Livin' Levene-a-Loca

I love a celebrity autobiography, a copy of Werner Herzog's recent memoir popped through the letterbox this morning and I'm writing this on a train into London for Patrick Stewart's book tour. It's a hard format to get right, with many well-meaning biographies becoming a list of personal achievements rather than a compelling work of prose.

For example, Johnny Marr's autobiography, Set The Boy Free provides a great insight into the rise and sad fall of The Smiths in the first half. The second half descends into various anecdotes about Johnny bumping into the likes of Nile Rogers and The Edge in his local Tesco or whatever. There are still some great insights into Johnny's creative process, but it's hard to escape the feeling that the autobiography is luxuriating in Johnny Marr's status as a guitar legend.

Run the Shadows, Walk the Sun by Doctor Who's John Levene does something similar, predominantly focused on relating the actor's life after he stopped playing Sergeant Benton. For a general audience, the life of an actor whose only real claim to fame is a role in Doctor Who isn’t worthy of a 240-page autobiography priced at £19.99. And yet, that’s what makes Run the Shadows so compelling, because it’s a fascinating and unglamorous look at the fleeting nature of fame.

Unlike Johnny Marr after The Smiths, John Levene isn’t working with The Pretenders or Talking Heads, he's working as a bingo caller on a cruise ship and mooching around the Warner Brothers lot while waiting to pick up his wife from work.

Although Run the Shadows, Walk the Sun is co-written with Michael Seely, John Levene's voice is undeniable. This is something you can't always say about celebrity autobiographies, even those produced by a ghost writer purely working from transcripts of the actual subject's voice. The tone veers wildly throughout, with John making some bizarre links between subjects. For example, a story about learning tracking skills in the Cub Scouts gives way to his sadness at the genocide of Native Americans.

There’s also a wild story about a domestic disturbance between his neighbours over a vandalised comic book, which resulted in a violent assault. John muses that he can understand this incident more clearly now, after having seen The Big Bang Theory.

Much later in the book, John recounts a heart warming tale about his improved relationship with his formerly estranged son and his grandchildren. It's a touching moment, but John can't resist pointing out that their bittersweet farewell is taking place a few feet away from where they discovered Sergei and Yulia Skripal after they were poisoned by Novichok.

Run the Shadows, Walk the Sun is also an incredibly honest memoir, but only up to a point. John recounts the horrific death of his hated father in graphic, gut-wrenching detail, but is notably evasive about what he said to his second wife, and how it ended their marriage. It's possible that Michael Seely is pulling back slightly, to protect John and Jenny's privacy. However, it's fascinating to see what John Levene will openly admit to, and what he'll keep tight-lipped about.

It raises the question of whether John is an unreliable narrator of his own life. For example, a story about how he lost his job as Johnny Bingo because he called the cruise liner CEO's daughter obese is framed as an unfortunate misunderstanding, despite John's admission that his sense of humour isn't always to everyone's tastes.

Similarly, a story about how one of Johnny Carson's producers told him he should be on the sofa with the legendary talk show host instead of waiting tables feels like a wilful misreading of a disarming comment by a restaurant patron. John Levene's optimism and idealism are paradoxically foolhardy and inspirational. He's a dreamer, sure, but he's also a realist, who was never afraid to take jobs that other out-of-work actors may have deemed to be beneath them.

There's certainly a palpable anger in Run the Shadows, Walk the Sun, but weirdly for this type of memoir, it's never directed at the industry. It's like John knows he was never going to be an A-List star, and was ultimately grateful for the – admittedly impressive – opportunities that were presented to him post-Doctor Who. Those that get John's ire are the liars and the vipers, like the unnamed individual who allegedly conned his mother out of her life savings.

“I decided the only way I could get my own back on these people who hated and resented me, […] was to play a track of me singing in harmony with Susan Boyle, a singer my mother loved. The hymn was my mother’s favourite, “How Great Thou Art”, and none of them in the audience knew it was me singing. So up yours and the horses you rode in on.”

Other subjects of John’s anger are stars and businesses who charge charities for their work after he spent years working for free even when he couldn't really afford to.

As part of Doctor Who's beloved UNIT family, John Levene could have dedicated a much larger chunk of the book to his time at the heart of one of the show's most influential periods. And yet, what makes Run the Shadows, Walk the Sun so fascinating is that he only dedicates a handful of chapters to his time making Doctor Who during the Jon Pertwee era. The rest of the book is about how he tried to recapture that moment in the sun by producing corporate events or becoming a bingo caller on a cruise ship.

Run the Shadows, Walk the Sun is a fascinating and compelling memoir that could only have come out of the cottage industry of niche Doctor Who autobiographies for a handful of grimly fascinated readers. Long may it continue.