Back in 1977 Six of One was publishing its first publication Alert it was something a little different than the other society magazines, it was published quarterly and was a collection of loose leaf foolscap pages with no staples or page numbers on different types of coloured paper. It featured articles written by members, with drawings and news and information about The Prisoner, sometimes reproducing photographs and call sheets from the series.
It was an event every 4 months when Alert came out, there was a gathering of members to help collate the magazine at a ‘work-in’ and here is my story of how I helped at one. It was mid 1977, and we had all come back from the April convention filled with enthusiasm for The Prisoner. We had a few meetings in the back room of a pub in Nottingham on Clumber Street, the Crystal Palace, and it was at one of these meetings that we got word from our coordinator Jackie Butcher that the Nottingham group had been invited to attend the next work-in and help collate the Winter 1977 Alert for the members.
We were all excited about the trip to Cheltenham and meeting the organisers of Six of One at their ‘HQ’. We set off early one Sunday morning in three cars, one from Derby with, Rita, Mike McLester and Jon, I was in one of the cars from Nottingham with Jackie and Andy Radford, and Pete and Robbie travelled in the other car. We all arrived at Marnie Allen’s flat, being greeted by Roger Goodman and Dave Barrie. It was great to chat to them about The Prisoner. All the pages for the Alert were all laid out in boxes around the room and we had to walk around picking up each page, making sure that they were in the right order to compile the issue.
After we had managed to get full copies of the issue for the lucky members to read there was a box full of stamped address envelopes (in those days when you joined you had to send 4 envelopes stamped and the right size to hold an Alert to be posted back to you ). We grabbed each of these envelopes, filled them with the Alert and flyers for society sales items, like photographs licensed from ITC. They were then placed in a big box ready to take to the post office.
It wasn’t just the Nottingham group there that day, there were a couple of other members and we chatted as we worked, briefly taking a look at the pages of the Alert as we went along with our conveyer belt production line. It was a fun time and didn’t seem like work, the atmosphere was very lighthearted and pleasant.
When we had filled all the envelopes. which were quite a few (and sometimes we noticed people that we knew from the address when we were filling them) there were quite a few boxes. Then it was a short journey in the car to the main post office to put all the envelopes through the post box for collection and delivery on Monday. It was a fantastic experience being part of a team in something we all lived for and believed in. We all had a lovely journey home, talking about the friends we had met and our experiences of the day.
