we knew you weren't a number

i LOVED the prisoner. i LOVED patrick mcgoohan



patrick mcgoohan

Actor who turned down the roles of James Bond and The Saint to find fame instead as the anonymous Number Six in The Prisoner.

Patrick McGoohan, who died on January 13 aged 80, starred in two of the most memorable British television series of the 1960s, Danger Man and The Prisoner.

If Danger Man was somewhat typical of 1960s espionage drama and derring-do, The Prisoner was a more cerebral affair in which McGoohan played a character known only as Number Six. The series, which was made in Britain and drew on elements of science fiction, concerned a former spy who was incarcerated in a small enclave called The Village. Attempts to escape were consistently frustrated by the mysterious Number One. It was McGoohan himself who came up with the idea for the show, and he himself directed several episodes. Indeed, many aspects of the series were based on his own life: for example, the birth date of Number Six, revealed in one episode, was the same as his own.

Patrick McGoohan was born in the Queens district of New York on March 19 1928, the son of Irish Roman Catholics who three years earlier had emigrated to the United States. The family returned to Ireland when Patrick was an infant, but their attempts to make a living on the land proved fruitless, and in 1938 they decided to move to Britain..........