Pictorial Prisoner!

  It was once asked what kind of cigarettes Patrick McGoohan smoked. I should say endless ones by the look of it!

BCNU

60 Second Interview with No.66

    No.113 "I'm sorry to trouble you, but you remind me of someone."
    No.66 "Who might that be?
    "An ex-Admiral, well they say he's an ex-Admiral, but that just might be a delusion."
   "His or yours?"
   "Theirs. Look, you're dressed like Number Sixty-six, you're wearing his cap and badge, and you look like him."
   "Then I must be, mustn’t I?"
   No.113b “Smile.” {click goes the camera}
   "Who?"
   "Number Sixty-six."
   "But there's something not quite right here."
   "How do you mean?"
   "You say you are Number Sixty-six an ex-Admiral."
   "I didn't say that."
   "Yes you did!"
   "No I didn't, you approached me. Who are you looking for lad?"
   "I'm not looking for anyone."
   "Then why come here bothering me?"
   "I just thought you reminded me of......but you are not him."
   "But you said that I am wearing the cap and badge, then it follows that I'm this ex-Admiral Number Sixty-six."
   "Look, what kind of game are you playing?"
   "I'm not playing any game lad. Sit down and help me with my plastic boats. You can have the pocket battleship the Graf Spee, I'll have HMS Exeter, Ajax, and Achilles and the Cumberland.......action stations, all hands to battle stations, range half a mile, open fire when within range..........Flag officer send a message to both Exeter and Cumberland................"

Reporter No.113

Photographic colleague No.113b

Village Life!

    "If he'd moved the King's knight instead of the Queen's knight, he'd have been covered."
    "Yes, but the bishop would have taken the knight."
   "Yes, but the Queen would have taken the knight checkmate."
   "Off-side surely!"
   "What?"
   "If the Queen move beyond the back four before the ball was played, the Queen would have been off-side. That would have led to a free kick. The free kick taken, passed to the King's pawn, a quick one two with the Queen's bishop, who nutmegs the centre half, and seeing the King off his line, chips the ball over the goalkeeper, one nil to United!"
    "Mmmm, keen football supporter are you?"

BCNU

More Village!

  In the original series of ‘the Prisoner’ and more precisely in the episode ‘A B and C,’ No.6 places an earring given to him by a woman at Engadine’s party. This he places on the number six on the roulette table. The number six comes up, and the Prisoner is given a key by the roulette croupier. In THEPRISONER this scene is reinterpreted by Two giving his son a key to his safe during the episode Schizoid, as pictured here.

    What's more there is another, but much stronger similarity between the two series, and that's the Shopkeeper. Oh, nothing to do with the Shopkeeper-No.19, or is it fifty-six, as played by Denis Shaw in 'Arrival,' and 'Checkmate,' but the shopkeeper No.112 in 'Hammer Into Anvil' played by Victor Woolf. He watches No.6 listen to the Davier recordings of Bizet's I'arlesienne. Then seeing the question marked word 'Security' on the front page of The Tally Ho, immediately telephones No.2 as soon as No.6 leaves the General Store. And that's the same after No.6 buys that Cuckoo clock! Well it's much the same way with this shopkeeper-37927 in THEPRIS6NER played by David Butler.

    As soon as Six, having enquired about a receipt for a knife, leaves the Village Shop, 37927 is on the telephone to report to Two. And the same can be said after 37927 has shared an illicit cigarette with who he thinks is un-Two. He's again on the telephone reporting to Two, as soon as the Un-Two has left the Village Shop. And that's another thing, the number 37927, that's one hell of a number for a citizen of the Village. Even if this was the very last number in the Village, 37927 being representative of the number of the populace in the Village, that number alone must surely turn the Village into the size of a City!

Be seeing you

Thought For The Day

   Science tells us, that for every action there is a reaction. The action in this case being the Prisoner resignation from a job he could stand any longer {well that's a good enough reason as any} the reaction being his abduction to the Village.
   There is also the "cause and effect" to consider. Something caused the Prisoner to chuck up his job, we are unsure of his motivation, but the effect is plain, the Prisoner's abduction to the Village. Whether or not the powers that be were justified in taking the action they did, would depend on whose side you are on. The fact that "they" did it to his own man, well that smacks as being far worse, than had the "other side" abducted the Prisoner! And yet it can also be seen that the British were simply protecting their investment in the Prisoner, and in that, protecting other people!
   So what can we learn from this? That without the cause and effect of Patrick McGoohan's resignation from 'Danger Man,' we may very well not have had a television series called 'the Prisoner!'

Be seeing you

Exhibition of Arts and Crafts

   From My Watercolour Landscape/Portrait Period.

                                     "The Prisoner And His Village"

BcNu

The Prisoner Under The Spotlight

    Having resigned his job, by handing it his letter of resignation to a balding, bespectacled man, sat behind a desk, the Prisoner drives back to his home through the streets of London, shadowed by two Undertakers in a black hearse. Arriving home, at No.1 Buckingham Place, Westminster, London, the Prisoner then collects two ready packed suitcases. From his desk, his passport and an airline ticket to Europe, and packs two holiday travel brochures into one of the suitcases. Well there's nothing much wrong with that, save for the two travel brochures. The only reason for them that I can think of, is that they indicate the ultimate destination of the Prisoner. That being a topical beach somewhere in the south seas.  His first port of call having fled London, could very well have been Paris, seeing as he has an airline ticket for Europe. And if it was Paris, that would relate to what he was dreaming in ‘A B and C,’ the scene where the Prisoner was discussing with Madame Engadine, about what he was going to do in his new life. That he was taking a long holiday, because he needed time to think. Somewhere different, somewhere quiet, hence the tropical beach somewhere.

         But this is quite incidental, because the Prisoner left it all too late. They came for the Prisoner before he was expecting them, hence the Prisoner's haste to get away, to escape, before they came for him. Because I'm sure he was expecting them, otherwise why not simply stay at home, put his feet up, and consider his future? It's almost as though the prisoner was running away, not simply going on holiday.

          The Prisoner might very well have been expecting them, but not quite so soon, and probably not in the guise of two Undertakers. Not that the Prisoner actually saw the two Undertakers, as they parked their hearse outside his house. The Undertakers gained entry to the Prisoner's house by the aid of a key, and pumped nerve gas into the study through the keyhole via a gas gun, of the type seen in both episodes of ‘The Schizoid Man’ and ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling.’ Then the coffin was carried into the house, the lid removed and the unconscious body of the Prisoner placed inside and the lid replaced. And the coffin then carried outside the waiting hearse. Picture the scene as the two Undertakers carried the coffin out of 1 Buckingham Place, across the pavement, and the coffin placed in the back of the hearse, with the unconscious body of the Prisoner inside, being abducted from his home. It is an everyday occurrence, the Undertakers collecting a body from someone's home. So innocent would the scene be, that any passer by would not give a second glance. A gentleman passing by at the time, would indeed have removed his hat in respect of the dead, as gentleman would do. But in this case, and how many cases like it, the coffin actually contained the unconscious body of a man being abducted from his home, by two agents, their origin quite unknown!

Be seeing you