Roger Delgado - Biography
Friday, 22 December 2017 - Reported by Marcus
Fantom Publishing has announced it is to publish I Am Usually Referred To As The Master, the first-ever biography of Roger Delgado, best known to millions as the original Master in Doctor Who. Before joining Doctor Who, Delgado was a hugely in-demand character actor, appearing in shows such as The Saint, The Avengers and Quatermass II amongst many others, and making an appearance in the Hammer Horror film franchise. He died aged only 55, but left a legacy of work for fans to continue enjoying.
Author Marcus K Harmes explains
I think he was long overdue a biography. March 2018 will be the centenary of his birth and it is time for his full life story to be told. It has been 45 years since his death and it is important to have got on record the views of his contemporaries. What attracted me at first was the brilliance of his performance as the Master, then as I saw more and more of his early career it was the breath-taking range of his acting, and then when talking to people who knew him, it was the warmth and attractiveness of his personality.
Notoriously private, very little has been written about Delgado’s life over the years, and Harmes has researched extensively to look into his home life and formative years. I’ve been able to access a wealth of previously unseen records which shed a lot of light on Delgado’s life before Doctor Who. From the Ministry of Defence I obtained his complete war record (the legendary and very detailed form B199A), the school he attended is still going strong and gave me materials from the 1930s about his education, the London School of Economics provided me with his student file. While we might know a lot about Doctor Who, there were decades before then that I had to reconstruct from paper trails in archives all over the place.
With previously unseen photographic material, and brand new interviews with his colleagues and friends, I Am Usually Referred To As The Master, is a warm and affection look at the life of a much-loved star. I was privileged to speak to many people who knew Delgado and very quickly a theme emerged: there is just not a single bad word to say about him. But what struck me was that no one was talking about him using platitudes, it was just over 40 years later people still have such vivid memories of him as the most charming, intelligent and decent man they knew.
Roger Delgado’s biography is now available in Hardback priced £19.99 exclusively from Fantom Publishing until it’s trade publication in 2018. 
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