K9 Stole My Trousers!

by Bob Baker

Bob Baker, co-writer of three Oscar and BAFTA winning Wallace & Gromit films, creator of K9, and writer of numerous Doctor Who episodes, releases his autobiography this June.

A stalwart of HTV, Bob has worked with Sir Laurence Olivier, Leonard Rossiter, Ron Moody, Toyah Willcox and Trevor Eve. Among his many TV credits, Bob wrote a number of episodes of Doctor Who with co-writer Dave Martin, several seasons of Bergerac starring John Nettles (of Midsomer Murders fame) and the smash hit children’s show, Into the Labyrinth; Bob also script edited the popular crime series Shoestring.

Bob is perhaps best known for his work with Nick Park on Aardman Animations’ Oscar and BAFTA-winning shorts, The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave and A Matter of Loaf and Death, and the feature film The Curse of the Wererabbit.

Among his recent work, Bob has just finished the first 26-part series of the regenerated K9 Adventures, currently showing on the Disney Channel and Channel 5 and is gearing up for a second series in the coming year.

Bob’s life has been rich and varied; his adventures outside of his illustrious career range from a wine-tasting tour of France and mad sea voyages with the legendary Keith Floyd to playing jazz with John Fortune of Bremner, Bird and Fortune. K9 Stole My Trousers is a tribute to some of the finest talents in TV in the last fifty years, both people Bob worked with and people he considered himself lucky to know in his personal life.

Genres: Doctor Who, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published June 17, 2013

About the author

Bob Baker is a Doctor Who writer who often wrote with Dave Martin. Baker and Martin are best remembered for creating K9, a character he partially owned the rights to. He made use of these rights in authorising the creation of the K9 TV series.

Beyond the world of Doctor Who, Baker's greatest success is as a writer for Aardman Animations' Wallace and Gromit series. He co-wrote the short films The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave and A Matter of Loaf and Death with animator Nick Park, and was one of four credited writers on the feature film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit; he received a BAFTA for The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and another for A Matter of Loaf and Death.

Reviews

[Gareth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bob Baker is perhaps best known for his writing partnership with Dave Martin, and then mostly for their work on Doctor Who. The pair invented K9, the infamous robot dog, and penned a number of memorable stories such as the show’s tenth anniversary celebration. Doctor Who fans will be an obvious audience for Baker’s cheerful memoir, but it’s worth noting that his Who stories scarcely warrant more than a paragraph each. Perhaps he figured any trivia would be on record anyway, which would be a fair assumption. (And maybe the heavily Who-leaning title wasn’t his idea?)

Baker is similarly ephemeral about some of his other writing gigs, not least because so many programmes ultimately don’t get made for a variety of (often stupid) reasons, but there are enough of them that you get a strong impression of the world he was working in.

He’s a bit more inclined to go into his life outside of TV and film writing, including a number of amusing and hair-raising escapades in lorries and boats. It’s *his* story to tell, so fair enough, and it’s all enthralling, but it’s difficult not to expect a bit more emphasis on the nuts and bolts of the writing credits he’s known for. His life story outside of all that can feel a bit like random, albeit very jolly information. (Perhaps I’m getting distracted by other biographies and autobiographies that focus entirely on the work, such as Robert Banks Stewart’s To Put You In The Picture.)

Towards the end we come around to Wallace & Gromit and the K9 spin-off series which for Baker are obviously great sources of pride (and TV production being what it is, consternation!), giving the book a positive ending. Baker remains an upbeat voice throughout, making this a fun, if slightly scattered read for telly fans.

[Benedict Reid · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aside from the mammoth second chapter, the most interesting thing about this autobiography is that Bob Baker doesn't focus much on himself. Instead he describes the various people who he met, sometimes mentioning which TV drama he ended up writing using their life.
Bob was obviously a writer who enjoyed talking to people. One of his great friends is Keith Floyd, and while we hear various stories about Keith's life and the adventures Keith and Bob go into, it's notable that I am only just old enough to know that Keith was a TV star in his own right. At no point does Bob mention it.
As is often the case with scriptwriter autobiographies, some of the later chapters a full of an underlying bitterness about recent projects which didn't happen. But in general Bob seems like he was a likable guy. Although I note that his 3 wives hardly make an appearance and only his oldest son (of 9 children) gets more than a passing reference.
It's quite obvious that no publisher's editor had a chance to work with Bob on cleaning up this material for publication, which is a pity because with a little bit of structural editing it may have been a truly compelling read. As it is, it's a little all over the place with some interesting stories from a long and varied life.