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Katy Manning
Katy Manning at The Television & Movie Store, Norwich, England, on 17 January 2009.
Born	Catherine Anne Manning 15 October 1949 (1949-10-15) (age 60) Guildford, Surrey, England, UK
Occupation	Actor
Spouse(s)	Raynor Burton (divorced)
Domestic partner(s)	Barry Crocker (present)

Katy Manning (born 14 October 1949, Guildford, Surrey, England^[1]) is a British actor best known for her part as the companion Jo Grant in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who.^[2] She has also made many theatre appearances, and is now a citizen of Australia.^[3] She is famously myopic.^[4]

Biography

Early life

Manning's father was sports columnist J. L. Manning. As the result of a car accident, she spent a year in hospital at sixteen and at eighteen went to America where she was offered a five-year contract with MGM. Returning to England, Manning trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art^[5], then joined a Wolverhampton repertory company and made her debut in Man At The Top (1970).

She married Raynor Burton in 1975, but the marriage lasted only two months. She gave birth to twins, Jonathan and Georgina, in 1978 with former boyfriend Dean Harris whom she separated from in 1981. She has been with current boyfriend Barry Crocker since 1990.

Doctor Who

She played the part of Jo from 1971 to 1973 alongside Jon Pertwee's incarnation of the Doctor. Manning struck up an immediate rapport with her co-stars, Pertwee, Nicholas Courtney (The Brigadier), John Levene (Sergeant Benton), Richard Franklin (Captain Mike Yates), and Roger Delgado (the Master). Fans of Doctor Who often refer to these characters as the UNIT family — UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, being the fictional United Nations squad that the Doctor worked for. Manning moved to Australia and was also seen in a famous Ruby Wax segment with longtime childhood friend Liza Minnelli.^[6]

Manning's connection with "Doctor Who" continues: She voices Jo Grant in the Companion Chronicles Audio Adventures, and she is also the voice of the Time Lady Iris Wildthyme in several of the Big Finish Productions audio plays. In 1978 she aroused controversy when she posed naked with an original Dalek prop for the glamour magazine Girl Illustrated.^[7] In 2005 Manning also appeared in Doctor Who - Inside The TARDIS with two of the doctors, Sylvester McCoy and Colin Baker, where they spoke of their experiences with the long-running show.^[8]

Later career

Katy Manning wrote the TV series Private Wives and has been involved in other writing and directing projects.^[6][9] In 1980, she toured in Peter Terson's 'VE Night' alongside Ian Cullen and Jane Goddard. In Australia she appeared in the play Run For Your Wife (1987-1988), and the production toured the country. Other members of the cast in the production were Jack Smethurst, David McCallum, and Eric Sykes. She has also appeared in the low budget film noir movie When Darkness Falls.^[10]

In June and July, 2007, she appeared as Yvette in the stage show 'Allo 'Allo alongside Gorden Kaye as Rene Artois at Twelfth Night Theatre in Brisbane. Guy Siner and Sue Hodge also reprised their original roles from the television series, and the other characters were portrayed by various famous Australian actors including Steven Tandy, Chloe Dallimore, Jason Gann, Tony Alcock, and David Knijnenburg.

Me and Jezebel at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe

In 2009 Katy returned to the UK as part of her one-woman show Me and Jezebel. A play based on a true 1985 story about Bette Davis inviting herself to a fan's house for a night and staying for a month, with Manning playing all the parts. It toured through March and April in England and also played at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe at the Gilded Balloon Wine Bar in August. The show received a five-star review in the Edinburgh Evening News, which described Manning as "one of Britain's best actresses". Manning also received two other four-star reviews and appeared on STV news promoting the show. The posters of Me and Jezebel proved so popular due to the cartoon drawing of Bette Davis that most of them went missing during the run of the Fringe.

See also

• Companion (Doctor Who)

References

External links

• Katy Manning at the Internet Movie Database