An Evening with Katy Manning

This week I was able to take my Doctor Who fandom on another trip around the country with tickets for a show in Liverpool’s St George’s Hall entitled “An Evening With Katy Manning”. As might be expected this featured the actress Katy Manning who played Jo Grant in the series alongside Jon Pertwee in the early 1970s. She was actually the Doctor’s assistant when I first watched the show so I was quite looking forward to the night and it turns out that she is quite the raconteur.

In true Jo Grant style she managed to make the entrance from the wrong door and proceeded to greet the waiting audience. As I was sitting at the end of the row, I received a rather big hug from her which I have to say was a rather nice surprise. I’ve seen quite a few shows over the years and I can safely say that I have never received a cuddle from the artist in question, although as I have previously seen one-man shows from the likes of Frankie Boyle and Jerry Sadowitz this is probably no bad thing. One of my friends suggested that I would never wash that shirt again although I can safely say that, as I later spilt beer on it, it is currently residing in the washing basket.

The format of the evening consisted of Katy telling a series of anecdotes from her life going back to her time in school hanging out with classmate Liza Minelli and also about her father, sports writer JL Manning who brought attention to the perils of doping in sport as far back as 1967 following the death of a rider in the Tour de France. Naturally, many of the anecdotes were about her time on Doctor Who but also related to her extreme myopia which lead both to comic accidents on set and also an incident on stage when she spent a scene talking to a standard lamp having mistaken it for her lead actor.

After meeting with fans during the interval the second part of the show consisted of questions from the audience as well as clips from her career, including her first TV appearance on “Softly, Softly”; a clip from an arts and crafts programme which she presented whilst trying to look enthusiastic about onion printing; and also a rather harrowing performance as a drug addict on the police drama series “Target” which demonstrates her real dramatic range and must be about as far removed from the ditzy Jo as one could imagine.

Overall, it was a highly enjoyable night in a stunning environment (Liverpool’s St George’s Hall is an architecturally astonishing building). I’ve seen a few similar shows to this, often at the Edinburgh festival, and I hope that Katy Manning considers this sort of thing again. She has both a warm and funny personality and her anecdotes are comic and engaging. And giving audience members a hug is always a bonus!