Series 1 – Not Produced
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Non-speaking characters:
An unspecified number of staff members at Perry and Barnet, including one additional security officer, two company directors and people in the club bar, Brian (alias Poseidon), and a female patient at Thames General Hospital |
Production
Series based on an idea by Roger Marshall & Anthony Marriott
Theme Music composed by Robert Earley Story Editor: Richard Bates Assigned Floor Manager: William Lawford |
Assigned Stage Manager: Shirley Cleghorn
Assigned Production Assistant: Christine Thomas Assigned Designer: Richard Harrison Producer: John Bryce Assigned Director: Laurence Bourne |
Rehearsals were scheduled to begin at 10.30am on Thursday 28 January 1965 at Rehearsal Room 3A, ABC Television Studios, Broom Road, Teddington, Middlesex
Camera rehearsals were scheduled to begin on Wednesday 10 February 1965 at Studio 1, Teddington
Recording was scheduled to take place on Thursday 11 February 1965 at Studio 1, Teddington
Camera rehearsals were scheduled to begin on Wednesday 10 February 1965 at Studio 1, Teddington
Recording was scheduled to take place on Thursday 11 February 1965 at Studio 1, Teddington
TV World-style Synopsis
Wednesday a.m.: Perry and Barnet. “Missing powder – street value, fivepence ha’penny. Funny – thought there’d be more money in the drugs business than that.”
Click here for detailed synopsis
Click here for detailed synopsis
Archive
Rehearsal script (two copies) – held in the BFI Special Collections
Story Notes
This unmade script was the work of Eric Paice (1926–1989), who was born in Pevensey, East Sussex. He began writing for the stage at Unity Theatre, a socialist theatre group based in London’s King’s Cross, in 1949. Five years later, Malcolm Hulke (1924–1979) joined the group as production manager, and the two men struck up a fruitful writing partnership. They submitted a one-off play to ABC Television entitled This Day in Fear, concerning a man being hunted by the IRA. ABC turned down the script, but it was accepted and produced by the BBC. It was transmitted as part of the corporation’s Television Playwright strand in 1958, then adapted for the radio and broadcast on the Welsh Home Service in 1959. Subsequent submissions to ABC were more successful, and Paice and Hulke wrote four Armchair Theatre plays between 1958 and 1960, as well as the popular children’s science-fiction serial Target Luna, which was quickly followed by the sequels Pathfinders in Space, Pathfinders to Mars and Pathfinders to Venus. Shortly after the latter serial was completed in 1961, the two writers went their separate ways, and from this point on Paice generally worked alone, writing for series such as ABC’s The Avengers, to which he contributed eight episodes between 1961 and 1964. For the BBC, he wrote 42 episodes of the long-running police procedural Dixon of Dock Green between 1963 and 1974, as well as acting as its story editor from 1964 to 1966; 29 episodes of The Brothers, a drama series following the trials and tribulations of a family firm (1972–1976); and 11 episodes of the shareholding saga Strike It Rich! (1986–1987). He was also an active member of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, a trade union for professional writers, fulfilling the role of chairman from the mid-1960s (when the organisation was known as the Television and Screen Writers’ Guild) and rising to president by the early 1980s. Like his former colleague Malcolm Hulke, who had authored a similar volume in 1974, Paice penned a guide for prospective screenwriters, entitled The Way to Write for Television, published by Elm Tree Books in 1981. Curiously, the back cover blurb lists Public Eye among Paice’s television credits, despite his script never having made it to air. The book was reprinted as an updated edition by Hamish Hamilton (an imprint of Penguin Books) in 1987.
The Drug Merchants was dropped from the production schedule at short notice, because a key aspect of its plot (a potential side effect caused by a new drug called Ergyl) was felt to be too similar to the real-life controversy surrounding thalidomide. Thalidomide was first marketed in 1957 by the German pharmaceutical company Chemie Grünenthal, under the trade name Contergan, as a medication for anxiety, insomnia, tension and morning sickness. It was launched on to the market without having been tested on pregnant women. The use of thalidomide in 46 countries by women who were pregnant or who subsequently became pregnant resulted in more than 10,000 children (about 2,000 of them in the UK) being born with severe deformities, including to the limbs, eyes, urinary tract and heart, as well as thousands of miscarriages. In the UK, the drug was licensed in 1958 and distributed by the Distillers Company (now part of Diageo) under the brand name Distaval, as a remedy for morning sickness, but it was withdrawn from the entire European market in 1961. The thalidomide scandal has been described as the “biggest man-made medical disaster ever”. The Drug Merchants was replaced by a script by Robert Holmes with the working title Shakedown, which was ultimately renamed ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’.
The Drug Merchants was dropped from the production schedule at short notice, because a key aspect of its plot (a potential side effect caused by a new drug called Ergyl) was felt to be too similar to the real-life controversy surrounding thalidomide. Thalidomide was first marketed in 1957 by the German pharmaceutical company Chemie Grünenthal, under the trade name Contergan, as a medication for anxiety, insomnia, tension and morning sickness. It was launched on to the market without having been tested on pregnant women. The use of thalidomide in 46 countries by women who were pregnant or who subsequently became pregnant resulted in more than 10,000 children (about 2,000 of them in the UK) being born with severe deformities, including to the limbs, eyes, urinary tract and heart, as well as thousands of miscarriages. In the UK, the drug was licensed in 1958 and distributed by the Distillers Company (now part of Diageo) under the brand name Distaval, as a remedy for morning sickness, but it was withdrawn from the entire European market in 1961. The thalidomide scandal has been described as the “biggest man-made medical disaster ever”. The Drug Merchants was replaced by a script by Robert Holmes with the working title Shakedown, which was ultimately renamed ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’.
Production Notes
The Drug Merchants was intended to follow You Should Hear Me Eat Soup in the recording schedule. According to the script, rehearsals for The Drug Merchants were due to begin on Thursday 28 January 1965. However, that date would certainly have slipped if production had gone ahead (probably to Friday 29 January, the date shown on the script for ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’), because Thursday 28 January was the date on which You Should Hear Me Eat Soup was recorded.
Though The Drug Merchants did not enter production, some rather unusual casting decisions made for the episode that replaced it offer clues as to which actors the production team might have had in mind for certain roles. In particular, in Robert Holmes’s script for ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’, property builder Teddy Booram is described as “a bull-necked man in his fifties.” This doesn’t sound much like David Nettheim, the actor who played him, who was balding, bespectacled, fairly slender in build and 39 years of age at the time of recording. Meanwhile, solicitor Donald Halston is “a young man” who “doesn’t conform to the legal image.” This description doesn’t really fit the actor who was ultimately cast in the role – Geoffrey Palmer, who was 37 at the time of recording, and whose dour and dignified features often led to him portraying figures of authority. Jenny Lloyd’s employee Hilda is referred to as “a fat blonde”, but Pauline Barker, the actress who took the part, was quite slim. It is also unusual (though not without precedent) that Barker received a credit for what is (in the rehearsal script, at least) a fleeting, non-speaking role. Could it be that, when The Drug Merchants was shelved, some of these performers had already been contracted to appear, or at least informally promised roles, in the episode? The following is a speculative cast list for The Drug Merchants, using actors who appeared in ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’. Bulleted notes below explain my reasoning in arriving at this list.
Though The Drug Merchants did not enter production, some rather unusual casting decisions made for the episode that replaced it offer clues as to which actors the production team might have had in mind for certain roles. In particular, in Robert Holmes’s script for ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’, property builder Teddy Booram is described as “a bull-necked man in his fifties.” This doesn’t sound much like David Nettheim, the actor who played him, who was balding, bespectacled, fairly slender in build and 39 years of age at the time of recording. Meanwhile, solicitor Donald Halston is “a young man” who “doesn’t conform to the legal image.” This description doesn’t really fit the actor who was ultimately cast in the role – Geoffrey Palmer, who was 37 at the time of recording, and whose dour and dignified features often led to him portraying figures of authority. Jenny Lloyd’s employee Hilda is referred to as “a fat blonde”, but Pauline Barker, the actress who took the part, was quite slim. It is also unusual (though not without precedent) that Barker received a credit for what is (in the rehearsal script, at least) a fleeting, non-speaking role. Could it be that, when The Drug Merchants was shelved, some of these performers had already been contracted to appear, or at least informally promised roles, in the episode? The following is a speculative cast list for The Drug Merchants, using actors who appeared in ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’. Bulleted notes below explain my reasoning in arriving at this list.
Marker
Charles Perry Dorothy West Chief Security Officer Wade Larry S. McFarland Dr Janet Morgan Hugh Lindsay Fox Benito Vuolo Security Officer Ralph Stone Naomi Dr Graves Miss Keller |
Alfred Burke
John Carson Hilary Tindall Edward Rees Geoffrey Palmer Patricia Haines Henry McGee David Nettheim Martin Friend Eileen Murphy Frank Mills Pauline Barker |
Non-speaking characters:
Brian (alias Poseidon), staff members at Perry and Barnet, including one additional security officer, two company directors and people in the club bar, and a female patient at Thames General Hospital |
Ray Marioni, Walter Henry, John Tucker, Brian Porritt, Katy Petit and Eileen Matthews |
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- Patricia Haines as Dr Janet Morgan – Aged 33 at the time of recording, Haines was a little younger than Dr Morgan’s scripted age of “around forty”, but would otherwise have been ideal for the role.
- Henry McGee as Hugh Lindsay Fox – There are a number of similarities between Fox and Hubert, the character McGee played in ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’. Both are upper-class twits whose hedonistic lifestyles have led to financial difficulties. Hubert is “Thin, fair, tall, vacuous, very Country Life-ish”, with costly addictions to gambling and alcohol. Fox is “a youngish, keen, freshly ironed Harrovian”, who is described by Miss West as “a buffoon” and “thick”, and who, according to Marker, “Spends well over his income on drink and women”.
- David Nettheim as Benito Vuolo – Both before and after his appearance as Teddy Booram (seated left in pic), David Nettheim was often called upon to portray scientists, doctors and various foreign nationals. Prior to Public Eye, his most recent work for ABC had been to play Italian chef Umberto Equi in the 1963 Avengers episode Death a la Carte.
- Eileen Murphy as Naomi – Eileen Murphy was 20 years old according to the press release for ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’. The script for The Drug Merchants describes Naomi as “a girl of about eighteen with long blonde hair down her shoulders”. However, as a third-year student, she would more likely be closer to twenty. Naomi’s hair colour and length don’t match the raven-headed black bob sported by Murphy’s character Connie Maguire (as seen in a surviving image from ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’), but this could have been easily remedied with the use of a wig. Coincidentally, Connie also has a slight medical connection. In Act Three of the replacement script, Marker sarcastically asks her what her husband thinks she was doing when she was working for Jenny Lloyd’s escort agency, “a postgraduate course in biology?”
- Frank Mills as Dr Graves – Frank Mills had previously played a doctor in the 1964 Redcap episode Epitaph for a Sweat and would do so again in the 1965 Avengers escapade The Master Minds.
- Pauline Barker as Miss Keller – Barker’s body shape would have been much better suited to playing the “skinny blonde” Miss Keller in The Drug Merchants than the “fat blonde” Hilda in ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’.
- There are no roles above for Maggie McGrath, Madge Ryan or Vivienne Martin, who played Jenny Lloyd, Mrs Sutton-Piper and Eileen Osborne in ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’. This is because Robert Holmes’s script offers more character parts for women than Eric Paice’s script does.
As well as non-speaking roles for humans, the cast list on the second page of Eric Paice’s script also calls for some animal extras: “A female chimp and a few rats and mice.” In the first scene, “chatter from monkeys” can also be heard.
One of the sets listed on the second page is “HOSPITAL SMALL OFFICE (DR. GRAVES)”. Within the body of the script, this appears to be two distinct settings: “SMALL OFFICE”, a room used by numerous doctors, “when they want to get away from patients, but not too far”, and “HOSPITAL. DR. GRAVES’ OFFICE”. It is possible that the writer intended the same set to double up as two separate interiors, which could have been achieved with minor redressing.
Home and Away
The rehearsal script contains no exterior scenes. However, had this episode gone into production, some exterior footage or photography may have been required for establishing shots, or to depict the view outside the window of the security office, though which, according to the script, “we get the impression of a car check barrier and an approach road.”
Many a Slip
Eric Paice’s script refers to the Pharmacological (misspelled “Pharmalogical” in the script) Society and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. The writer uses these terms interchangeably, though he probably intended to refer to the latter. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB) was the statutory regulatory and professional body for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians operating in England, Scotland and Wales. In 2010, the Society’s regulatory powers were transferred to the newly formed General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), at which point the RPSGB was renamed the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS). On the other hand, the British Pharmacological Society (BPS) is a charity with no regulatory powers, whose mission is to promote, support and advance all areas of research into drugs and how they work.
In Act Two, Perry informs McFarland that, after receiving a telephone call from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, “I’m calling a meeting in my office after lunch.” However, the subsequent meeting appears to take place the following Monday morning. Perry starts the meeting by saying, “I’ve called you here this morning, gentlemen, because of some rather alarming information I received on Friday. I have since had the opportunity to confirm this over the weekend…” Perhaps the earlier scene had originally been intended to occur on a Friday, but this is contradicted by its placement between two scenes featuring Marker that transpire on a Saturday. When Marker meets Naomi in Janet Morgan’s office/laboratory at Middlesex University, the student remarks that she wasn’t expecting any visitors, because “The University is usually dead quiet on a Saturday morning.” Having been told by Naomi where he might find Dr Morgan, it can be presumed that Marker goes to Thames General Hospital, the setting for his next scene, the same day. Dialogue in the detailed synopsis has been slightly adjusted to make sense of this.
In Act Two, Perry informs McFarland that, after receiving a telephone call from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, “I’m calling a meeting in my office after lunch.” However, the subsequent meeting appears to take place the following Monday morning. Perry starts the meeting by saying, “I’ve called you here this morning, gentlemen, because of some rather alarming information I received on Friday. I have since had the opportunity to confirm this over the weekend…” Perhaps the earlier scene had originally been intended to occur on a Friday, but this is contradicted by its placement between two scenes featuring Marker that transpire on a Saturday. When Marker meets Naomi in Janet Morgan’s office/laboratory at Middlesex University, the student remarks that she wasn’t expecting any visitors, because “The University is usually dead quiet on a Saturday morning.” Having been told by Naomi where he might find Dr Morgan, it can be presumed that Marker goes to Thames General Hospital, the setting for his next scene, the same day. Dialogue in the detailed synopsis has been slightly adjusted to make sense of this.
Who Wants to Be Told Bad News?
Eric Paice was among the writers listed when ABC announced Public Eye to the press on Wednesday 4 November 1964 (see above). In addition to the show’s co-creator Roger Marshall, “who wrote some of the best Avengers scripts”, the other writers named were William Emms, Terence Frisby, Michael Hastings, Marshall’s fellow co-creator Anthony Marriott, Martin Worth, Robert Holmes, Wally Bosco, Michael Cahill and Mike Watts. The press release formed the basis of an article, Saturday thriller from ABC (see below right), which appeared in Television Today on Thursday 12 November and named the same writers. A further press bulletin issued by ABC on Monday 18 January 1965 reiterated the list of names.
In common with The Drug Merchants, the scripts from Bosco and Marriott never went into production. Wally Bosco (1880–1973) was an actor and writer who had been performing since the silent era of cinema but who had been gravitating towards screenwriting since 1945, starting with the short documentary film March of Progress. Anthony Marriott’s (1931–2014) only on-screen credit for Public Eye would be as its co-creator, partly because he was so busy with other projects, including writing the BBC2 entertainment programme Open House and co-writing (with Alistair Foot) the BBC Home Service / Radio 4 comedy series Listen to this Space. “It didn’t work out for him on it for a variety of reasons,” Roger Marshall told Andrew Pixley in July 2012, “primarily because he was working for the BBC on a radio show every afternoon and really I don’t think he left himself time to do anything else. It wasn’t a happy relationship.” Marriott did, however, write an original Public Eye novel, Marker Calls the Tune, which was published by Fontana in January 1968. When Television Today reported on the London launch of Public Eye in a front-page feature on Thursday 8 April 1965 (see The Morning Wasn’t So Hot), the list of writers on the series now excluded Bosco, Marriott and Paice, whose scripts had fallen by the wayside. On Thursday 24 June, Television Today reported on a two-day meeting that had begun the previous day at the headquarters of the Independent Television Authority in Brompton Road, Knightsbridge. Described as a “Consultation”, it was attended by programme executives from all ITV companies, together with producers, directors, designers, script editors and writers, as well as senior ITA staff. Matters under discussion included the thorny topic of censorship, as ITA chairman Lord Hill was currently embarking on a “clean-up campaign”. According to an article in the Spring 1965 issue of Screenwriter, the official organ of the Television and Screen Writers’ Guild, “ABC in particular has come under fire over the past quarter. One episode of Public Eye has been banned for offending a sacred cow and the company’s Redcap series is being toned down following pressure from the War Office.” The quoted article pointed out that it was not widely known that ITV companies were requested to submit scripts for clearance by ITA censors before rehearsals began. “Yet no censorship code has ever been made available to writers – presumably because the Authority does not wish this aspect of its activities to come under public scrutiny. If we are in for a new era of tame television, let the ITA at least have the courage to publish a list of proscribed subjects so that we all know where we stand.” The article gave no indication as to which edition of Public Eye had been “banned”. All episodes produced for Series 1 were subsequently broadcast in multiple ITV regions, including Protection is a Man’s Best Friend, which had offended the Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association. Unless there had been a misreporting of the postponement of The Morning Wasn’t So Hot in four regions (where the episode had eventually been transmitted just days before the ITA conference), it may be that the article was referring to The Drug Merchants. The Television and Screen Writers’ Guild would certainly have been aware that this script had been dropped, since its writer was the chairman of the union. |
Nobody Wants to Know
In Act One, Larry McFarland’s office contains at least one volume of the British Pharmacopoeia and a set of the British Pharmaceutical Codex. The British Pharmacopoeia is a collection of quality standards for medicinal substances in the UK, which is published annually on behalf of health ministers. The first edition was issued in 1864, and was one of the first attempts to harmonise pharmaceutical standards, through the merger of the existing London, Edinburgh and Dublin Pharmacopoeias. In 1907, the British Pharmacopoeia was supplemented by the British Pharmaceutical Codex, published by the Pharmaceutical Society, which laid down standards for drugs and other pharmaceutical substances not included in the British Pharmacopoeia. Subsequent editions of the British Pharmaceutical Codex were published in 1911, 1923, 1934, 1949, 1954, 1959, 1963, 1968 and 1973. From 1979, it was retitled The Pharmaceutical Codex.
Thumbing through a volume of the British Pharmacopoeia, Marker finds a reference to ergot. Ergot, or ergot fungi, is a group of fungi of the genus Claviceps. The most notable member of this group is Claviceps purpurea, or rye ergot fungus. This grows on rye and related plants, and produces alkaloids that can cause ergotism in humans and other mammals that ingest grains contaminated with its fruiting structure. There are two types of ergotism, the first being characterised by muscle spasms, fever and hallucinations. Victims may appear dazed, be unable to speak, suffer hallucinations, become manic, exhibit other forms of paralysis or tremors, or even die. These effects are the result of serotonergic stimulation of the central nervous system by some of the alkaloids – or, as Miss West puts it, “It paralyses the nervous system.” The second type of ergotism is marked by violent burning, absent peripheral pulses and shooting pains in the fingers and toes, caused by vasoconstriction (narrowing of the blood vessels), sometimes leading to gangrene and loss of limbs due to severely restricted blood circulation. The burning sensation, together with the name of the order of monks that specialised in treating victims of ergotism, the Hospital Brothers of Saint Anthony, led to the disease’s common name, Saint Anthony’s fire.
Miss West tells Marker that ergot “was responsible for killing off a number of French peasants some years ago.” She appears to be referring to the 1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning, also known in French as le pain maudit (the cursed bread), a mass poisoning that took place on Wednesday 15 August 1951, in the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in Southern France. More than 250 people were involved, including 50 who were interned in asylums and seven who died. Ergot poisoning is widely believed to have been the cause of the epidemic.
In spite of the dangers, ergot has been used medicinally since the Middle Ages, owing to its vasoconstrictive properties. Controlled doses of ergot have been used to induce abortions (which may have given Janet Morgan pause for thought about the use of Ergyl during pregnancy), to expel the placenta following childbirth, and to reduce excessive bleeding during menstrual periods or after childbirth. Ergot alkaloids are among the oldest headache remedies. They were developed in the 1920s, and doctors have been prescribing medicines containing them (sometimes, as with Ergyl, in combination with caffeine) to treat headaches, including migraine, since the 1940s.
In Act Two, Naomi refers to Poseidon, the ancient Greek god of the sea (and of water generally) as well as of storms, earthquakes and horses, as “old hundred hand”. In Greek mythology, the Hecatoncheires, or Hundred-Handers – named Briareus (or Aegaeon), Cottus and Gyges (or Gyes) – were three monstrous giants, of enormous size and strength, each of which possessed fifty heads and a hundred arms. Briareus/Aegaeon is closely linked with Poseidon, who was sometimes called Aegaeon or Aegaeus. Naomi’s assertion that Poseidon’s Roman equivalent Neptune “actually had nothing to do with the sea” is somewhat contentious, though it is likely that he was associated with freshwater springs before he was connected with the sea.
The various settings of this story – drug firm Perry and Barnet, Middlesex University and Thames General Hospital – are all fictional… or at least they were at the time the script was written. Middlesex University became a reality some years later. It grew out of mergers between various schools and colleges in North London, beginning in 1878 when St Katherine’s College, a female teacher training college, was created in Tottenham. This was joined by Hornsey College of Art, founded in Crouch End in 1882; Berridge House, established in Hampstead in 1893; Ponders End Technical Institute, founded in 1901; and Hendon Technical Institute, which opened in 1939. In 1973, these institutions formed Middlesex Polytechnic, which was granted university status in 1992.
When Benito Vuolo speaks lustfully about Miss Keller, Miss West remarks, “We shall have to send you back to work on bromides, Benny.” A bromide is a compound of the element bromine with another element or group of elements. Some bromide salts, particularly potassium bromide, are natural sedatives, and were prescribed during the second half of the 19th century as a remedy for epilepsy, convulsions and insomnia. However, a side effect of this treatment is dampened libido. This side effect contributed to an urban myth that bromide was routinely added to the tea of prisoners and First World War soldiers in order to reduce their sexual urges. The use of bromides as suppressants also gave rise to the figurative use of the word bromide, to mean a trite statement, cliché or platitude intended to soothe or placate.
Since The Drug Merchants never entered production, naturally there are no photographs from this story. The image at the top of the page is a close-up of Alfred Burke as Marker from the surviving episode The Morning Wasn’t So Hot, which was recorded about a month after The Drug Merchants would have been made.
Thumbing through a volume of the British Pharmacopoeia, Marker finds a reference to ergot. Ergot, or ergot fungi, is a group of fungi of the genus Claviceps. The most notable member of this group is Claviceps purpurea, or rye ergot fungus. This grows on rye and related plants, and produces alkaloids that can cause ergotism in humans and other mammals that ingest grains contaminated with its fruiting structure. There are two types of ergotism, the first being characterised by muscle spasms, fever and hallucinations. Victims may appear dazed, be unable to speak, suffer hallucinations, become manic, exhibit other forms of paralysis or tremors, or even die. These effects are the result of serotonergic stimulation of the central nervous system by some of the alkaloids – or, as Miss West puts it, “It paralyses the nervous system.” The second type of ergotism is marked by violent burning, absent peripheral pulses and shooting pains in the fingers and toes, caused by vasoconstriction (narrowing of the blood vessels), sometimes leading to gangrene and loss of limbs due to severely restricted blood circulation. The burning sensation, together with the name of the order of monks that specialised in treating victims of ergotism, the Hospital Brothers of Saint Anthony, led to the disease’s common name, Saint Anthony’s fire.
Miss West tells Marker that ergot “was responsible for killing off a number of French peasants some years ago.” She appears to be referring to the 1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning, also known in French as le pain maudit (the cursed bread), a mass poisoning that took place on Wednesday 15 August 1951, in the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in Southern France. More than 250 people were involved, including 50 who were interned in asylums and seven who died. Ergot poisoning is widely believed to have been the cause of the epidemic.
In spite of the dangers, ergot has been used medicinally since the Middle Ages, owing to its vasoconstrictive properties. Controlled doses of ergot have been used to induce abortions (which may have given Janet Morgan pause for thought about the use of Ergyl during pregnancy), to expel the placenta following childbirth, and to reduce excessive bleeding during menstrual periods or after childbirth. Ergot alkaloids are among the oldest headache remedies. They were developed in the 1920s, and doctors have been prescribing medicines containing them (sometimes, as with Ergyl, in combination with caffeine) to treat headaches, including migraine, since the 1940s.
In Act Two, Naomi refers to Poseidon, the ancient Greek god of the sea (and of water generally) as well as of storms, earthquakes and horses, as “old hundred hand”. In Greek mythology, the Hecatoncheires, or Hundred-Handers – named Briareus (or Aegaeon), Cottus and Gyges (or Gyes) – were three monstrous giants, of enormous size and strength, each of which possessed fifty heads and a hundred arms. Briareus/Aegaeon is closely linked with Poseidon, who was sometimes called Aegaeon or Aegaeus. Naomi’s assertion that Poseidon’s Roman equivalent Neptune “actually had nothing to do with the sea” is somewhat contentious, though it is likely that he was associated with freshwater springs before he was connected with the sea.
The various settings of this story – drug firm Perry and Barnet, Middlesex University and Thames General Hospital – are all fictional… or at least they were at the time the script was written. Middlesex University became a reality some years later. It grew out of mergers between various schools and colleges in North London, beginning in 1878 when St Katherine’s College, a female teacher training college, was created in Tottenham. This was joined by Hornsey College of Art, founded in Crouch End in 1882; Berridge House, established in Hampstead in 1893; Ponders End Technical Institute, founded in 1901; and Hendon Technical Institute, which opened in 1939. In 1973, these institutions formed Middlesex Polytechnic, which was granted university status in 1992.
When Benito Vuolo speaks lustfully about Miss Keller, Miss West remarks, “We shall have to send you back to work on bromides, Benny.” A bromide is a compound of the element bromine with another element or group of elements. Some bromide salts, particularly potassium bromide, are natural sedatives, and were prescribed during the second half of the 19th century as a remedy for epilepsy, convulsions and insomnia. However, a side effect of this treatment is dampened libido. This side effect contributed to an urban myth that bromide was routinely added to the tea of prisoners and First World War soldiers in order to reduce their sexual urges. The use of bromides as suppressants also gave rise to the figurative use of the word bromide, to mean a trite statement, cliché or platitude intended to soothe or placate.
Since The Drug Merchants never entered production, naturally there are no photographs from this story. The image at the top of the page is a close-up of Alfred Burke as Marker from the surviving episode The Morning Wasn’t So Hot, which was recorded about a month after The Drug Merchants would have been made.
With thanks to Jonny Davies, Andrew Pixley, the BFI Special Collections, the British Newspaper Archive and Network Distributing.
The Missing Markers is a not-for-profit fan website written and edited by and copyright © Richard McGinlay. All rights reserved.
Public Eye (the ABC years) is copyright © StudioCanal. No attempt to infringe this copyright is intended.
The Missing Markers is a not-for-profit fan website written and edited by and copyright © Richard McGinlay. All rights reserved.
Public Eye (the ABC years) is copyright © StudioCanal. No attempt to infringe this copyright is intended.