“I will not make any deals with you.
I will not be pushed,
filed,
stamped,
indexed,
briefed,
debriefed
or numbered.
My life is my own.
I resign.”

They are, if anything, words to live by. They are, if anything else, words I and many of my peers have tried to live by.

It is a hard internal argument whether to call these continually passing people heroes or just people whom I admire. This probably only exists because another more vehement individualist within my experience once tore a strip off me for referring to a living person as a hero. They were alive, human and to describe them as such was a weak sycophancy.

I can’t say I agree. Yet even if I don’t, said individualists argument seeded something in me that has left the hot footed back forth step hesitance at describing anyone as a hero. A sort of bully-thought you occassionally pick up from hot faced people who stress their words with a hint of some sort of violence, verbal or physical. The type that gives you momentary pause in conviction. Before, inwardly, you nod to yourself and who you are and were, smile and set off, on the road again…

It was the sister again. It always seems to be, when one of them passes.

An SMS message this time.

“Did ye see Patrick Mcgoohan died today?”

Patrick Mcgoohan was the sort of human you grew into admiring. It started as a kid – you watched things like ‘Dangerman’ and he was somehow cooler than Bond, ‘The Avengers’ and all that ilk. There was a relentless air to him that real shit kicker heroes had. You could easily see him ripping Grendel’s arm off. You also knew that somehow, he was too intelligent to get caught by Grendel’s mother.

I used to watch ’Dangerman’ on television when I was a kid. Repeats, sadly; I may not have been there at the beginning, but still, it’s one of those rare few things I have not revisited, for fear time and cynicism will have hollowed it out. A bit like ‘Get Smart’. The memory is just too good, the effect too long lasting, to be tarred.

From Scanners to Ice Station Zebra, Mcgoohan was the sort of actor who lifted proceedings. His skill at his craft was such that he could wring better performances from those around him. His turn as Edward Longshanks in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, so arresting in its regal viciousness that a film that could quite easily have failed, had it not the villain it needed to carry its exploitation flavored historical epic proceedings.

As with most of my generation, I came along that bit too late to enjoy the great actors on stage – in plays that would become signature pieces to them and their craft. It really must have been something to see Mcgoohan in Ibsen’s Brand. This, being a time when Orson Welles would refer to his skill at the craft as being “intimidating”.

However, in Mcgoohan’s own words: “I will always be a number.” Being remembered for only one work is viewed with mixed feelings. Some are proud, some resent being boxed in by the one creation. Critics sometimes seem to write about people in vaguely melancholy condescending ways. Likening it in some ways to being a one hit wonder with a pop song.

But what a work to be remembered for. What a glorious thing is ‘The Prisoner’.

From its mildly schizophrenic opening music – to its cloud-like psychological Orwellian plot blending spy fiction, science fiction, allegory in a surreal haze of suspicion, paranoia and questions. There was nothing like it – I’m not quite sure there has been or will be. It is hard not to see its influence everywhere in much modern fiction, film, television or otherwise. I know without a shadow of a doubt it is everywhere in everything I create. I will never be able to properly express the sheer marvel and joy I find within ‘The Prisoner’.

It would be years later that I would embark on a pilgrimage of sorts to Port Meirion. Clough Williams-Ellis’ near hallucinatory melding of nature and architechture. A middle twenties sort of reconnection with Mcgoohan and his series. It was a beautiful day and in the touch base back with the imagery that…

I could finish that paragraph – I could sit here and whittle out hours of the immensity that Patrick Mcgoohan’s vision and presence had on me and others. The hand it had in shaping the human I would become. Talk of the slight sadness I feel that I did not at least get to say thank you.

But that would be telling.

And that would be information.

“We were honoured to have with us a revolutionary of a different calibre.
He revolted.
Resisted. Fought. Held fast. Maintained. Destroyed resistance.
Overcame coercion.
The right to be a Person, Someone, or Individual.
We applaud his private war and concede that despite materialistic efforts he has survived intact and secure.
All that remains is recognition of a Man.”

Patrick Mcgoohan (March 19, 1928 – January 13, 2009)

Be Seeing You.