Colin Baker was born in 1943 in the Royal Waterloo Lying-In Hospital in London during an air raid. He spent his earliest years in London with his mother, while his father served in the armed forces. He narrowly avoided an early death during the wartime blitz when a piece of flying shrapnel just missed him, embedding itself in the side of his cot. After the war, Baker's father took a job as managing director of an asbestos company in Manchester. The family moved north to live in Rochdale, although Baker attended school in Manchester.
Peter Moffett, now better known by his stage name Peter Davison, was born on 13 April 1951 in the Streatham area of London. In 1961, he and his family - parents Sheila and Claude (an electrical engineer who hailed from British Guiana) and his sisters Barbara, Pamela and Shirley moved to Knaphill, Woking in Surrey, where Davison was educated at the Winston Chirchill School. It was here that he first became interested in acting, taking parts in a number of school plays, and this eventually led to him joining an amateur dramatic society, the Byfleet Players. On leaving school at the age of sixteen, having achieved only modest academic success with three O Levels of undistinguished grades, he took a variety of short-lived jobs ranging from hospital porter to Hoffman press operator.
Kevin McNally was born on April 27, 1956, in Bristol, England. He grew up in Birmingham where he attended Redhill and Mapledene Junior schools and Central Grammar School for Boys. At the age of 16, he got his first job at Birmingham Repertory Theatre. A year later he received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1975 he won the Best Actor Bancroft Gold Medal for his stage performance. McNally's most notable stage performances in London's West End include his appearance as Alan Bennett opposite Maggie Smith in 'The Lady in the Van' and opposite Juliette Binoche in 'Naked'. He also starred as Richard in Terry Johnson's 'Dead Funny' at the Savoy Theatre.