Doctor Who: Lost Autographs…Found!

A little while ago I wrote about one of my biggest regrets, when it comes to encountering Doctor Who actors at conventions.  This involved the day that I met William Russell, who played Ian Chesterton for the first two years of the series. 

(Daily Doctor Who # 138)

Ian is one of my favorite companions and so I was pretty excited to meet the actor behind him.  Unfortunately, for a blend of vaguely-remembered reasons that have something to do with long lines and conflicting schedules, my friend Matt and I missed the opportunity to get William Russell’s autograph.  So we boldly decided to sneak in an autograph request while we were getting our photographs taken with him and Carole Ann Ford, at the Visions ’93 convention in Chicago.

That could have been my big regret, because I’m sure that was a little bit annoying to the actor, but both he and Carole Ann Ford graciously agreed.

No, my regret was that instead of asking him to sign a photograph, or my autograph book, I asked him to sign my copy of Doctor Who: The Early Years, which contained a photo of him.

I regret it because later I decided to not keep the book, and so I pulled the page his signed out of the book and stored it.  Annoyingly, it was a page opposite a photo,  rather than one including a photo.  So it looked kind of random.

More annoyingly, I then went and lost that page.  Or rather, when I recently went to write the post about meeting the two original cast members, I realized that I hadn’t stored them with all my other autographs.

Well, the good news that I can share is that recently I found that autograph again!

In a fit of re-organization completely unrelated to anything else, I was moving this book from one shelf to another…

Yes, a big coffee table book about DC Comics from the mid-1990’s, which against all odds I have kept and taken to Australia with me. 

And tucked inside that book, I found my autograph of William Russell!

As you can see, it’s not very exciting looking, appearing on a relatively random page of text, next to a picture of a Dalek (maybe we could say this is from that bit where Ian is hiding inside the Dalek casing).

It turns out that we also got Carole Ann Ford’s autograph at that time.  She actually did sign on a page with pictures of the actors, which is probably what I was hoping Mr. Russell would do.

This is nice, but not as exciting for me since I already had a signed picture of her from another event, several years earlier.

Anyway, all that to say that what was once lost has now been found, and given a new and more sensible home in my folder of other autographed pictures, where hopefully they will be happy and have someone to talk to.