The first broadcast of the TV series The Avengers, starring Patrick MacNee as John Steed took place 60 years ago today, in 1961. Some things you might not know about the show:
- For anyone who isn’t familiar with the show at all, it was a British espionage drama which ran from 1961 to 1969. The central character was an agent called John Steed, who wore a suit and a Bowler hat and carried an Umbrella (which was a sword in disguise). He worked with a succession of assistants, mostly female.
- The first episode was called Hot Snow. In this, John Steed wasn’t the main character. The central character in Hot Snow was a doctor called David Keel who was investigating his girlfriend’s murder. As it happened, a drug ring was responsible, and John Steed was investigating them and asked Keel to partner with him, as needed, to solve crimes. In the first series, there were some episodes in which Steed didn’t appear at all. Steed became the central character when the actor playing Keel left the show at the end of season 1.
- John Steed (Patrick Macnee) had six partners in the course of the show: Dr. David Keel (Ian Hendry), Dr. Martin King (Jon Rollason), Venus Smith (Julie Stevens), Mrs. Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman), Mrs. Emma Peel (Dame Diana Rigg), and Tara King (Linda Thorson).
- Steed’s full name is John Wickham Gascoyne Beresford Steed; he was born sometime between 1922 and 1925 and attended Eton, where he got into a fight with the school bully, one James Bond, and got expelled. He joined the Coldstream Guards and served in WWII. He reached the rank of major before moving into the intelligence services.
- He had three different London addresses: 5 Westminster Mews, 4 Queen Anne's Court and 3 Stable Mews.
- He was a lover of wine, especially Champagne, but being the epitome of a British gentleman, he also liked his Tea. As Emma Peel informs her replacement, Tara King, he likes it stirred anti-clockwise.
- Arguably his most famous female partner was Emma Peel, played by Diana Rigg. She joined the cast in 1965. While developing the character, the writers decided they wanted her to have “man appeal”, and from there decided they would name her accordingly. She was originally going to be called Samantha Peel, with her first name shortened to “Mantha” but the name which stuck derived from a verbal shorthand for “man appeal” – “M Appeal”.
- She was born Emma Knight, and married Peter Peel, a pilot whose plane went missing over the Amazon rain forest, and was presumed dead. She has genius level intelligence and is an expert in fencing and Kung Fu. (she was, in fact, the first person to do Kung Fu on screen, even though the producers wanted her to stick to judo. Diana Rigg learned Kung Fu in secret and used it anyway.) When Diana Rigg was leaving the show to take up a role in the Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the writers had her husband re-appear, so Emma Peel leaves her job to go back to him.
- Diana Rigg wasn’t the only actor in The Avengers to also appear in a Bond movie. Honor Blackman was Pussy Galore in Goldfinger and Patrick Macnee played Sir Godfrey Tibbett in A View to a Kill. In The Avengers episode called Too Many Christmas Trees, Steed gets a Christmas card from Cathy Gale postmarked "Fort Knox", a reference to Honor Blackman's appearance as Pussy Galore.
- It was the first British TV show to be sold to an American network. Thanks to its popularity across the Pond, Diana Rigg was able to make an early bid for wage equality. She discovered the cameraman was being paid more than she was, and demanded a pay rise, or she’d walk out. Because the show was popular in the US, they wanted to hang on to her so they granted her request.
New Year New Reading Challenge?
I can help. Here are links to books which meet potential criteria:
- Death and Faxes
- Killing Me Softly
- Settling the Score
- Secrets and Skies
- Over the Rainbow
- Closing the Circle
A title with six words
A book with a number in the title
A book with a colour in the title
Short story collections/A book with a green cover
A book published in the last year/during lockdown
A book you can finish in a day/A book under 200 pages
A book featuring characters from a deck of cards
A Book set during Christmas
A book with a place in the title
A Debut novel
A book with a plant or flower on the cover/A book about siblings
A book with a female villain or criminal
Includes space travel
Features Royalty
Books featuring skiing or snowboarding
A book with the Olympic games in it
A book with a bird in the title
A book featuring a secret society
A book featuring time travel/alternative dimensions
Raiders Trilogy:
Books featuring superheroes
Books featuring ghosts
From an Indie Publisher/Self published/An author you've not read before/A female author/A genre you wouldn't normally read/A book outside your comfort zone/A book by an author with your initials and your initials are JH
All of them!
More details can be found here
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