Hines was born in Horsforth, a north-west suburb of Leeds in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the third son of Bill and Molly Hines. His mother was Scottish and came from Port Glasgow.[3] Shortly after Hines was born, the family moved to Harrogate where his mother ran a boarding house. As a child, Hines went to the Western Board Primary School and then Norwood College. Through his parents attending a local amateur dramatics group and regularly visiting the cinema, Hines discovered a love for performing and began attending the Margery Newbury School of Dancing every Saturday morning. It was here that during a performance aged seven at the Royal Hall in Harrogate that Hines sang the song Louise while doing an impersonation of Maurice Chevalier which generated newspaper headlines reading "A young star is born here tonight at the Royal Hall Harrogate".[4]
With a well-established career in television, Hines acted in feature films less frequently, but appeared in I Could Go On Singing (1963) with Judy Garland and he provided an uncredited voice for the James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967).[7][8]
Doctor Who
Hines auditioned for the part of Ben Jackson in Doctor Who in 1966 but was unsuccessful.[9] His debut came in the same year, when he was cast to play the part of Jamie McCrimmon, the companion of the Second Doctor (played by Patrick Troughton). Originally intended as a one-off guest character, Jamie joined the regular cast and appeared in the series from 1966 to 1969.[10]
Hines reprised the role in a cameo in the 20th anniversary serial "The Five Doctors" (1983) and as a guest star in The Two Doctors (1985). Hines appeared in more episodes than any other "companion" actor in the history of the series, but many of the episodes featuring Jamie no longer exist in the BBC's collection. The only actors appearing in more episodes are those who played the first four Doctors.[11]
In 1968, during his third year on the show, Hines released with Major Minor Records the novelty record "Who's Dr. Who?" Esteemed songwriters Barry Mason and Les Reed composed the music and lyrics, but the record was a commercial failure. Hines later called it the only flop Mason and Reed ever wrote.[12]
Hines, Troughton and Wendy Padbury (who played the Second Doctor's other companion, Zoe Heriot) all departed the show in 1969. At the advice of his agent, Hines was the first of the three to announce his intention to leave, though Troughton asked him to stay a few more months to the end of the sixth season, as this was when Troughton planned to relinquish his role as well. The three actors remained with the show until the conclusion of the final serial The War Games (1969). Hines remained in contact with Troughton.
"My agent was advising me to leave. I was going to leave earlier – in fact there was a script written called 'The Laird of Lochinvar'," Hines told SciFiNow. "They were going to go to Scotland and he was going to fall in love with a Highland lass. I remember the Daily Sketch, front page news – JAMIE IS TO LEAVE DOCTOR WHO. Patrick read it and said, 'I'm leaving in six months' time, my contract ends, my wife's been saying I should be doing other stuff, wait for me,' so I stayed on till The War Games and left with Patrick. Then Padders [Wendy Padbury] said, 'I'm not going to stay with Jon Pertwee because I'll never get into shot! He's 6 foot 4 and I'm 4 foot 6!" We didn't want to leave! I still say that if my agent hadn't been nagging me, and [Troughton's] wife, we'd still be there now. You'd have to shoot us to get us out [of] the TARDIS. You'd never have heard of David Tennant or Christopher Eccleston because we'd still be there. We were having such a ball!"
Author Diana Gabaldon credits watching Hines in The War Games (and finding him attractive in a kilt) as the inspiration for her first novel, Outlander, a time travel story set in 18th century Scotland. Consequently, she named the novel's male protagonist Jamie.[13] She says that the character's surname, Fraser, is a coincidence, as the PBS station on which she watched Doctor Who habitually cut off the episode's credits. She did not learn Hines' name until several years after Outlander was published.[13] In a 2018 interview with SciFiNow, Hines said: "When I was in Emmerdale I got this book, sent by Diana Gabaldon. She explained, saying, 'Dear Frazer, I watched you in this black and white TV show and I loved your legs and your kilt, and I went to church the next day and all I could think about was your legs and your kilt, and I've written this book.' I read it, and I took it to David Cunliffe, who was head of drama at Yorkshire TV. He said it was too expensive, so he didn't do it."[10]
Deborah Watling and Frazer Hines at a Doctor Who 50th Anniversary event
Up until 2007, Hines was the only surviving Second Doctor companion actor not to have acted in a Big Finish ProductionsDoctor Who audio play. (The others have played characters other than their television roles.) In November 2007, he starred as Jamie in Helicon Prime, the second instalment in Season 2 of Big Finish's Companion Chronicles. Since then he has appeared in many more Companion Chronicles, where his uncanny ability to mimic Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor has been welcomed by fans of the show.[14] Hines has also recorded linking narration for many Second Doctor serials which no longer exist in video form; the soundtracks, along with Hines' narration, have been released on CD by BBC Audio. He also appeared in an audio trilogy with Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor as an older Jamie. In 2013, Hines portrayed both Jamie and the Second Doctor in the Big Finish audio play The Light at the End, produced to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who.
After his tenure as Jamie in Doctor Who, Hines appeared in several films such as The Last Valley and Zeppelin (both 1971), until 1972 when he was cast in the soap opera Emmerdale Farm as Joe Sugden,[16] a role he played until 1994. In between making episodes of Emmerdale, as it was renamed in 1989, he has continued a career in the theatre and made occasional appearances in other TV shows. Hines was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1992 after Michael Aspel surprised him during the filming of Emmerdale.[17] He stated in a 2019 interview, "I left Emmerdale because I got sick of going to work when it was dark and coming home when it was dark. I'd just got married and owned a stud farm, and so I said I would leave." He stated he was asked back to the show the following year but refused and was later killed off. Despite his off-screen death, Hines confirmed that he would like to return to the soap.[18]
Hines was cast in an episode of the television adaptation of Outlander, which he had helped to inspire.[21] In the May 2015 episode "Wentworth Prison", Hines portrayed Sir Fletcher Gordon, an English prison warden.[21][22] Hines said: "When it came to pass that they were making a TV series, I said 'I've got to be in it!'. My agent said they were casting for Sir Fletcher Gordon, so I went to see the casting director – it wasn't a given, I had to go and read for the part. I'm glad I did."[10]
From 2016 to 2017, Hines starred as Albert Blunderstone in the tour of the play Seriously Dead.[23]
In 2019, Hines starred in an audio film of Up Pompeii!, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the series, appearing alongside original cast members including Madeline Smith and Tim Brooke-Taylor. Hines appeared as Sonny Troughton, a former criminal, in two episodes of Doctors in 2020[24] and starred in the romantic-comedy film Lost at Christmas set in the Scottish Highlands later that same year.[25]
Boxtree, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers, published Hines' autobiography in 1996. This work, titled Films, Farms and Fillies, first appeared in a paperback edition. Thirteen years later, in December 2009, Telos Publishing released a revised hardcover edition, titled Hines Sight.
In July 2010, Hines disclosed that he suffered from colorectal cancer for eleven years, explaining that he kept his illness a secret for fear of professional alienation. Since his recovery, Hines has openly promoted cancer awareness through Cancer Research and the Bobby Moore Cancer Foundation. His older brother Roy Hines (1942–1982) was also an actor and died of cancer aged 40.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
