Learning By Example

    It has been well documented that one's school days remain with you for the rest of ones life. Indeed one's school days can have a profound effect on structuring the rest of your life. And so I believe it to be said of Patrick McGoohan.

   I have already made comment here within my Prisoner blog-articles of Patrick MGoohan's school days at Ratcliff College, but here is something which I have not yet made light of. All students of Ratcliff College are issued with a number.

  Now we come to the use of such numbers. If a student is caught doing something he isn't supposed to be doing - and ends up in trouble with the headmaster - this is regarded as being unmutual, and the said student is referred to only by his number and not by name. also, the student has to stand before the entire college on a rostrum and confess what he did. But not in the students own words - he is told what to say by a priest!

    Now recall what happens in the episode A Change of Mind, when No.93 is called to confess his faults. "They're right of course. Quite right. I'm inadequate, inadequate, disharmonious. But I'm grateful, truly grateful, believe me. Believe me, believe me!"

   You will recall that those words are not No.93's own, but that a voice over the loudspeaker tells No.93 what to say. Coincidence do you think, or something still remaining in the mind from Pat McGoohan's school days?

   Endeavours have been made, in the past, to ascertain what the Pupil McGoohan's number was at Ratcliff college. But this proved to be no easy task, such is the extent of the Ratcliff archive. I don't expect it was No.6, that would be far too coincidental!

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