John Garforth - Avengers novels writer!

[Timeless A-Peel]

While we're on this topic, has anyone here read his Champions novel? Because I've been interested in it ever since I saw the series, but when I figured out who wrote it I had second thoughts. Does it have the same sort of content as the Avengers ones, or was he able to write them without totally changing the tone of the series?

[DiVicenzo]

I remember that little interview. That was quite difficult to trace the man !

Thanks for getting Denis - well done! Merci beaucoup

[Avengerholic]

I quite like 'The Gold Bomb', I thought that was very much The Avengers.

[Timeless A-Peel]

I quite like 'The Gold Bomb', I thought that was very much The Avengers.

That was Keith Laumer, though, and he generally did a better job. There was one scene in The Drowned Queen where Steed had his roomate vacate the cabin by telling him he had a pet snake prone to cuddling up to you for warmth. I thought it was hilarious.

I had to read some of his sci-fi for school once, though. Let's just say it fit the "disturbing and depressing" criteria beloved by English classes.

[Bill Thinnes]

Another thing Garforth had going for him, IMHO, was the QUALITY of his writing: originality, word-play, the unexpected, and - as I mentioned in my previous post - depth of character. Steed and Emma are somewhat two dimensional [necessarily, perhaps] in the TV show. Not that I don't love it to death! But I thought Garforth's novels gave a little extra depth to the characters, largely by revealing some of their internal thoughts/musings. The later Laumer and Daniels books go for [by my book, anyway] broader humor and bizarre, obvious character-naming; rather an EPIC-like approach. I prefer the darker Garforth take... I realize I'm a minority here, but from a literature standpoint I really feel the Garforth novels are superior. Does ANYBODY out there agree??

[darren]

Although I've been aware of the Avengers books for ages, I've never once considered tracking one down. The joy of the Avengers for me is all to do with the visuals and the feels of it; you just don't get that from a book.

[Ketman]

This John Garforth character is intriguing, to say the least. A google search turns up four Avengers novels by him, all from 1967. He also has five more novels, mostly novelizations of other TV series, written between 1969 and 1978, after which he disappears off the radar. Outside of this thread I can find no evidence that he wrote any scripts at all, either for radio or TV. Yet he seems to imply it in several places.

About The Avengers, he says: "Around this time they also brought back the original producer (John Pierce or some such name) who wasted a lot of my time discussing writing ideas – the old mantra about new ideas and new writers – before dishing out the new series (it was Tara King by then) to the same old gang who wrote everything around that time."

He's talking like an insider whose time is valuable, but we need a reality check. Garforth has has no imdb entry, either as a scriptwriter or anything else. When someone with no TV credits to his name gets to meet a producer, we can take it that he was the one asking for the meeting. Presumably he's sent in scripts in the hope of being invited to write for the series. If the producer spends time with an untried scriptwriter discussing and explaining what he wants, and it comes to nothing, that would have to be called a waste of the producer's time, rather than the writer's. If the Avengers didn't use Garforth, and no other show used him either, the reason might just be that he wasn't any good.

In answer to the question "Did you have any feedback from actors, the production or fans?" he says this:

"I had no feedback. Performers do not react to the written script. They count the number of words, evaluate their role, when it goes out if it succeeds they take the credit and if it fails it was badly written. Which is generally fair, we have many more brilliant performers than writers."

That leads us to believe he was employed as a scriptwriter. But where is the evidence?

But this next reminiscence is the unlikeliest of all:

"The fact that television spin-offs were a despised genre was brought home to me on the occasion that I met Diana Rigg at her flat in Dolphin Square with her PA (or an ITV PA assigned to her) called Marie Donaldson. I don’t think Diana Rigg had read any of them, but Marie Donaldson vetted them all and she thought that one of them (probably Gloria Munday) verged dangerously towards an explicit sex scene. I explained that what I was trying to do – and Miss Rigg interrupted imperiously with ‘I know what you’re trying to do!’ So I gave up any attempt to talk intelligently to her. She thought she was royalty and was treated so by all her hangers-on."

First, notice that it contradicts what he said before - that actors give very little feedback to scriptwriters. That would be even more true of spin-off writers whose connection to the show is only peripheral. The Avengers was a sabbatical for Diana Rigg, a break from her more serious work, and she was already growing tired of it. She'd rather have watched a puddle evaporate than read one of Garforth's novelizations, never mind comment on it. Second, Marie Donaldson was not anyone's PA. She was ABC's Press Officer. As such she'd have an office of her own, and wouldn't need to arrange meetings in Diana Rigg's flat, especially meetings in which Diana could have no personal interest. But it's hard to see why Ms Donaldson would meet him at all. If she had the power to vet novelizations of the series (and who gave her the power, and why?) she would communicate with the publisher, not the writer. He would have no authority to negotiate content with her. Doing novelizations of TV shows is absolutely the bottom rung of the fiction-writing ladder. It's done by hacks who write at home and do all their business through their agent. Sometimes they don't even meet their own publisher. There would be several layers of authority between Garforth and Marie Donaldson, and the chances of his being called to a high-powered meeting with her and Diana Rigg are just about nil. It's an anecdote fabricated out of nothing by a hack writer trying to big himself up.

[Frankymole]

He's talking like an insider whose time is valuable, but we need a reality check. Garforth has has no imdb entry, either as a scriptwriter or anything else.

It could be a nom de plume though, lots of novelists or scriptwriters have written novelisations under assumed names (Stephen Gallagher as John Lydecker, for instance) so their reputation for "serious" work isn't compromised.

[Ketman]

John Garforth is his nom de plume. His real name is Anthony Hussey. There is no writer listed under either name on imdb.

[Frankymole]

John Garforth is his nom de plume. His real name is Anthony Hussey. There is no writer listed under either name on imdb.

Perhaps he had a different nom de plume for television scripts