Exclusive Interview with Doctor Who's John Levene!
Back to Supanova, and this time we're sitting down with John Levene, best known as Sgt. John Benton in the original run of Doctor Who. We also learned that he's a very, very funny man. Try and listen to the audio if you can, because the transcript can't capture his patter.
https://houseofgeekery.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/john-levene.mp3
G-Funk: We are the House of Geekery and we're at Perth Supanova 2017 and we're sitting with, correct me if I don't get it right, John Levene.
John Levene: That's right.
GF: We were trying to work out if we had it right before you came in.
JL: It's not my real name, that's why.
GF: No, by all means! We don't answer to anyone.
JL: Screw them all! Let's march to the beat of our own drum, eh?
GF: Absolutely! That was always a part of Doctor Who, wasn't it? By the way...John Levene was on Doctor Who!
JL: Yes, I played Sgt. John Benton from 1969 to 1974 and... (laughter from the room while John smiles broadly for the camera). To put in a nutshell...I just did my panel and I told them this...I was born literally at the start of World War II, 1941, and I had a very rough childhood so I never imagined that my life would amount to anything. You can imagine that when I left home and went to London and met this big movie star named Telly Savalas, he was making The Dirty Dozen at the time...
GF: Yes, he came into the clothing shop?
GF: Wait a minute, you played a Cyberman first?
JL: I was a Cyberman first, then I played a yeti.
GF: Was that with Patrick Troughton?
JL: Yes, it was called 'Invasion'. I'm the one in the front when they're coming down Salisbury in front of Saint Paul's Cathedral? I'm in the front on the right.
GF: That's an iconic image.
GF: So you worked with Troughton, and Pertwee and Baker as well?
JL: And Baker, I did a year with Baker. And five minutes with William Hartnell when we did 'The Three Doctors', which was my favourite story because I had such a big part in it. It's been a glorious ride all the way through, really.
GF: How could you predict that? It was unprecedented.
JL: When Pat Troughton finished, and the figures had gone down so far, I was very happy to be one of the five people who brought it back up to 18 million people. All in all looking back I still can't believe it was watched by so many people. 18 million people worldwide, every single day...
JL: Even the Queen. As you know I had dinner with the Queen of England last month.
GF: Oh! Just drop that in there!
JL: Well, he said he was the Queen of England. You can never be sure. Someone asked me if I was gay yesterday. I said "gay? I'm not even fucking happy". That's my little gay joke out of the way. Sorry. Although I do have to thank the organisers, by the way, I've got a lovely room at the hotel. Sliding doors, wall to wall carpet. I've never slept in a fucking lift before. I'd only been in the room two minutes and there's a knock at the door, it's only the fucking manager. He said "have you got a woman in there with you?" I said "no", and he threw one in. What a hotel!
GF: Ok, um...right, I'm derailed.
So the reason for the jackets is nothing to do with vanity, it's got everything to do with fans. First of all, I love being smart. I could never wear tee shirts and go on stage. But the modern thing is that you just wear a tee shirt. These (the jacket) were on sale, they were 10 quid apiece in a junk shop. When you see the photograph (mugs for the camera again), when you develop the photograph this blue comes out beautifully. That's why I wear it.
GF: It'll pop next to bland, black tee...
JL: Someone was saying...I'm 75 now...there was a newspaper article a couple of months ago in England...all the people who are over 65, do you realise what we didn't have when we were young? No VCR's, no phones, nobody could afford a telephone. Only one in 25 families could afford a car. I grew up literally, back in 1941 to 1944, with a radio with a big 12 volt battery which you had to carry up from the town. It was crippling. You had to plug it in and of course it went in and out...there were things like 'Journey Into Space' and 'Top of the Pops' back in those days. I grew up without any of this new stuff and I have not enjoyed it. I don't have a computer and I don't have a cell phone because I notice that people are utterly addicted. Nobodies talking to each other now and it's gonna go bad, isn't it? How can you not communicate?
JL: I didn't know it was a stogie until I heard...um...there's a song, a bloke who sings about stogies...
The Next Interviewer Waiting Their Turn: 'King of the Road'
JL: Yes! Thank you very much, I owe you ten dollars. Anyway, Jon's favourite joke. This tramp's going up and he sees this stogie about that long. As he picks it up and about to put it in his mouth he notices that he's standing next to a Rolls-Royce, and the bloke in it just lit this great big ten-incher up and the tramp looked at the bloke and said "you're lucky to be able to smoke these all the time! How can you afford that!" And the bloke, this is supposed to be the gag, the bloke looked up and said "well, I work for Cunard" (meaning the shipping company). The tagline is that the tramp goes "I work fucking hard and all and I don't have a Rolls-Royce and cigars". Jon let it out and it died a death. Everyone...they almost fucking hung him. What I'm saying is that no matter how great big you are you can still make a mistake. We better get to another question.
GF: That sounds fair. I'll pull out my best question, this is my favourite.
JL: Go on, I'll get serious now.
JL: I can tell you now, I've just helped an author and if any of you love Doctor Who as much as I think you do, they just produced an autobiography of the man who made me. The director Douglas Camfield. He was this huge director and he was fantastic. I do a jag where I say that when I first met him he fell all over me. I was kissing his feet the entire time. He's the one who gave me Benton, he saw how hard I worked. I was almost the lead in The Sweeney and quite a few others, and as you know I was almost James Bond when Sean Connery gave it up but I wasn't leading man material. Clint Eastwood said in one of his movies "you've got to know your limitations". Leading men are totally different to the ones who I meet who are support actors, but no, there's many roles I'd love to have played. I'd loved to have done a bit of Shakespeare, I love Shakespeare. I get his books as soon as they come out. Apart from being James Bond, I can't think of a lot. I've done everything I've ever wanted to do and I have just made a quick movie for Dreamworks. They asked me to visualise one of the characters in one of their animated movies. I've spend over 12 months and lost my health over it, but I'm back now. When you're director, producer and cameraman it's hard work. My health went down, working 18 hours a day. I want to say in closing: thank you for your wonderful interest in Doctor Who. As you said before, we never dreamt we would become a franchise as big as this but you've got to know that our hearts are with you. As Jon Pertwee said "you put us up on the screen". If we're no good when we get there you ignore our program and walk away and we don't get any more work. So you're actually the stars, I'm just an ordinary man in an extraordinary job. That's how I look at it.
GF: Thank you for everything you've done on the show, and thanks very much for a great interview.
