In the story Billy Liar {Billy Fisher}, a rebellious youth living in a North England town, retreats into his own fantasy world of Ambrosia in order to escape his mundane, and tedious existence.
Billy's world Ambrosia has its own system of government, its own monetary systems, its own laws, and Billy sees himself portraying many important faces from Lord Mayor to an ex-Army general. In his fantasy world, Billy is the top man - No.1.
If one accepts the theory that the village is all in the mind of the Prisoner, indeed that the Prisoner has created the village in his own mind, with its own laws, administration, its own credit card system, a self-contained society in fact, with the Prisoner as Number 1. Then a close comparison between Billy Fisher and the Prisoner can clearly be drawn, as Billy and the Prisoner-Number 6 clearly have one thing in common - they both want to escape!
Be seeing you
Reading some of the guff produced over the ensuing decades, I get the impression that McGooohan ended up moor like Billy No-Mates..... :-D
ReplyDeleteI don't think No6 and Billy had so much in common though - rather they were polar opposites. Billy wanted to escape from the real world into a Village of Fun and Frivolity where he was Number One, whereas No6 wanted to escape a village where he seemed the centre of all attention, back into the real world where he was moor of a Billy NoBody.