No Ordinary Joe

 Simon Stabler speaks to Emmerdale and Doctor Who star Frazer Hines

- Simon Stabler

Although best known for playing Doctor Who companion Jamie McCrimmon in the late 1960s, and Emmerdale's A Joe Sugden from 1972-94, Frazer Hines has been entertaining audiences since the early 50s.

"We were living in Harrogate and I used to go to the Marjorie Newbury School of Dancing" recalls the Horsforthborn actor. "I was seven years old and I had to do an impression of Maurice Chevalier singing Louise. We weren't a rich family, so my mother got this potato sacking, made a suit and dyed it white. I can't stand anything itchy on my knees, I could never have been in the army, so when I got to the tap dance, my legs were a little stiff.

"The local newspaper said: 'Seven-year-old stops show. He even had the Maurice Chevalier Walk?

"Somebody at Corona Stage School, how they saw it, I don't know, rang my mother and said: 'We'd like Frazer to join us? My mother said: 'He's too young, we'll wait until he's 10? And when I was 10 years old, my mother rang Corona, spoke to the principal Rona Knight, a lovely lady, and I went to Corona.

"I always say that it was a very good year to be there, because there was Richard O'Sullivan, Dennis Waterman, Susan George, Jeremy Bulloch and Francesca Annis.

"Corona was good because you got the three Rs in the morning, and then in the afternoon, whatever house you were in you got play reading, ballet and tap, we learnt everything. The teachers were all excellent, although all of us boys hated ballet"

Shortly after joining Corona, Frazer appeared in his first film, as an extra in the crowd in John & Julie, a comedy set in the week leading up to the Queen's coronation, which was recently shown on Talking Pictures TV as part of the channel's platinum jubilee celebrations.

"I was the 480th citizen," he jokes, "in fact, I recorded it to freeze-frame to try and spot my school cap."