The Prisoner - from Patrick McGoohan to Sergei Viktorovich Skripal

Be Seeing you!

S smiles to himself.  He is a free man, not a number.  He ushers his daughter out of his modern suburban house, pulls the door to, and helps her into his car.  Together they have a drink and a pizza in the city centre, smiling as the waiter takes their photo.  Then as they stroll away a fog overcomes him.  He struggles to breathe, as if he is being smothered by a great balloon...... He collapses, on a bench.....

When he regains consciousness he is disorientated.  His head hurts.  His mouth is dry. He pulls himself up to raise the blinds and looks out of the window.....

He is confused.  The phone on the side table rings.  S lifts the receiver.  Good morning to you.  A suave, cultivated voice speaks.  I hope you slept well?  Come and join me for breakfast.  Number 2.  The Green Dome.

Boris Lavrov offers S tea. With lemon or polonium?  Sergey Johnson smiles.  Now please, he oozes.  It's my job to check your motives.

I've been checked....

Of course, but when a man knows as much as you do a double check does no harm.....  A few details may have been missed.....

I wake in the village.  The sun is up; the tide is out. In my head I hear the voice of Patrick McGoohan.  I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.....  My life is my own.

Is it?

Thanks to my younger brother, Tim, I have just re watched all seventeen episodes of The Prisoner.  I first saw it fresh in the sixties, when it was a sensation.  Ever since then the clipped tones and sharp image of McGoohan have been in my head.  Every so often I have run across sands and shouted, I am not a number:  I am a free man!  

And I have gloriously vindicated the right of the individual to be individual.  I used to wear striped socks at school, for example....  I was Unmutual....

And I am surely not alone in this?

Patrick McGoohan first visited Portmeirion, an Italianate village in North Wales designed and built by architect Clough Williams-Ellis, in 1960 to film an episode of Danger Man.  So when he 'retired' from that series and wanted to produce something different he returned here to be imprisoned by unknown authorities.

The series was highly successful, with over eleven million viewers for most of the first showings, but it perplexed many and the final episode was not what everyone wanted. McGoohan's character, Number 6, is told that he is free to go, having survived a bewildering succession of examinations and tests.  

The ultimate revelation, however, is that we are prisoners of ourselves, which McGoohan defines as: about the most evil human essence.

The central theme of The Prisoner is, in McGoohan's words, the freedom of the individual.  I want to yell back, 'That's our right.  The loss of one's own individuality is a nightmare.'  

But there is a more concrete, more sinister, essence.....

What do you do with an ex- secret agent?

The Prisoner still has a large following. From April 20th to 22nd this year The Prisoner Appreciation Society (http://www.sixofone.co/)  will be holding PortmeiriCon 2018 celebrating 50+ years of The Prisoner.  

On June 23rd at Elstree Studios, Borehamwood, The Unmutual Website (& Quoit Media Limited) will be presenting NOT A NUMBER, A Patrick McGoohan Retrospective..... (see http://www.theunmutual.co.uk/)

If you haven't ever seen it, The Prisoner might now seem a curiosity.  It isn't perfect, for sure, and some of the costumes and hairstyles, special effects and sets are very sixties, but despite these and other drawbacks it still intrigues and surprises. McGoohan himself is an impressive presence and many of the supporting actors keep up with him, though Leo McKern temporarily broke down with the strain.  It was ground-breaking in many ways; it challenged the TV industry and the viewing public; it was unusual in that its 'hero' kept failing to get away and that there was no arch villain to blame it all on in the end....

And it was worryingly prescient.  Whose side are you on?  How many times have you been captured on CCTV today?  Are you a number?  Or a free person?

I am a privileged visitor at a Catholic boarding school.  On one side of the corridor there are evenly spaced wooden doors, set into the block stone walls with ogival arches over each frame.  On the other side there is a cloistered square, monastic in architecture. It is by no means a prison, though to an imaginative child some of its features might seem just a little enclosing.....

A framed article mounted on the corridor wall catches my eye. The heading is: Patrick McGoohan, 19th March 1928 - 13th January 2009, Old Ratcliffian 1940 - 1944, Actor.  

Apparently he excelled at maths and boxing.....

Patrick McGoohan was born in Queens, New York City, but was brought up in Ireland and then London.  With the blitz came evacuation to Loughborough, and school at Ratcliffe College.  In twenty years he was Danger Man, and then, 86 episodes later, the highest paid TV actor in the country, he resigned..... 

And he became The Prisoner.....

After the last episode of The Prisoner (Fall Out) aired on February 2nd 1968 there was such an outcry that McGoohan had to escape with his family to a remote place in Wales until the furore had died down. He subsequently moved to Switzerland, and then to California.  In the 70's he wrote, directed and appeared in episodes of Columbo, and in 1995 played Edward I in Braveheart. 

On January 13th 2009, aged eighty, he died.....

Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time
It's easy
All you need is love
All you need is love



Be seeing you!