Bureau of Visual Records

   At first glance the sign “walk on the grass” seems rather strange and eccentric, and yet it is simple psychology. The regular sign “Don’t Walk On The Grass” automatically makes one want to walk on the grass, thus breaking the rule. However the open invitation to walk on the grass instantly takes away the desire to do so. In other words, take away the rules, and there’s no point in rebelling!

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Just a Thought!

    The original script for ‘Many Happy Returns’ called for filming around Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus, specifying a sequence outside Lillywhites where a passer-by gives Number 6 a two-shilling coin thinking him to be a beggar. Well that wouldn’t be difficult looking at the raggedy state of Number 6. The two-shilling coin he uses to deposit the roll of film, containing photographic evidence of The Village, in a left luggage locker at Piccadilly Circus tube station for safe keeping.

    Long before that, ZM73 had another roll for film sent to him by Doctor Jacob Seltzman. This roll of film he left at the World Camera shop on Victoria Colonnade in London. The developed prints to be made into slides. The proprietor gave ZM73 a receipt for the roll of film. The receipt he gave to his fiancée Janet Portland for safe keeping, in time of trouble. However, seeing as how Sir Charles Portland could have been able to obtain that receipt from his daughter, and thereby the slides which had been made up from the photographic prints. Might not it have been safer for ZM73 to have put the receipt in the wall safe behind the television set in his study? Thereby removing the need for the character of Janet Portland from the episode, which would then have required a different title!

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The Prisoner At 50

   Getting on for 50 years after the event, and we think we know the Prisoner. Yes there are things we do know, and things we think we know, and yet there are still things that we can never know the answer to. Such as where did the maid in ‘Arrival’ hide? The maid the Prisoner saw standing on the small balcony of his cottage waving a yellow duster in the air. The Prisoner ran round to the door of his cottage, but there wasn’t any sign of her, not until he looked out of the window to se her scurrying away along the path and down some steps. The Prisoner should have met the girl coming out of his cottage, but he didn’t. And what made the maid leave the cottage of ‘6 Private’ so quickly? She couldn’t have been afraid to be caught there, after all she was only doing her job, even if the room didn’t need dusting!
    And Fotheringay, who seemed genuinely looking forward to seeing an old colleague again. It may be supposed that he had no choice than to do as the Colonel instructed. But what Fotheringay did was a betrayal, but let’s tell it like it is. The only reason Fotheringay was in The Village was to help egg the cake! If Number 6 had arrived in what he thought to be the Colonel’s office, without sight nor sound of Fotheringay, he might, he just might have smelt a rat. So Fotheringay was there merely to dress the scene. Once that had been achieved his services were dispensed with. So what were these embarrassing questions which might have been asked? Wasn’t Fotheringay meant to be away from the department? Perhaps he was working for another department within British Intelligence, and his superiors were not supposed to know about it. And the Colonel, he looked a worried man once Number 6 had discovered the deception. He was effectively doing the job Number 2 normally carried out, so perhaps Number 2 told Fotheringay that the Colonel would give him further orders when he returns to London……….. but perhaps he didn’t actually return to London. After all it’s usually Number 2 who carries the can for failure. But in this case Number 2 hadn’t got it wrong.  So perhaps in this instance the Colonel paid the price for failure, whatever that price might have been. But this is all conjecture, because we simply do not know.
    On another matter, where did that bloke get to, the Prisoner saw up in the Bell Tower in ‘Arrival?’ As a matter of fact a number of fans used to insist that it was a child! What’s more I once came across someone at a memorabilia event, who told me he had met someone who claimed they had been that child!
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Exhibition of Arts And Crafts

                           “Local Service Only!”

BcNu

Sixty Second Interview With Doris

    Doris “Yes gentlemen, what can I get you?”
    “I’ll have a pint of old and mild, and my friend here will have a pint of bitter.”
    “We haven’t seen you gentlemen in here before.”
    “No we’re not regulars, so I don’t expect we’ll get the first one on the house.”
    “I’m sorry I’m not quite with you. That will be one shilling.”
    “I'm Number……. I mean J. G. Hyde, and this is my photographic colleague…..Sid Lexy. We contribute to The Tally Ho.”
    “The Tally Ho, what’s that?”
    “It’s a newspaper.”
    “I’ve never heard of it.”
    “Smile” {click goes the camera}
    “You served a gentleman in here the other day.”
    “I serve lots of men.”
    “This one wore a raincoat and flat cap. A blue shirt and a goldie coloured tie.”
    “Oh him. He threw up in the gents, I told him he’d be sick, but he took no notice.”
    “Why was he sick, something wrong with the food?”
    “Certainly not!”
    “Perhaps you sold him a bad pint?”
    “Its wasn’t that, it was the cocktail of drinks he drank, that would make anyone sick.”
    “You mean he did it deliberately?”
    “Perhaps it was for a bet.”
    “What with himself?”
    “There was this girl.”
    “Girl?”
    “Smile” {click goes the camera}
    “What was she like?”
    “Slim, attractive, dressed all in white.”
    “And she was with this man?”
    “No, but she was coming out of the ladies toilets as he was going into the gent’s.”
    “Funny though. She asked me if I would help play a trick on that man.”
    “Trick, what sort of trick?”
    “Well she gave me a pint glass, said I was to put that gentleman’s pint into it.”
   “And you did.”
   “Yes. He drank his pint of mild bitter beer and put the empty glass on the bar. I remember asking him if he wanted another. No he said, one of those was quite enough.”
    “What did he do then?”
    “He ordered that cocktail of drinks then went into the toilet to be sick.”
    “And the glass?”
    “That’s the strange thing, it had a sticker on the bottom of it. I remember because I noticed it when I washed it up.”
    “Sticker? What did the sticker say?”
    “You can read it for yourself. It’s on the bottom of your glass.”
    J.G. Hyde picked up his glass of beer and began to drink. A sticker on the bottom began to reveal itself. You…..have…..just……..been…..poisoned!”
    “Quick Whisky, Vodka, Gin, Brandy, Tia Maria, Tequila, Schnapps, Sherry, and Drambuie.”
    “You’ll make yourself sick sir!”
    “I felt sick the moment I clapped eyes on your dress!”
    {The sound of vomiting!}
    “There I told you so! Someone get a mop and bucket!”

Reporter J. G. Hyde
Photographer Sid Lexy

The Prisoner

    Why should Number 6 hide blank sheets of paper in the Stoneboat? Why should Number 6 feel the need to do anything, especially to avenge Number 73’s death the way he did. After all it’s unlikely that he knew the woman. Mind you in his line of work it’s not beyond possibility, after all there had been Engadine, as well as ‘B.’ One a French socialite, the other clearly a spy.
   I wonder how Number 6 and Number 2 got on before the episode of ‘Hammer Into Anvil?’ There must have been a time when Number 2 of the previous episode relinquished the post, and the new Number 2 took over. Number 2 didn’t simply take up his position on the morning of ‘Hammer Into Anvil,’ he’d been questioning Number 73 for a start, perhaps he was the cause of her slashing her wrists in her first bid to commit suicide. Although that might simply be put down to the fact of her situation, having woken up one day in The Village.
   I like to think that fictionally speaking Number 2 was Thorpe. That sceptic who assisted the Colonel in checking certain details of their ex-colleague’s report. The feeling is that Thorpe didn’t reckon his ex-colleague very much. He might have put out certain feelers himself about The Village, if he and the Colonel didn’t already know about it before ZM73 gave them his report. He might have volunteered his services, they might have come seeking him. But either way, if Number 2 was Thorpe, The Village didn’t suit him. True, the character of Number 2 isn’t quite that of Thorpe. But the environment of The Village has the power to change most men, confined there without a friend in the world. It makes me wonder how Number 6 and Number 2 got on together when they first met {before Number 6 was taken forcibly to see Number 2} at least Number 6 would have had no doubts about Thorpe. That once again he had been betrayed by the people he once worked with. And that neither man had much regard for the other. More than that, Thorpe would have had Number 6 at his mercy. But on the other hand, perhaps it was the way as it was with Number 2 of the previous episode, that he and Number 2 had had nothing to do with each other, not until that particular episode!

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Six Knows The Way!

    “You know the way, now show us.”
                                   {The High Court Judge – Fall Out}
    That is what was spoken to Number 6 during ‘Fall out,’ I think it was a compliment, but certainly it was part of the praise being heaped upon him by the High Court Judge, or President, in this particular instance. But in France a President is a Judge, so its all the one thing. And in ‘Harmony’ in THEPRIS6NER, while Six is driving his bus on the guided tours around The Village {apparently he was a bus driver} and out into the desert, a couple of times he saw Two sitting in the back of the bus. He asked Six on those two occasions “Do you know the way?” It may be supposed that Two was simply asking the driver if he knew his bus route. On the other hand it might be some symbolic reworking of the phrase used by the President in ‘Fall Out.’ Meaning that if Six knows the way, then he should show them, and then Two can pass The Village onto him.

Breathe in….breathe out……more Village.