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Monday 12 March 2012

The Tally Ho

This is not the best way to present The Tally Ho newspaper, but it was the only way I could get it done. Why? Well perhaps the Village newspaper is one of the enigmatic props in the series. Fine we have an artilce in which No.6 apparently speaks his mind, and there is an accompanying photograh. And that's fine, save for the fact that the words of the article are not the words No.113 wrote down in his note pad when he interviewed No.6 who was "standing" for election in Free For All.
For those who are not in the know, the rest of the newspaper is complete gobbledygook! Somone, I don't know who, in the Properties dapartment of the production of the Prisoner, must sat down with a load of magazines, books, newspapers, and cut out lines of text, then mixed it all up so that hadly any of it made any sense, pasted it all together, and had The Tally Ho printed. More than that, this process was repeated not twice, not thrice, but six different issues for the episodes; A B anc C, Free For All, Many Happy Returns, Hammer Into Anvil, and two for A Change of Mind.
I said that apart from the article about No.6 speaking his mind, the rest of the text is utter gobbledygook. Well that's not quite correct, if you look at the newspaper, those of you who have a copy, there is text that does make sense, but only for a few lines before it reads of something else, it's difficult to explain. But the text is repeated and sometimes thrice. Such text reads as the two examples from the above Tally Ho, and perhaps you will now see what I mean.

    So much time and effort must have gone into producing The Tally Ho that way, it must have been very time consuming, for something the television viewer was highly unlikely to be able to read on the television screen.

I'll be seeing you

4 comments:

  1. Modelled on the The Thunderer, I would think.

    http://iconicphotos.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/photo-1.png?w=700&h=467

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  2. Hello Moor,

    Thanks for the link, but the 'Old Thunderer'? I'm not familiar with that term. It must have something to do with 'The Times' newspaper I'm guessing.

    Regards
    David
    BCNU

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  3. Re-writing old editions of The Times was one of the jobs Winston Smith was working on, in Orwell's book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. One of the things about Tally Ho to wonder at is how exactly how that printing roller worked. Now we've seen the page properly we know that in fact it didn't work very well at all..... except for the bit they wanted you to read :-D

    Perhaps more interesting is what lay behind the name. It is very "English", evoking cheery Edwardian gentleman - a village trope generally - and it also has connotations of "the chase" (fox hunting) I suppose. I wonder who gave it the name.

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  4. Hello Moor,

    Yours is a very illuminating comment. But I've never seen The Tally Ho device as an actual printing device of the newspaper, but as a "despenser," as at the turn of a handle a sheet is despensed and torn from a roll. However, there is an instance in 'A Change of Mind' when No.6 helps himself to the second issue of The Tally Ho from the printer/dispenser. No.6 tears off a copy of the latest issue from the roll, and if you look closely, there are two sheets of paper, one is The Tally Ho newspaper, the other is a blank sheet of paper which No.6 throws away. This in the same way of early liquid photocopiers.
    With early photocopiers you took the sheet of paper you wanted to copy, put it through to photograph it, then you took the photograph and placed it on top of a possitive sheet and put them both through the liquid. Then threw away the negative sheet. Obviously this is not what No.6 did to gain his copy of The Tally Ho, but it looks to be a similar idea, by the way he throws the blank sheet of paper away.

    Isn't 'the Prisoner' fascinating? always something to observe, something new to learn every day!

    Regards
    David
    Be seeing you

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