Katy Manning

Catherine "Katy" Ann Manning^[1] (born on 14 October 1946^[2]^[3] in Guildford, Surrey, England) played companion Jo Grant in Doctor Who beginning with Terror of the Autons and ending with The Green Death. She has also provided the voice and likeness for Iris Wildthyme in several of the Big Finish Productions audio dramas, and she has made many theatre appearances.

Manning is famously short-sighted. A story regarding Manning's short-sightedness is often related about Terror of the Autons, her first Doctor Who story. Manning had not informed anyone of her limited vision, and the script called for her and Jon Pertwee to run across a field. Manning ran straight into a tree, and knocked herself unconscious. From then on, whenever a story called for the Doctor and Jo to run across quarries or down corridors, Jon Pertwee could be seen leading Manning by the hand.

She played the part of Jo from 1971 to 1973 alongside Jon Pertwee's Doctor. Manning struck up an immediate rapport with her co-stars, Pertwee, Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier), John Levene (Sergeant Benton), Richard Franklin (Captain Yates) and Roger Delgado (the Master).

In 1975, she married Raynor Burton, but that marriage lasted only two months. She gave birth to twins in 1978 with Dean Harris. She was also in a relationship with Stewart Bevan, who played Jo's future husband Clifford Jones in The Green Death. (DCOM: The Green Death)

In 1977, she posed nude with an original Dalek prop for the glamour magazine Girl Illustrated. She laughed the furore off, stating, "You'd have to pretty well put me under a microscope to see anything!" Upon being informed of the photos, Jon Pertwee was quoted as saying, "Typical Katy!" In a later interview, she stated that the nude pictorial "went over like a cup of cold sick."

Katy Manning appeared on stage in Australia when she appeared in the play Run For Your Wife, during 1987-1988. The production toured the country. Other members of the cast were Jack Smethurst, David McCallum and Eric Sykes. Manning also appeared as herself in the documentary "Where on Earth is Katy Manning ... Because She'd Really Like to Know!"

Katy Manning in an Iris Wildthyme costume with Paul Magrs at a 2012 convention.

Katy's connection with Doctor Who continued well into the 2010s; she was the voice of Iris Wildthyme in several of the Big Finish Productions Doctor Who Audio Dramas, and the star of the Iris Wildthyme series. Katy's portrayal of Iris has since appeared in over 90 short stories published by Obverse Books and on the covers of most of their Iris Wildthyme anthologies.

She has also reprised the role of Jo Grant for Big Finish's The Companion Chronicles series. In Find and Replace and The Elixir of Doom, she played the dual roles of Jo Grant and Iris Wildthyme, and in Ghost in the Machine, Manning voiced the Third Doctor when he and Jo switch bodies. She also read several Short Trips, voiced Magistrix Borusa in Gallifrey audio story Annihilation and appeared in The Mega, an audio story from The Lost Stories range.

Elisabeth Sladen and Katy Manning for *Death of the Doctor*

For the first time since 1973 Manning performed the role of Jo Grant on television in 2010's Death of the Doctor, an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures. She starred alongside fellow former Third Doctor companion Elisabeth Sladen (who played Sarah Jane Smith) and Matt Smith (the Eleventh Doctor).

In 2013, Manning appeared in the 50th anniversary story The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, voiced Gilda Fairbanks in the Bafflegab Productions audio story Vince Cosmos: Glam Rock Detective, and also contributed to the charity reference book Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who.

In 2015 she voiced Jo Grant in The Defectors alongside Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor, and in The Third Doctor Adventures featuring Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor.

In 2019, Manning reprised her role as Jo Jones for a special scene created to announce the new Blu-ray rendition of the Season 10 box set.

Writing[edit | edit source]

Though most of her experience with the DWU has been as an actor, she's had a limited amount of writing experience in the franchise. In 2001, she wrote the foreword for the Telos novella, Nightdreamers and, in 2009, she contributed an introduction to the short story collection Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus from Obverse Books.