Who's Who???

I'm idly channel-hopping whilst undertaking my (almost) daily knee exercises (12 months on and the knee hasn't let me down again, so I'm sticking at them) when suddenly I'm catapulted back to the year 1967 by the sublime vision of Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in The Avengers! 

I've stumbled upon an obscure channel called Great! TV and it's showing my favourite show as a spotty teen from the age of approx. 15 to 18 featuring Diana Rigg as secret agent Emma Peel. 

It would be barely a lie to say that I was in love with both the character and the actress. She was sooo cool. Sooo sexy, sooo kick-ass confident. She could send an assailant flying backwards into a wall with a mere flick of the wrist. And that look in her eye as she delivered a put-down or a saucy greeting to poor Steed, who was clearly besotted yet doomed by the writers to live in a platonic straightjacket.

In this episode ("Who's Who???" a "mad scientist" has invented a machine which will switch "psyches", i.e. put one person's memories and personality into his or her victim's brain. (Pre-dating the host of body-swop movies that followed). The villains, a couple who plan to assassinate a network of British agents known to our hero and heroine, capture Steed and Mrs Peel and perform a double swop.

And here's the pay-off. Because the bad guys are a couple, Patrick Macnee (Steed) gets to kiss Mrs Peel! AND pat her bottom!

The couple plan to assume our heroes' identities and set up house in Mrs Peel's apartment, so goodness knows what might have followed if the good guys had not escaped and put paid to the plot (somewhat belatedly, since half of the agents have already been murdered).