Brian Blessed admits Doctor Who pitch gave BBC bosses 'a heart attack'

rian Blessed says his \'Doctor Who\' ideas gave bosses "a heart attack" and cost him the iconic role.

The \'Flash Gordon\' actor was offered the chance to take over from William Hartnell in the 1960s, but his pitch for playing the iconic Time Lord didn\'t work for the BBC.

Speaking to RadioTimes.com, she said: "I was [approached]. It\'s a long story. I was in [BBC police drama] \'Z-Cars\' for two years playing \'Fancy\' Smith, the tough, heroic Yorkshireman.

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"And then [BBC producer] Andrew Osborn took me for a long walk and he said, \'Bill Hartnell\'s very old and we want a young Doctor Who.\' "

However, the 83-year-old actor was also weighing up an offer to play Porthos in BBC\'s \'The Three Musketeers\'.

Opening up on his meeting Beeb bosses - and his own ideas - Brian admitted: "They nearly had a heart attack.

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"It absolutely scared them to f****** death. So I went off and did \'The Three Musketeers.\' "

Despite the lead role not panning out, the booming star did end up appearing on \'Doctor Who\' in 1985\'s \'The Trial of a Time Lord\' as warlord Yrcanos.

In the past, the booming actor revealed he was put off by the longevity of playing the Doctor.

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He previously said: "I was still in my 20s at the time and I didn\'t fancy taking on something that was going to be another two-year job as I\'d just done two years in \'Z-Cars\'.

"But they told me I could just do it for six months instead and then they asked me how I\'d play the Doctor?

"So to get out of it, I said, \'Well his name is Who, which is not an English name at all, it\'s from the Far East, so I\'d like to play him like Charlie Chan and make him Chinese\'.

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"Well the offer disappeared very quickly after that as they obviously thought they were dealing with a total maniac."