The Therapy Zone

All Our Prisoner Days - Part Three

    Spring 1988 saw the reopening of the main hotel which was burned down back in 1981, and to its previous specifications. One would hadly have known! Autumn of the same year saw the first Prisoner comic by P. Cotterel & J.M. Philbert. And the first Prisoner LP issued on CD by an unauthorised source. This together with The Prisoner graphic novel, the first of four part by D.C.Comics. Later the four comics would be pubished in one volume under the title of Shattered Visage.  The sad death of actress Mary Morris, who played No.2 in Dance of the Dead was announced.

    1989 saw the French magazine Le Rodeur started by Jean-Michel Philbert, as was the Miscellany magazine here in Great Britain, and another Prisoner actor died, George Colouris, who played the chess champion in Checkmate. Silva Screen redid the Prisoner LP plus on CD-Cassette in the Autumn.

    Patrick McGoohan returned to Great Britain in 1990, this to attend the Motor Show at the NEC in order to take delivery of a Caterham Super 7. At the same time Simon Bates of BBC Radio 2 managed to interview McGoohan, this was transmitted in the 7th of October 1990. And the sad news of the death of film director Don Chaffey who directed several episodes of the Prisoner.

    Spring 1991 was the time that Silva Screen released the second Prisoner album on CD-Cassette. And in the Autumn of 1992 Silva Screen released the third and final Prisoner CD-Cassette. Which coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Prisoner's first screening on British television.

    Writer of the script for ‘Hammer Into Anvil’ Roger Waddis died the Summer of 1993. And in October of the same year the last issue of Number Six came out after a total of 37 issues, to be replaced in January 1994 by In The Village. June 13th actress Nadia Gray, who played Nadia-No.8 in The Chimes of Big Ben sadly died.

    January 10th 1995 saw Polygram Television International acquire ITC, and thereby own the rights to the Prisoner which Granada Ventures owns today after Carlton had acquired Polygram, and the merger of Carlton and Granada.

    November 4th 1995 saw the death of actor Paul Eddington, who played the role of Cobb in Arrival.

    30th of January 1996 actor Guy Doleman, No.2 in Arrival died. And later that year actor Patrick Cargill, No.2 of Hammer Into Anvil died. And on the 10th of July of this same year BBC World Service interviewed Patrick McGoohan.

And the Autumn of 1997 saw the 30th anniversary of the first screening of the Prisoner on British television.

   1998 saw the production of Village day, the most ambitious amateur film since the Prisoner series itself!

    In more recent years there have been;

The 40^th and 45^th anniversaries of ‘the Prisoner’ Network DVD’s release of the series in Box set form several times.

Books published;

The Prisoner Script books by Robert Fairclough

The Prisoner’s Dilemma Jonathan Blum and Rupert Booth

Fall out by Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore

Danger Man or The Prisoner? by Roger Langley

Not A Number Patrick McGoohan A Life by Rupert Booth

Miss freedom by Andrew Cartnel

The Prisoner Blog by David A. Stimpson

The tally Ho newsletter produced by David A. Stimpson

This of course does not bring matters fully up to date, not by any means, and does not include all ‘the Prisoner’ connected trivialities.

    Yet I hope it does give you an idea of some of what has taken place in the past years of prisoner appreciation. Perhaps one day I'll get round to cataloguing the years from 1998 to date. Yet it could be argued by seasoned fans of ‘the Prisoner’ that we have seen the best years of active Prisoner Appreciation. Certainly the best years of Six of One: The Prisoner Appreciation Society are long behind them.

  

BCNU