The Avengers Forever: Website News Archive

	Website News Archive February 2001

Time To Play "Catch Up." 27 February. The old "Pending" mailbox is threatening to burst again, so here are a few long-overdue updates (some from June of last year!—tsk, tsk): bloopers for "The Joker" from J.P. Hitesman, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station" from Adam, "Castle De'ath" from Jim Connell and "A Surfeit of H2O" from Beth Randall, "Man-Eater of Surrey Green" from Sara Hiser, and "From Venus With Love" from Derek Lyons, plus new trivia for "A Touch of Brimstone" from Stephen La Riviere and "Death at Bargain Prices" from Gregory A. McVey-Russell. There's also a bit more Who trivia trivia from Chris Krisocki, another small update on the Mystery Channel schedule courtesy of David L. Smith (yikes!), an expansion of the John Le Mesurier bio featuring a contribution from his cousin Autumn Downey, an expansion of the Ferdy Mayne bio by Linda Gillies, friend of a friend of Ferdy, a new bio for Anthony Ainely by Stephen La Riviere, and a very brief new bio for Julie Stevens by Yours Truly with help from Jonathan Gibbs. We'll cap things off with a bit of AvengerNews.

Finally, you've probably noticed the reworked Avengers Forever logo. The catalyst for this change has to do with a site I found recently: Wacky Genre TV Avengers Page, where you'll find chopped-up bits of my logo used as page title and background. (I'm certain they started with my art because no one else to my knowledge has paired the silhouettes with the text and added a drop shadow.) Perhaps it is an odd character quirk, but once my site logo has been stolen and mutilated like this (in much the same way as you'll find the original site logo all over the net), I often feel compelled to create something new. In this case, I killed three birds: I gave the site a face lift, I brought the logo closer to what I'd originally envisioned (but lacked the graphic tools at the time to execute), and also wound up with something that is virtually impossible to steal.

What'd She Say? 26 February. First-time visitor Rick Setchell tackles that age-old question of what Emma whispers in Steed's ear in "The Forget-Me-Knot." Also, Vince of Cornwall, another first-timer, notes that Vladek Sheybal (Zarcardi, "Cat Amongst the Pigeons") appeared in Casino Royale as Le Chiffre's representative at the East German auction.

New Trivia Question—With Answer! 25 February. The question posed about Emma's gun only yesterday has already been answered, and so has become a new entry in the Trivia Quiz. But the big story on Action News is ten new visitor reviews, nine of them from two new contributors: Iain Clarke, who is tackling The New Avengers, and Mónica Candelas Gallardo of Barcelona, Spain, who coincidentally reviewed the same episode as Jonathan Woods, the latter having taken brush to paper, so to speak, to produce a stunning, one-of-a-kind entirely illustrated review (note long download times for this one!).

New Links and Other Stuff. 24 February. Thanks to Mike Noon for passing along the URL for ABC at Large, a great little website devoted to the original production studio responsible for The Avengers. And for a tiny treat, visit the Black and White Television Gallery and scroll down to the bottom (thanks, Carlos). On the trivia front, a visitor has posed an excellent question, which I am posting here on the chance that someone might have an answer: What is the make, model and caliber of the gold-plated revolver that Emma Peel uses in the opening sequence of the color episodes? And finally, it's time for a retraction: Back on 19 January I wrote, "...my remark that Emma only ever appears in a leather catsuit on color film in "The Strange Case of the Missing Corpse" was challenged by a reference to her outfit in "You Have Just Been Murdered." However, assuming Piers Johnson is correct, the latter is PVC, so my assertion still stands." I have recently been informed by a very reliable source that the outfit in "Murdered" is indeed leather, so I was wrong, and the trivia on the respective pages has been corrected.

Willkommene deutsche Käufer! 22 February. Fans in Germany can now shop online at The Avengers eStore for original Avengers videos, New Avengers videos, books and music. In other news, Carlos Pagés has done it again and delivered another fine new wallpaper design. (And for MAC users, I've added some instructions to the Help me! page for wallpaper/desktop installation.)

New Videos from A&E (O/T). 17 February. A&E has released several episodes of Space: 1999 on video (Gareth Hunt appears in one episode, so it's not totally off-topic). Order VHS Set 1 and Set 2 or DVD Set 1 and Set 2. Back on topic, Brian Kelly has started a list on Yahoo! Groups. The focus of the list will be weekly discussions of the Emma Peel Era of The Avengers, beginning with the first episode and proceeding in order. And for some pure 24-karat trivia, the pictures of antique autos hanging on the walls in Steed's flat (color era) are online here.

Happy Valentine's Day! 13 February. So, what are you doing surfing the net instead of spending some Quality Time with your Sweetie? Oh... I see... Well, just in time for lonely Avengers fans, Pete Stampede has arrived with another load of great guest actor material. This time he has decided to revisit some of his more, well, emaciated pages and put some meat on their bones. Enjoy what essentially constitute brand new bios for Philip Bond, Julian Chagrin, Michael Forrest, Dudley Foster, Richard Montez, Jackie Pallo, Peter Swanwick and Talfryn Thomas.

Who is this Benson Guy...? 11 February. Jonathan Woods returns with yet another fabulous treat for the eyes and mind, this time for "Return of the Cybernauts."

Dennis Spooner Bio. 10 February. Thanks to a generous contribution by his sister, Anne Frost, there is now a wonderful biography on writer Dennis Spooner.

More on the First Emma. 7 February. Courtesy of authors Scot D. Ryersson and Michael Orlando Yaccarino, Elizabeth Shepherd's bio has more than doubled in size. Plus you'll find a number of outstanding new Visitor Reviews including a four-in-one review by Francis Hui and another illustrated masterpiece by Jonathan Woods.

Kinky Boots Identified. 6 February. Kinky Boots Volume 3 features "Death on the Rocks," "Intercrime," "The Medicine Men" and "The White Elephant," and Volume 4 has "Conspiracy of Silence," "Six Hands Across A Table," "Brief for Murder" and "The Outside-In Man."

Happy Birthday, Dear Patrick!
Patrick Macnee, born 6 February 1922

Update Those Bookmarks. 4 February. Dutch fans of The Avengers now have a place to call home on the World Wide Web: De Wrekers! Stop by and say hello to webmaster Hendrikus Schumacher of Holland. (Stop by even if you aren't Dutch—there are some great images, and Hendrikus speaks English.)

Where's Penelope Keith? 3 February. I've received an amazing amount of email over the issue of which nanny in "Something Nasty in the Nursery" is Penelope Keith—so much so that I've created a new page called Where's Nanny Brown? that takes a "scientific approach" to try and answer the question once and for all. And while I was busy grabbing images of all those nannies, I also updated the images for the episode page and added a series of "blooper" shots.

NameThat Nanny! 1 February. Some have suggested that the winking nanny in "Something Nasty in the Nursery" is Penelope Keith. But, golly, it just doesn't look like her to me—or to a lot of other fans...