We can't let pass the passing of Patrick McGoohan without a note of his role in the early days of Illuminations. McGoohan died in Los Angeles on Tuesday at the age of 80. As the obituaries attest, while he was an admired stage actor in the 1950s, he was best known for creating and starring in the 1967 17-episode ITC series The Prisoner. Extensive online offerings bear witness to its complexities and possible meanings -- and to its extraordinary and enduring fan base. I have only a footnote to offer, relating our attempts to secure an interview with McGoohan about the series back in the autumn of 1983.

There are others who were more central to this tale than me, most notably Laurens C Postma and Chris Rodley, and perhaps they may be tempted to correct my memories in the Comments below. But this is how I recall the events running up to Christmas 1983. Before the start of Channel 4 in November 1982 I worked first as Television Editor at Time Out and then at the post-dispute alternative City Limits. As someone who had watched an inordinate amount of television in the 1960s and early 1970s (there wasn't much else to do in the Whitstable of those years), I was fascinated by series like Danger Man (the precursor to The Prisoner) and The Avengers.

Hard as it may be to conceive in these days of late-night re-runs, digital channels and DVD box-sets, before Channel 4 it was all but impossible to see these series. So with a few nerdy friends (I use the word positively -- and I was one myself), including Dick Fiddy, Tony Mechele, Steve Woolley and Chris Wicking (who also sadly died recently) I started an oddball group called Wider Television Access, or following the form of call-sign signatures at American radio stations, WTVA.

We wrote a few press pieces, and even once or twice appeared on television, arguing that Britain television should cherish its heritage far more than it did at the time, and that, say, The Avengers was a piece of pop art that should be taken a little more seriously. Or, at the very least, that it should be available to be seen. A little later, we advertised for a co-ordinator to run the group, and that's how I first met Linda Zuck who's been the co-owner of Illuminations since the late 1980s.

WTVA started an occasional magazine called PrimeTime to write about all this (these days, we would have set up a web site). But our main activity was organising monthly screenings of whatever bits and pieces of archive television we could lay our hands on. Initially, our presentations were in the old Scala Cinema in the basement of what became the first Channel 4 headquarters at 60 Charlotte Street. Later, we moved to the 'new' Scala (which was in fact the King's Cross cinema opened in 1920), which is now a club venue.

The Scala presentations were not strictly legal, since there were no union or talent agreements that permitted theatrical presentations of television series. But we found a sympathetic friend in the ITC archives, and as long as we called ourselves a club and kept it all low-key, no-one seemed to mind very much. What we discovered, however, was that there were lots of others who were keen to see again the ATV/ITC series like The Saint and Danger Man and, especially, The Prisoner. On some Sunday afternoons we could attract 200 people or more on the strength of no more marketing than a Time Out listing.

The new Channel 4 needed lots of cheap programming, and among the archives that it raided were the ITC vaults. The Prisoner was slated for a re-run early on, which I believe the first time it had been aired since the original 1967 showings. But the channel also needed an element of legitimacy for these presentations. Its high-minded mission after all included the mandate 'to encourage innovation and experiment in the form and content of programmes'. What part did ancient pulp television have in all this?

Perhaps this was never really a problem, but someone I think saw that WTVA might be able to assist in providing a little context and rationale for, say, The Prisoner. And while I now cannot recall exactly where the idea came from, WTVA -- and by extension my recently-formed independent production company Illuminations -- found itself in the autumn of 1983 with the offer to make a one-hour documentary to play just after the conclusion of the run of The Prisoner the following February.

The associate producer and WTVA supporter Chris Rodley was central to this, and we recruited the enthusiastic and slightly eccentric producer/director Laurens C. Postma to help us make it happen. Illuminations by this point had made two shows by my then colleague Geoff Dunlop -- a pair of dance films with Siobhan Davies' group Second Stride and an elaborate performance film with David Byrne and Talking Heads called Once in a Lifetime (which had not been transmitted then). But I was definitely naive about production and not a little nervous as a first-time producer.

We knew that an interview with McGoohan was an essential element for a documentary about The Prisoner. But we also knew that he was reclusive, supposedly 'difficult', and that he had rarely spoken about the series -- and certainly not on television. We began shooting other components, including interviews with the co-creator George Markstein, producer David Tomblin and financier Lew Grade (who have all since died).

The crew decamped to Portmeirion to film some scenes and we had a bizarre day with the Six of One appreciation society. This involved running around the series' London locations in a bus that matched exactly the one in the closing scene on Westminster Bridge in episode 17. I also had a phone conversation with the veteran actor Leo McKern, who contributed an extraordinary performance as the final Number Two -- he told me the whole experience of the shoot with McGoohan was so unpleasant and traumatic that nothing on earth would persuade him to appear in our documentary.

Meanwhile faxes (that's how long ago this was) went back and forth to Los Angeles about whether or not McGoohan would take part. Eventually, Laurens and Chris got on a plane with the promise of a meeting but nothing more. McGoohan directed them to his neighbourhood bar for an early morning get together and they spent a day, with an expensive local crew in tow, driving around the city before, towards twilight, McGoohan relented and sat down in front of the camera with a view of Los Angeles behind. By the end it was getting so dark that Laurens had to bring up the camera car and switch on the headlights to illuminate McGoohan's face.

Job done -- and the interview was thoughtful and comparatively expansive. Except that, true to his reputation, McGoohan wanted nothing to do with a release form to allow us to use the interview. (He had supposedly never signed his contract with Lew Grade for The Prisoner, which it's said is one of the reasons why no movie version has appeared to date and why it's taken so long for the television re-make, now shot but not yet screened, to appear.)

Chris and Laurens flew home and negotiations continued about the release form. I think McGoohan flew to Paris just before Christmas, and the faxes followed him there. We however had to own up to Channel 4 that we had a great interview, a pretty good programme, but no release form. Eventually, I was summoned to a meeting with Channel Controller Paul Bonner. He growled at me, and right through Christmas I worried about whether Illuminations would get paid and whether the documentary would be shown. McGoohan never did sign a release, but Channel 4 went ahead anyway.

WTVA and Illuminations partnered on other Channel 4 productions, including Cat Among Lions, a film about the American production company MTM. McGoohan took occasional small roles in movies, including playing Edward I in Braveheart. And as a true television classic, The Prisoner remains a remarkable legacy.