The Therapy Zone

   What follows is another extract from an interview with the late Frank Maher, stunt double for Patrick McGoohan, and stunt arranger on the Prisoner.

    Q: How did the Penny Farthing bike come about? It appears on all the props, badges and so on.

Frank Maher: Well, at the time the bike turned up it was pulled out of the props truck at Portmeirion and put to one side. A lot of Welsh extras were around, goggling at all these funny things that were being pulled out. Anyway, this Penny Farthing was leaned up against something, and Pat came up and said "Right Stuntman - ride it!"

   So, I tried riding it and nearly broke my neck! Anyway, there was a little guy who'd been watching  -must have been seventy if he was a day - and he said "Excuse me, do you mind if I rode it?" And he made an idiot of me because he walked over to a tree, leant the bike against it, climbed up - which I hadn't thought of, sat on the bike and merrily went on his way.

   Pat loved it and got him to ride around the village on it as part of the background. Now I don't personally agree with the ideas of symbolism connected with the bike, I love it as a logo, but "Symbolic of Progress" and so on... no, not for me.

    Q: How was the Prisoner described to you?

     Frank Maher: Well, this was one night in a pub after we'd played squash and he gave me a sort of synopsis of the story. I asked if it was supposed to be John Drake who'd been nicked and taken off, and he said {Patrick McGoohan} it was, although this wasn't going to be stated. He {Patrick McGoohan}didn't explain the concepts behind the story, and in fact when we got up to Portmeirion I only had two scripts and sections of two others. Then after about two weeks I got the locations sections of the fifth - it was that crazy, you didn't really know what you were doing.

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   In Memorium. The news of the death of a prized citizen of the village broke last evening. Number Six, who kept the secret of his resignation to the last. A man who was defiant, at times unmutual. Who fought, resisted coercion, held fast, maintained his individuality, such was this man of steel so magnificently equipped to lead the village. But who all through his life he resisted the village.

    Has Number Six finally escaped? There are those who would say that Death is an escape. But I dare say Number Six will always be "with us." He will be remembered by those who knew him, by those who thought they knew him, and by those who tried to break him, to find his breaking point.

   Had Number Six merely given Number Two what he wanted to know, then life here in the village could have been so very different for the Prisoner. But it was not in the nature of the man simply to "give in." The words first uttered upon his arrival here in the village so long ago by the Prisoner "I am not a number. I am a free man," will echo around the village for many years to come.

   There has never been such a Prisoner as Number Six, and perhaps there never will be again.

Be seeing you