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Just picked up a A/unc britannia £2 2015 for £3 at a local antique and collectors fair got to be a bargain with only 650 000 made I am sure these are pretty underrated by collectors and will fetch a lot more than £3 in the future , I dont know when but probably when the mail get hold of this information

Very nicely put. Now that you mention it, I think you are right about the 13 episodes. I also believe that PMG only had a hazy idea of the ending, maybe the general principles only, but in the haste to put something together he went with outrageously psychedic and iconically 1960s imagery, chucking anything into the pot that worked. It must have been fun to come up with.

Always glad for happy collectors. I am not sure of value anymore, but hopefully they gain. I am of similar opinion about the currency 1981 10P....

I also feel that the booming laughter which followed "I am not a number, I am a free man" was a cryptic message to us all. Much more true today, in fact, than it was back then. #dem bones, dem bones, dem...dry bones, now hear the word of the Lord. I wonder what inspired that being included.

I don't know how accurate this is, but I once read that there were intended to be two series of The Prisoner (at least). The first series was to be 13 episodes, and they had already filmed the first two episodes of Series 2 - "Living In Harmony" and "The Girl Who Was Death" - which do have a different feel about them to the initial 13. However, for the reasons DaveG says, it wasn't taken up so they broadcast them immediately following the supposed end of Series 1. But they did need to end the show somehow, so McGoohan was instructed to do that, and he is listed as the writer for episodes 16 and 17, for which they also brought back Leo McKern as Number Two. I'm not sure McGoohan even knew how it was all meant to end - if at all - which explains the very psychedelic and confusing final episode which left more balls in the air than they knew what to do with. The very end though, does make you think that he never did escape ... though whether that means The Village or - by analogy - from what society was becoming, the whole show being a metaphor of some kind, is left rather open-ended.

I think the clue to the main reason for this lies in the total number of episodes of the whole series, which was 17. I'm not sure that any other series has had such an odd number before finishing. My understanding is that the filming was incredibly expensive - it did use some cutting edge techniques for its time - and Lew Grade (I think it was) was getting nervous about the spiralling costs. Patrick McGoohan, whose series it essentially was, was told to wrap it up PDQ. Hence the last two episodes seem slightly disconnected from the rest. It is also likely that these two were rather cobbled up in a hurry, with little real build up to them, and were likely hastily scripted around PMG's own, not completely clear, vision of how the whole thing should end. I seem to recall that there was originally envisaged that there would be 24 episodes made, which means 7 are 'missing.' To the best of my knowledge, there are at least 2 for which scripts, or at least story outlines, were produced, but were rejected at the time by PMG. Whether these would have added to our understanding, I'm not sure, since the whole series was, I think, intended to leave the viewer guessing, even though some of the explanations were subtly there. For instance, in the final few seconds of the final episode, when the butler stands at the door of the prisoner's house, the door opens automatically, as doors did in the village, suggesting quite clearly, that for all the appearence of his escape, he was really still trapped. My view is that if anybody tries to discern explanations for everything that went on, they will drive themselves crazy because the explanations just aren't there, deliberately. That's what I liked about the whole thing. In my view there has been nothing remotely so unusual and interesting since.

I have to say that I don't think we could have wished for more considering we took in someone with whom we have nothing in common for as long as it takes. She will have been here for 4 weeks this coming Friday. Language is a bit of an issue as it is proving difficult to find her work where there is minimal customer contact, but every day I hear a few more words used, so hopefully within a few months the communication problems will reduce. The first few weeks have been a bit labour intensive on my part carting her around to get the basics sorted such as signing on, registering with a doctor, taking her shopping, trying to teach basic English and write benefits logs and job applications etc, but that's part of the deal when there's no common language and will ultimately pay off when she is able to stand on her own feet comfortably. Frankly, the above post where someone claims they have spent a lot of money on the refugee is complete b******s. Additional costs for taking someone in - a gas safety certificate and some energy, set against which the host will get £350 a month paid in arrears for the first year. There's no obligation to feed them at your expense, though most would at least until cashflow is established. The host would be quids in if calculated on an honest basis, even if food was provided. How much does a set of house keys cost for God's sake?