Arundel12report

For the first time, Arundel agents introduced the episodes we watched. Each agent had their own unique insights into the episodes (eg. Elsa Lancaster was once very good looking; spotting familiar locations; and telling when the leopard Napoleon wrestled wasn't real.

One message from most of the episodes this year was, clearly, that hospital is a very dangerous place to be if you are an UNCLE agent. First of all, poor Mr Waverly almost has his brain drained (Brain Killer), and then Illya gets kidnapped (Deadly Quest). In fact, Illya fared better when he was treated by the Arabian girl (Arabian Affair) who knifed him in the leg - as he was walking without difficulty in the following week's episode.

And the other story proved that girls' schools can also be very dangerous. As IK tried to escape the attentions of both the Arabian girl and the school girl (Her Master's Voice), he didn't count as 'getting the girl' in either of these episodes.

And talking of 'getting the girl' - this was what Ruth's session was about this year. She had - with the help of some other agents - reviewed the endings of all the episodes and films to see who gets the girl at the end. Most people thought that it would be around 60% to Napoleon and 40% to Illya. And, of course, Alexander Waverly does get the girl sometimes. There was sometimes a debate on whether anyone got the girl in a particular episode, but we agreed the results amongst us. The results were a real surprise. Look at the table - and do you see a correlation between the table and the popularity of seasons?

This year's picture was the one where Illya is sitting at a computer console, whilst Napoleon is standing on the other side with 3 glamorous women.

There were 45 entries in all. One theme was 'Napoleon always getting the girl', although there was also a lot of hilarity over other themes too.

The winning caption was: The girls are saying, Please introduce us to Illya. He knows how to push all the right buttons.

Jac managed to be fiendish, not once but twice, this year. As usual there was the quiz - with questions that would require us to spend the year watching UNCLE DVDs to be able to answer them.

Jac had prepared a lot of names from the series. She pinned a name to your back, and you had to find out which character you were by asking questions. In case that wasn't difficult enough, the person you asked could only answer 'yes' or 'no'. This led to questions like 'Am I a man?' and 'Am I in colour?'

Some of the names were the teeniest, weensiest obscure, so when you asked if you were a goody or a baddie, not everyone knew.

It was a great game to help people mix with each other - and some people managed to help you guess by using non-verbal signals.

The recently issued S&S DVD had a documentary where DMcC, Joanna Lumley, P J Hammond and Shaun O'Riordan talked about their memories of the show. They were all filmed separately and the interviews cut together.

I had the privilege of seeing P J and Shaun at an event a few years back,and they were clearly delighted by the interest taken in their work on the show. I hadn't heard Joanna talk much about it but she had obviously enjoyed working on it, and working with DMcC. She is sure that S&S were aliens. She did say it had been rather a 'boy's club' - and it did sound like that.

David claimed that he had helped out with only one effect (the end of the tunnel in the 'Soldier' story) but Shaun said that David had contributed a lot more. He also paid tribute to Joanna who had to work with some primitive effects which would have given a Health & Safety officer a heart attack!

Darryl was bursting to talk to us about bubblegum cards this year. What could have been a sticky subject was enlivened by handing around samples of the different kinds of cards that had been issued. I think most of us have some of the bubblegum cards from the sweetie cigarettes that were around in the 60s, but Darryl introduced us to the Australian set and gave us each a photocopy of them all to take away.

He also arranged for copies of the group photo to be signed by everyone, so we could each have a copy to take away with us.

People also contributed to the raffle once again - with special contributions from our American cousin, who brought a photo RV had signed especially for Arundel, and some goodies from the NCIS convention.

But I did think the highlight for all of us this year was the opportunity, on Saturday night, to see some of the 'extras' on the Time-Life DVDs.

We had already enjoyed watching this year's episodes on very clear copies, without the 'snow' or 'house of wax' melting images on our 'home' copies.

In the 'extras', we watched the main interview with RV & DMcC, Fandemonium (complete with the copy of The Network), and also David's home movies of the MGM set, and making a couple of episodes.

The latter were a sort of precursor to video diaries, and would be of interest to anyone interested in MGM's history - not just UNCLE fans.

For the joint interview, they obviously seemed very much at ease with each other, and had happy memories of the show, and working with LGC. Obviously, their memories were of different events, although they both named Concrete Overcoat as their favourite episode. And they differed over their approach to scenes in water, as RV has made no secret over the years of his dislike of water. DMcC was still upset at the time the knife trick went wrong, and I think RV had been unaware of any impact until they discussed it.

I look forward to RV's autobiography to see what else he has to say. He mentioned the tribute he has written to his co-stars, in the DVD.

Another special DVD was the one Ceindreih made of the winning scenes / lines in last year's award ceremony (our first Arundel awards ceremony). It was beautifully done and much appreciated by us all.

I had a great time and hardly stopped laughing all weekend. I'm already looking forward to Arundel 12, and thinking of the next award ceremony.