Doctor Who star's huge mistake as he turned down sitcom success for short-lived flop

Former Doctor Who star Pete Davison, who was huge as the show's fifth doctor in the 1980s, had fans wondering "What if?" after he turned down what could have been the biggest role in his career, despite being crippled with debt. The actor and cricketer, who first hit our screens way back in 1975 and went on to play Tristan in James Herriot's All Creatures Great And Small series, sabotaged his chances of a lead role in The Brittas Empire.

Instead, he ended up playing an accountant in a very short-lived office drama called Fiddlers Three - and fans have been wondering ever since whether he rued the day he made the decision. One TV enthusiast took to the Ganymede and Titan forums online after reading Pete's memoir Is There Life Outside The Box? An Actor Despairs. In the book, he confirmed that he'd been offered the part of "bumbling leisure centre manager Gordon Brittas in the lead role of The Brittas Empire" - and ended up saying no.

The viewer wrote: "The part [was], as you know, eventually played in the inimitable fashion of Christopher Jonathan Brown. So we can assume it didn’t work out with Davison in whatever way.

"For his part, Davison was very graceful about how well Barrie did with it and was very complimentary about the role, and he said he would’ve played it very differently."

He then suggested: "It only occurred to me in retrospect that Brittas was half of the reason Chris suffered what he described as ‘git overload’ that led to his reduced capacity in Series VII", before teasing fellow fans with the words: "What if?"

We now know that he chose to play Ralph in Fiddlers Three instead - but the ill-fated sitcom lasted just 14 episodes before being canned.

It first aired in February 1991 and was all over by May - and in his book, Pete suggested it could have been the trigger that temporarily wrecked his career.

"If I had to pinpoint a job that sent me spiralling into my dark decade, it might be Fiddlers Three, a sitcom for Yorkshire Television written by Eric Chappell," he wrote.

"The lure of Fiddlers Three was the money which I desperately needed at that moment. We were living unhappily in an eight-bedroom riverside house with mortgage debt and interest on unpaid tax rising by the day," he cringed.

However, he added: "I'm probably being slightly unfair to Fiddlers Three. We had a very good cast, Paula Wilcox played my wife, Charles Kay was my boss, and Tyler Butterworth and Peter Blake my office rivals - and if you judge a job by how much fun you have making it, Fiddlers would be right up there."