By modern standards the episode is pretty tame stuff, but even to this day one can’t deny a certain frisson when Mrs Peel makes her spiked-heeled-and-collared, corseted appearance as the Queen of Sin (Dame Diana apparently designed this, dare I say it, iconic ensemble herself), and in any case it’s hard to shake the impression that this sort of big set-piece moment is the episode’s raison d’etre – the rest of the plot is frankly pretty thin and spurious. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

And quite how did standing in a cupboard with the sonic screwdriver enable the Doctor to miraculously cure himself of the odd affliction he’d acquired? He told me that Brando and James Dean did not interest him onscreen but that watching how Elvis moved in front of the camera and shot close-ups taught him the most about film acting. On the other hand, the credibility of the script is certainly matched by its scientific accuracy and its general coherence: at one point, Mrs Peel is telling Steed about the BVS for the first time, at which point the chimney-sweep is killed by the ‘UFO’. It probably has to do with his recording background, his well-documented friendship with Keith Moon as well as working on TOMMY with a number of music artists including Ann-Margret and Tina Turner.

The year was 1991 and a rerun of The New Avengers had recently concluded – this had woken up all my memories of the repeats of the original show I’d seen in the late 80s. I said “We had to let your little island get bombed lower into the Atlantic so all the stuck up Nazi loving Brits in the house would accept our help. Nominated for a Tony Award for the role, she'll find out if she's a winner during the June 12 awards ceremonies.

Most of the time gimmicks and cleverness for its own sake seem to be the guiding principles involved in commissioning episodes, sentimentality feels crowbarred in, and the show’s beginning to feel relentlessly pleased with itself. The British Film Institute (BFI) stated that "partnerships with Michael Winner and Ken Russell in the mid-[19]60s saw Reed become an emblematic Brit-flick icon", but from the mid-1970s his alcoholism began affecting his career, with the BFI adding: "Reed had assumed Robert Newton's mantle as Britain's thirstiest thespian". Reed subsequently revised the story, claiming he drank 106 pints of beer on a two-day binge before marrying Josephine Burge: 'The event that was reported actually took place during an arm-wrestling competition in Guernsey, about 15 years ago; it was highly exaggerated.The leader of the gang is one Ivan Dragomiloff (Oliver Reed) – who, despite his name, has been raised as a very proper English gentleman – who enquires as to who it is that Miss Winter would like bumped off. I’ve been trying to think why this should be – I don’t think it’s just down to my appreciation of the performances involved. And he seems to be gaining new admirers all the time, which speaks volumes about his character and his talent. His final role was the elderly slave dealer Proximo in Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000), in which he played alongside Richard Harris, [31] an actor whom Reed admired greatly both on and off the screen.