The Biography

Dursley McLinden was a Manx-born Brirish actor of stage and screen. He appeared in the title role of Tim Diamond in the 1988 film Just Ask for Diamond. His television roles included a 1988 appearance in Doctor Who as Sgt Mike Smith in the story Remembrance of the Daleks and his reprise of the role of Tim Diamond for the 1991 spin-off series The Diamond Brothers. In the theatre, he mostly specialised in musicals such as Follies (Shaftesbury Theatre, 1988), in which he starred in the key role of Young Ben opposite Daniel Massey, Julia McKenzie, Millicent Martin and Eartha Kitt, and The Phantom of the Opera, in which he played Raol right up until his death from AIDS at the age of thirty in 1995. In 2021, Russell T. Davies wrote the Channel 4 series It's a Sin which was inspired by McLinden.