Notable television appearances before he gained the role of the Doctor included roles in "Vision On" (where he played Pepe/Epep, a character who lived in the mirror), an O-Man in "Jigsaw" and "Tiswas". Every episode of the innovative ATV schools maths programme "Leapfrog" featured Sylveste (sic) as "Bert" in wordless sequences filmed out of doors, as he attempted to form regular geometric patterns from different numbers of logs or carpet squares. He also appeared in "Eureka", often suffering from the inventions of Wilf Lunn and as Wart, assistant to StarStrider in the CITV series of the same name. McCoy also portrayed, in one-man shows on the stage, two famous movie comedians: Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton. He also appeared as Henry "Birdie" Bowers in the 1985 television serial about Scott's last Antarctic expedition, "The Last Place on Earth".