Sunderland-born Dr Who legend - and world record breaker - William Russell dies at 99

The Sunderland-born actor who helped launch TV legend Dr Who - and earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records - has died just months short of his 100th birthday.

William Russell played science teacher Ian Chesterton, one of the Time Lord’s original companions.

In the show’s first ever episode, An Unearthly Child, Ian and colleague Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) are intrigued by a new student, Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford), who seems impossibly knowledgeable on some subjects but inexplicably ignorant on others.

They decide to follow her home, only to find her supposed address is a junk yard.

Searching it, they come across an incongruously placed police telephone box, before being confronted by William Hartnell’s Doctor. When the old man introduces himself only by his title, Ian becomes the first character ever to utter the immortal line ‘Doctor Who?’.

The teachers are about to leave when they hear Susan’s voice from the policebox and force their way inside.

The rest is televisual history.

William Russell was born Russell Enoch in Sunderland in November 1924, to parents Alfred and Eva, though the family moved to the Midlands while he was still a boy.

He served in the RAF during the Second World War before embarking on a career that would see him pop up in the likes of Blackadder. Heartbeat, Poirot and the first Superman movie, as well as maintaining a steady stage presence.

He found fame again in later life, appearing in Coronation Street in the early 90s as Rita’s sweet, but short-lived, husband Ted Sullivan.

Russell remained fiercely proud of his Doctor Who connections, appearing at conventions, reprising the role of Ian several times for audio company Big Finish, and even popping up as a Television Centre security guard in An Adventure in Space and Time, a dramatisation of the programme’s early years made to mark its 50th anniversary in 2013.

His last screen appearance, appropriately enough, was in the show which had meant so much to him - and it would make him a record breaker.

At the end of The Power of the Doctor, Jodie Whittaker’s final appearance as the13th Doctor, viewers saw new series companions Graham and Dan creating a support group for former friends of the Time Lord - including Ian Chesterton.

William Russel’s brief appearance on October 23, 2022, came 57 years and 120 days after Ian disappeared from the nation’s screens at the end of episode six of The Chase - on June 26, 1965 - marking a new world record for the longest gap between TV appearances by the same character.

Previous record holder Philip Lowrie had clocked up a mere 43 years between his appearances as Dennis Tanner on Coronation Street.

William Russell is survived by children Vanessa, Laetitia and Robert, from his first marriage to Balbina Gutierrez, along with his second wife Etheline and their son Alfred Enoch, who followed his father into the profession and is best known as for his appearances as Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter series.