Sylvester McCoy

Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith (born 20 August 1943), known professionally as Sylvester McCoy, is a Scottish actor. Gaining prominence as a physical comedian, he became best known for playing the seventh incarnation of the Doctor in the long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who from 1987 to 1989—the final Doctor of the original run—and briefly returning in a television film in 1996. He is also known for his work as Radagast in The Hobbit film series (2012–2014). McCoy was born Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith in Dunoon, on the Cowal peninsula, to an Irish Catholic mother and an English father who had been killed in action in World War II a couple of months before McCoy was born; he met his father's family at the age of 17. He was brought up primarily in Dunoon, where he attended Saint Mun's School; he then studied for the priesthood at Blairs College, a seminary in Aberdeen between the ages of 12 and 16, but gave this up and continued his education at Dunoon Grammar School. After school he moved to London where he worked in the insurance industry for five years. He worked in the box office of The Roundhouse for a time, where he was discovered by Ken Campbell. McCoy came to prominence as a member of the experimental theatre troupe "The Ken Campbell Roadshow". His best known act was as a stuntman character called "Sylveste McCoy" in a play entitled An Evening with Sylveste McCoy (the name was coined by actor Brian Murphy, part of the Roadshow at the time), where his stunts included putting a fork and nails up his nose and stuffing ferrets down his trousers, and setting his head on fire. As a joke, the programme notes listed Sylveste McCoy as played by "Sylveste McCoy" and, after a reviewer missed the joke and assumed that Sylveste McCoy was a real person, Kent-Smith adopted this as his stage name. Some years later, McCoy added an "r" to the end of "Sylveste", in part because of the actors' superstition that a stage name with thirteen letters was unlucky.