If there is one question which is most frequently asked of 'the Prisoner,' it is this, "Why did you resign?" Well to be perfectly honest, that question has been done to death. I mean we all know why the Prisoner resigned, he resigned for peace, for peace of mind. We hear that from the Prisoner’s very own lips, the trouble is I don’t think Number 2 was actually listening at the time, because he asks the Prisoner to tell him again. But the Prisoner was in no mood to repeat himself, “You’ve been told” he said, yes and so were we, the television viewer but were we listening? So what is the next most asked question of ‘the Prisoner?’ Where am I? We know where the Village is, it’s in the county of Gwynedd in North Wales, any damned fool can tell you that. Unless of course you are of the opinion that the Village is situated somewhere on the Baltic, on the Lithuanian coast. Or even somewhere south west of Portugal and Spain, even on the coast of Morocco, it might even be an island!
“What do you want?” might be the next most popular question, the answer to which is a simple one, “We want information, information, information!” Which after all is the main priority of the Village Administration, the acquiring of information. But then that begs the next question, what is it they do with all that information when they get it? Well you see that long room filled with grey filing cabinets, of the type in which the Prisoner’s card having been marked, is dropped in the filing cabinet marked RESIGNED, well there you have it. Information stored away for, well for a very long time. Ah, I perceive that you are about to ask who has access to this information. Well whoever requests it I suppose. What would the point of gathering all that information only to see it stored away in a room full of grey fling cabinets, for no-one to have access? I mean this isn’t AREA 51!
And then we come to the question “Who are you?” To which a disembodied voice answers “I am Number Two” or “I am the new Number Two,” depending on which Number 2 it is at that time. Only three Number 2’s were ever returned to the Village for a second term of office, well four if you include Number 2 who was due for retirement. The thing is though, three out of the four Two’s to be returned to the Village had previously failed in their exploits against Number 6. Although in two cases Number 2 could not be expected to take the full blame for failure, one of whom was brought back because he would have no direct contact with Number 6, as he would be overseeing the educational experiment of Speedlearn. The second would be given a chance to break Number 6 under his own terms, and the third Number 2, well he would be overseeing the proceedings of ‘Fall Out’ in the matter of democratic crisis. Oh yes I was forgetting, and the fourth Number 2, well he hadn’t failed at all. He had been far too busy working on the infrastructure of the Village for the good of the people, and the community in general to be involved with Number 6! But of course none of this answers the question of who Number 2 is.
We do know that one Number 2, he of ‘The Chimes of Big Ben,’ ‘Once Upon A Time,’ and ‘Fall out,’ came from London, for that is the place to which he returned after escaping the confines of the Village. We are witness to him being dressed in a bowler hat and business suit, as he strides passed the Houses of Parliament in the City of Westminster in London. In fact this former Number 2 actually enters the Houses of Parliament, but in what capacity he is there we do not know. Perhaps someone out of the Foreign Office perhaps.
Yet this former Number 2 is not the only one to be connected to Westminster. Number 6, an Irish-American, who achieved the position of Number 2, if for perhaps the shortest term of office in Village history, has a house in the City of Westminster, No.1 Buckingham Place. What’s more the underground car park in which the Prisoner parks his Lotus 7 in the opening sequence of ‘the Prisoner,’ is but a stones throw from the Houses of Parliament. So would it be too left of field to assume that somewhere in the Houses of Parliament there is a small office where the Prisoner handed in his resignation?
As for all the remaining Number 2’s, I am of the opinion that the majority, if not almost all, had been recruited from within the British Civil Service. There is an argument for Number 2 of ‘Hammer Into Anvil’ to be that of Thorpe of ‘Many Happy Returns,’ if only fictionally speaking. And for the same reason Number 2 of ‘Arrival’ could be Colonel Ross of British Intelligence in the three Harry Palmer films ‘the Ipcress File,’ ‘Funeral In Berlin,’ and ‘The Billion Dollar Brain,’ but even fictionally speaking that would be stretching a point.
One Number 2 is an American perhaps recruited from the CIA. Another is Welsh, while a couple of them are Australian, while the rest are English born.
So to the answer of who is Number 2, I have done my best. But as Number 50 once said “Who is anyone here?” {meaning the Village}.
Be seeing you
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