Happy Birthday Wendy

Wendy Padbury, born 7 December 1947 in Warwickshire, England, played companion Zoe Heriot from The Wheel in Space to The War Games and again in The Five Doctors.

Happy 66th Birthday Wendy

Padbury came to prominence as an actor in 1966, when she joined the cast of the long-running ATV soap opera Crossroads. She played the role of Stephanie "Stevie" Harris, foster daughter to the show's main character, Meg Mortimer (Noele Gordon). 

She was cast as the Second Doctor's new companion, Zoe Heriot, in Doctor Who in 1968. She became very close to her co-stars Frazer Hines and Patrick Troughton. Padbury tells many fond stories about the practical jokes they played on each other during rehearsals; perhaps the most famous tale she told about this was when, in rehearsal, she fell asleep. As she was wearing a kilt, Patrick Troughton undid the clasp and then woke her up. Startled, she leaped up and the kilt fell off. In those days, the rehearsals for Doctor Who were held in a Church hall - the moment Wendy leaped up and screamed was the exact moment the Vicar walked into the hall. Wendy now says, very fondly of Patrick Troughton, that he had deliberately timed it so! 

Her connection with Doctor Who, after she left the programme (at the same time as Hines and Troughton) was not quite over. She appeared in Doctor Who and the Daleks in Seven Keys to Doomsday (1974), a stage play at the Adelphi Theatre London based on the television series, in which she played a companion named Jenny, opposite Trevor Martin as the Doctor. She made a cameo appearance, again opposite Hines and Troughton in Doctor Who's twentieth anniversary story, The Five Doctors. She is now retired and lives in France.

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