and Vera, had already left home by the time Dennis was born and another brother, Allen, had died as a child. Boxing was a big part of Waterman's childhood. His father had been an amateur boxer and made all of his sons box. Waterman's acting career began in childhood. His first role was in the movie Night Train For Inverness (1960). He appeared in two small stage roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1960 season. The following year, at the age of thirteen, he was cast in the role of Winthrop Paroo in The Adelphi Theatre production of The Music Man (singing 'Gary, Indiana'). A year later, he got his breakthrough on TV, starring as William Brown in the BBC adaptation of the Just William books of Richard Crompton. Waterman played the role of Oliver Twist in the production of the Lionel Bart musical Oliver! staged at The Mermaid Theatre and appeared on a cast recording released in 1961. He was a series regular in the 1962 CBS comedy Fair Exchange, playing teenager Neville Finch. In 1963 he took a starring role in the Children's Film Foundation movie Go Kart Go. Waterman was in the original cast of Saved, the play written by Edward Bond and first produced at The Royal Court Theatre in November 1965. He had a major role in the film version of Up The Junction (1967) in which he played Peter, the boyfriend of Polly (Suzy Kendall).
In the early 1970s Waterman appeared in Colditz as a young Gestapo officer. He played the brother of a victim of Count Dracula in the Hammer film Scars Of Dracula (1970) and the boyfriend of Susan George in Fright (1971). He appeared alongside Richard Harris and John Huston in a Hollywood western, Man In The Wilderness (1971). He was a member of the company of actors who featured in The Sextet (1972), a BBC2 series which included the Dennis Potter drama Follow The Yellow Brick Road and Waterman later appeared in the same dramatist's Joe's Ark (Play For Today, 1974). Both plays were directed by Alan Bridges. Also in 1974, Waterman appeared in Man About The House, in which he played a friend of Robin, a German student Franz Wasserman (an evident play on his own surname). He became well known as George Carter in The Sweeney during the 1970s. Such was the popularity of the hard-hitting police drama that he and co-star John Thaw were guests on Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise's 1976 BBC Christmas show (the favour was repaid when Eric and Ernie turned up in an episode of The Sweeney's final series in 1978).
As well as four series and the original Armchair Cinema pilot, Regan, the show also spawned two spin-off movies, Sweeney! and Sweeney 2. In addition to starring as Terry McCann in Minder, Waterman also sang the theme song, 'I Could Be So Good For You', which was a top three UK hit in 1980. It was written by Dennis's then-wife, Patricia, along with American songwriter Gerard Kenny. Waterman also recorded a song with George Cole: 'What Are We Gonna Get For 'Er Indoors?' But it was shit and it didn't chart. In 1976 Waterman released his first LP, Downwind Of Angels, arranged and produced by Brian Bennett of The Shadows.
Waterman starred in a television film made by Tyne Tees Television, The World Cup: A Captain's Tale in 1982. It was the true story of West Auckland FC, an amateur Northern League side who won the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy, sometimes described as the 'First World Cup'. Waterman played the part of Bob Jones, the club captain. It cost one-and-a-half million knicker to make of which most was funded by Waterman himself. Shooting took place in the North East and in Turin. Scenes were shot in County Durham pit villages and in Ashington where goal posts and a grandstand were erected in a public park with a colliery headframe in the background. It was one of Dennis's finest performances (although his Durham accent was a bit dodgy, admittedly). The same year, Waterman starred in the musical Windy City. A relatively short-lived production, the cast included Anton Rodgers, Diane Langton, Victor Spinetti and Amanda Redman, with whom Waterman had an eighteen-month affair during the run of the musical and with whom he later went on to star in New Tricks. He took the lead male role in the BAFTA-winning BBC adaptation of Fay Weldon's The Life & Loves Of A She-Devil (1986).
His CV also included appearances in the movies Snowball (recently shown on Talking Pictures), Crooks Anonymous, The Pirates Of Blood River, Oh! What A Lovely War, The Smashing Bird I Used To Know, My Lover My Son, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Belstone Fox,
The First Kangaroos, Vol-Au-Vent, Arthur's Dyke and Run For Your Wife. Though the least said about the latter, the better. On TV he has roles in series like The Barnstormers, Theatre 625 (the acclaimed 1965 production of Unman, Wittering & Zigo), Weavers Green, Journey To The Unknown, Paul Temple, Thirty Minute Theatre, Armchair Theatre, Thriller, Oranges & Lemons, Special Branch, Tube Mice, The Knock and Murder In Mind. He recited excerpts from the journal of Walter Thompson for the UK History series Churchill's Bodyguard and appeared on stage in Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell and as Alfred Doolittle in the 2001 London revival of My Fair Lady. He narrated the reality-format television programme Bad Lads' Army and appeared in the 2009 BBC2 mini series Moses Jones.
Waterman was caricatured by the nowhere-near-as-funny-as-he-thinks-he-is David Walliams in Little Britain, in sketches where Waterman visits his agent (played by Matt Lucas) looking for roles. The sketches feature Waterman being extremely small and getting offered, but always declining, respectable parts because he will not be allowed to 'write the theme tune [and] sing the theme tune.' This running joke was based on Waterman having previously sung the themes to at least four of the programmes in which he has starred - Minder, Stay Lucky, On the Up and New Tricks. In November 2006, showing he could be a good sport, Waterman made a guest appearance in Comic Relief Does Little Britain Live, alongside the comedy version of himself. A lifelong fan of Chelsea, Dennis's love of football was reflected in his being chosen to present Match Of The Seventies in 1995 and 1996. In 2015, his friend of many years, George Cole, died aged ninety. Waterman delivered the eulogy at Cole's funeral. Waterman was married four times: To Penny Dixon (1967 to 1976), Patricia Maynard (1977 to 1987), an actress with whom he had two daughters, one of whom, Hannah Waterman, is also an actress, Rula Lenska (1987 to 1998 having first met when she appear on Minder) and Pam Flint (from 2011). Waterman's marriage to Lenska ended, reportedly, because of his violent behaviour towards her. In March 2012 he caused controversy with some comments on this issue: 'It's not difficult for a woman to make a man hit her. She certainly wasn't a beaten wife, she was hit and that's different.' The interview was broadcast on oily twat Piers Morgan's Life Stories in May 2012. His autobiography, ReMinder - co-written with Jill Arlkon - was published in 2000.
