Who on Earth Is Tom Baker?

 "My mother beat me up many times, of course. Things were different in those days, before penicillin."

I last saw this in the '90s at some point, as a teenager. I enjoyed it, certainly, but was looking at it very much through the prism of Doctor Who fandom... which is, of course, a wonderful thing and a big part of my life. And yet... one should see Doctor Who, like everything, in its social and cultural context, and see Tom Baker for who he is: an actor... and a human being. All of which is to say that I thoroughly enyoyed this the second time round.

This is, of course, a thing of joy. Far more than the Dickens and the graveyards and that anecdote about the taxi driver, this is a fascinating look into the mind of a thoughtful, philosophical, cultured and highly intelligent man whose upbringing in such poverty and ignorance gives him a certain understated wisdom and eloquent, hinting at deeper things while deliberately refraining from forthright statements. This is a man who loves ambiguity, to be playful with ideas, who is wary of those wity too much certainty.

His musings on his upbringing, the interlude asa monk, the omnipresence of God, the quality of the bottle of red with which the video ends, the inferiority of sunsets to Turner...one can understand why this man was considered, in his heyday, to be the sort of with who would regularly spar verbally with the likes of Jeffrey Barnard and Francis Bacon after a pint or twelve.

If you can track this down- and there is, ahem, a very obvious place- and you're a fan of Tom, see if you can watch this. It's a thing of wonder.

Alas, it also shows the passage of time. Tom is ninety now. In this he's a fit man in his fifties, and surely 1991 can't be all that long ago...