John Garforth

In 1964 I married for the second time (my first wife had been an actress and she went off on tour for months etc. etc. - not a recipe for stability) I needed more money. I was already editing Camden's NALGO branch magazine and doing most of the work on the Camden Journal, our library magazine so it seemed to make sense to try my hand at a detective novel.

In fact this was never published, but through it I found an agent and began to receive commissions as a noveliser of television series and as a ghost writer These included 'The Avengers', 'Champions', four Paul Temple novels, Sexton Blake and - the silliest of them all, a novel called The Pallisers based on Simon Raven's television series. But I earned more during this fifteen year period than most reputable novelists and certainly more from writing than local government was paying.

Although I enjoyed writing them and loved the incidental glamour of trips to Pinewood and meeting people like Bette Davis and Diana Rigg - Francis Durbridge was always a trifle suspicious because he thought I put in too many jokes and he couldn't understand why I wasn't writing novels of my own. If he recognised anything funny he would earnestly strike it out.

During this period I also wrote 'A Day in the Life of a Victorian Policeman' for Geo. Allen & Unwin. I was runner up in The Times/Jonathan Cape Crime Writing Competition, and as part of my day job I wrote a documentary for Radio London about Alexandra Palace, a couple of mystery cycle plays for Mid-Pennine Arts, and of course vast quantities of stuff for the local and arts press. I think I am proudest of writing for Encore (the magazine for vital theatre) who reproduced one of my pieces in The Encore Reader published by Methuen. It was, I am ashamed to say, an attack on Arnold Wesker.

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My Avengers Past Catching Up with Me

I have recently received correspondence from the webmaster of the French Avengers fansite who came across this website. Here is the correspondence.

Good afternoon Mr Garforth,

I have spent a couple of hours reading your site. I've found it by luck. I'm the webmaster of the French site dedicated to The Avengers, Le Monde des Avengers (http://www.theavengers.fr/index.htm) and I was very surprised when I read the following assertion :

I assume that anybody coming to this website is concerned with my activities as a Staffordshire County Councillor or my work as an activist in the Labour party. So most of this material is devoted to those aspects of my life.

I have read your four novels and that is how I've found your website ! In fact, I had to explore the website to be sure you are the same person !

I have written a review of each book concerning the series and here is the one about the novels: http://www.theavengers.fr/faq/faqbibliotheque_romans.htm#1

My favourite ones are : The Laugh was on Lazarus and Heil Harris !

I would be very honoured if you accept to answer the following questions for the site.

1 When and how did you discover The Avengers ?

2 What are your favourite season and episodes ?

3 Why did you decide to write novels on The Avengers ?

4 What is your favourite one ?

5 You wrote you have met Diana Rigg: What was her reaction to the novels ?

6 Did you meet other members of the cast or production ?

7 Was it easy to write on Steed and Mrs Peel, compared with others novelizations of televisions series like The Champions and Paul Temple ?

8 Were the novels based on episodes of the series ?

9 Did you have any feedback from actors, the production or fans ?

10 Your novels were a world wide success (They were translated in French, German, Dutch and they were even sold in Chile). How do you explain that success ?

11 Why did you write on your website the following passage. Don't you think it is a privilege that these novels are still popular among fans forty years after their publication ?

I recommend that if anybody comes across any of these works in second hand shops or jumble sales you buy them and destroy them unread and I will reimburse you the 50p or whatever you paid, as a service to literature.

Best

Denis

My repy is as follows:

Hi Denis,

It was kind of you to write so good naturedly about my rather frivolous comment quoted at the end of your letter. It is of course quite unwarranted and since posting it I have several times thought of removing it. The fact is that for a 'serious' novelist my c.v. is a disqualification from being thought a proper writer. At the time, in the mid-60s I approached the task with genuine enthusiasm. 'The Laugh Was on Lazarus' was conceived as I thought with originality, an imaginative opening chapter (I have given public readings of it) and contains some effective writing. 'Heil Harris' must have some virtue because the German publisher used the other three but refused to publish that one. My own favourite was 'Gloria Munday' because for me it was a very 60s-Twiggy-pirate radio saturated time which I thought then that I had captured quite well. My main regret is that I was writing the four books to a printer's deadline, and I think the fourth of them (Heil Harris) was rushed and therefore suffered.

The fact that television spin-offs were a despised genre was brought home to me on the occasion that I met Diana Rigg at her flat in Dolphin Square with her PA (or an ITV PA assigned to her) called Marie Donaldson. I don't think Diana Rigg had read any of them, but Marie Donaldson vetted them all and she thought that one of them (probably Gloria Munday) verged dangerously towards an explicit sex scene. I explained that what I was trying to do - and Miss Rigg interrupted imperiously with 'I know what you're trying to do!' So I gave up any attempt to talk intelligently to her. She thought she was royalty and was treated so by all her hangers-on.

That is why my favourite Avengers series was the Joanna Lumley period, I'm sure I'd have fallen in love with her. But by 1967 the Avengers was already in deep trouble because the Americans thought Patrick McNee was too old and they wanted him replaced by Roger Moore, who in fact had bigger fish to fry. Around this time they also brought back the original producer (John Pierce or some such name) who wasted a lot of my time discussing writing ideas - the old mantra about new ideas and new writers - before dishing out the new series (it was Tara King by then) to the same old gang who wrote everything around that time.

On one of these occasions when I was summoned to Elstree I watched Tara King dodging in and out of doors and running along a balcony in what I assume was an audition. That was also how I met Bette Davis.

Now back to your questions:

1. I discovered The Avengers during the Honor Blackman series, which were probably taken more seriously forty five years ago than they are now.

2. I can't answer this - in my memory they are a continuum, no longer divided up into episodes. My favourite series was either Honor Blackman's or Joanna Lumley's.It always seemed to me that Diana Rigg was acting with subtitles across the bottom of the screen, 'acting' and she was more serious than this stuff. But them I'm prejudiced. It wasn't until Bleak House that I took her seriously again.

3. I didn't decide - my agent at the time asked me to do it because he thought my work combined thriller and comedy and class and thought I could do the job.

4. see above

5. see above.

6. see above

7. I found them all easy - I think that was why I was chosen for the jobs. If you have read The Champions you'll see that I set myself the challenge of combining the pilot (which had not been seen at the time) and the first couple of episodes into an integrated plot. I thought I did it quite well, but that is for others to judge. At least it kept me interested.

8. Not The Avengers novels, The Champions and Paul Temple yes. The Paul Temple scripts were old radio serials from the Bristol days which I thought were dated so I tried to make them slicker, like the Francis Matthews TV series to which they were linked. I think Francis Durbridge was slightly hurt that the same old gang (see para 2) wrote the TV series instead of Francis himself and he was suspicious of me, deleting any comedy that he detected.

9. I had no feedback. Performers do not react to the written script. They count the number of words, evaluate their role, when it goes out if it succeeds they take the credit and if it fails it was badly written. Which is generally fair, we have many more brilliant performers than writers.

10. The success of The Avengers novels was due to the success of the television series. The novels were re-published in various countries in the early 1990s because of Joanna Lumley and AbFab. No credit to me.

Okay, Denis, I think I've answered all your questions.

I'm sorry that my website was politically motivated and treated my 60s and 70s hack life as peripheral. I know a couple of people in Tamworth who treat me with respect because of The Champions.

I'll read your reviews of the novels now, but I promise not to pop up and argue with the things you say. Your reactions are as valid (maybe more so) than my intentions forty years ago.

Take care now, with all best wishes, John

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John died peacefully on 3rd February 2014.