atommickbrane, last night she and I and my scootering friend Kate went on a mission to the Barbican for The Avengers 50th Anniversary Evening: two classic episodes (oh, like every single episode isn't a classic) and a Q&A with director Gerry O’Hara and set designer David Marshall.Both episodes were black-and-white, new to me, and highly entertaining. Mandrake, the tale of an unscrupulous doctor and a Cornish churchyard, was not only a Mrs Gale story (Honor Blackman, rowr) but guest starred the ever-sexy John Le Mesurier as the doctor and featured an entertainingly ditzy performance from Randall & Hopkirk's Annette Andre as a cracker salesgirl with theatrical leanings.
The Hour That Never Was is a fantastic Diana Rigg story (though poor Patrick had noticeably chubbed out in the face department between series), full of eerie abandoned-airfield shots and with a lovely glimpse of Steed's wartime past as the heavy-drinking hellraiser of RAF Hamelin.
The two old boys made the subsequent Q&A a lot more fun than I expected, especially naughty Gerry.
And I got to introduce friends from different areas of my life, and they seemed to get on OK. Though who wouldn't when there's Avengers to bond over?
Today I have the theme tune lodged firmly in my head, which makes a change from Comedy Central's jingle advertising its 'Joey Tribbiani's Guide To Dating' Friends marathon ('All the sexy ladies, guess what? you're in luck / Joey's gonna invite you up to see his chicken and his duck').
