There are guests who arrive at the Tony Slattery's Rambling Club shed expecting a conventional interview. And then there is Mark Strickson.
As Executive Producer of the Club from Day One, Mark knows rather more about what happens inside the Presidential Garden Shed than most. So perhaps we'd better all be on our best behaviour as this week's President takes us on one of our regular rambles into the great outdoors.
Mark is, of course, best known to many as Vislor Turlough, companion to Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor. But that is only the beginning of the story. Since leaving the TARDIS, Mark has forged an extraordinary second career as a television producer and director, particularly in the world of wildlife and natural history. His work has taken him around the world and included the programme that helped bring Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, to international attention.
And so, with Tony's magic bingo machine having selected our destinations, we set off.
First stop is 378: Higher Education. How did education shape the man who would eventually move from acting into zoology and then into the world of international television production? Mark's own journey is rather remarkable: after leaving Doctor Who, he moved to Australia, taught Theatre Studies and studied for an honours degree in Zoology. Somewhere along the way, one career became another.
But what exactly does Mark make of education, and where might this particular ramble lead us? As ever, the number is only the starting point.
Then we're heading for 804: Literature and Rhetoric, an especially appropriate destination for someone born in Stratford-upon-Avon. Mark attended King Edward VI Grammar School in his home town, the same school traditionally associated with Shakespeare, and was a chorister at Holy Trinity Church, where his father was organist and choirmaster.
So Shakespeare is inevitably somewhere on the horizon.
But once the Rambling Club starts walking, there's no guarantee where it will end up. What does the Bard mean to someone who grew up surrounded by Shakespeare's legacy? And what happens when an actor's relationship with words and storytelling develops into a career spent telling very different kinds of stories?
Finally, the bingo machine gives us 577: The General Nature of Life.
And here, perhaps inevitably, we arrive at the world that has dominated so much of Mark's later career: wildlife, natural history and the extraordinary business of making television about the living world.
Mark has produced and directed programmes for major international broadcasters including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Discovery and Animal Planet. His work has taken him from the world of acting into some very different and occasionally dangerous environments.
Eventually, after our journey through the great outdoors, Tony's magic bingo machine does what Tony's magic bingo machine does best and transports us back to the Presidential Garden Shed.
The walking stops.
The rambling doesn't.
And perhaps, given that Mark has been helping to steer this particular ship since the very beginning, we should be grateful that he hasn't yet revealed everything he knows about us.
Presented by Paul Carmichael & Allan Lear
Music composed and performed by Michael Livesley & Andy Frizell
The voice of Pwfthhh- Michael Livesley
www.michaellivesley.com
Series Producers- Erica Lear and Mark Hutchinson
Producers- Alan Dyebing & Stuart Morris
Executive Producer- Mark Strickson
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