Series 4 — Episode 26
Honey for the Prince
by Brian Clemens
Directed by James Hill
Production No E.64.10.26
Production completed: March 4 1966. First transmission: March 22 1966.
Production
Production dates: 20-Feb — 4/03/1966
James Hill returns to direct another Brian Clemens script, this one with better one-liners than the last, and they turn in a fun ending to the fourth series.
There are no production memos for the last few episodes so there is no record of how the episode was received by the production office or the ABC overlords. However a report in the Daily Express for 23rd February 1966 suggested the episode had run afoul of censorship issues, partly for Carmen Dene’s sultry performance dressed in a very short bath gown while wielding a tiger’s claw glove and partly for Mrs. Peel’s Dance of the Seven Veils being too risqué. I suspect the reportwer was simply being dim and taking at face value a beat up by the studio to increase interest in the episode, as the dance with six veils affords them a joke or two and Diana Rigg is wearing a large jewel in her navel so as not to offend any puritanical Americans.
Location filming starts the episode, with our heroes crossing the bridge at Tykes Water Lake and the only other location shot is the obligatory ending tag scene at Silver Hill. The view through Mr. Bumble’s windows looks like an Elstree set and the view through Steed’s window and that of the QQF, showing Big Ben are backdrop photos.
Regional broadcasts
Broadcaster | Date | Time |
---|---|---|
Rediffusion London | 25/03/1966 | 8.00pm |
ABC Midlands | 26/03/1966 | 9.20pm |
ABC North | 26/03/1966 | 9.20pm |
Anglia Television | 26/03/1966 | 8.15pm |
Border Television | 26/03/1966 | 9.20pm |
Channel Television | 26/03/1966 | 9.20pm |
Grampian Television | 25/03/1966 | 8.00pm |
Southern Television | 26/03/1966 | 9.20pm |
Scottish Television | 22/03/1966 | 8.00pm |
Tyne Tees Television | 25/03/1966 | 8.00pm |
Ulster Television | 25/03/1966 | 8.00pm |
Westward Television | 26/03/1966 | 9.05pm |
Television Wales & West | 26/03/1966 | 9.05pm |
TV Times listing


8.0 The Avengers
starring
Patrick Macnee
as John Steed
and
Diana Rigg
as Emma Peel
in
Honey for the
Prince
By Brian Clemens
In which Steed becomes a genie — and Emma joins a harem …
Cast also includes
Ponsonby Hopkirk | Ron Moody |
Prince Ali | Zia Mohyeddin |
Arkadi | George Pastell |
Vincent | Roland Curram |
Grand Vizier | Bruno Barnabe |
B. Bumble | Ken Parry |
Ronny Westcott | Jon Laurimore |
Postman | Reg Pritchard |
Bernie | Peter Diamond |
Eurasian girl | Carmen Dene |
George Reed | Richard Graydon |
Music by Laurie Johnson
Directed by James Hill
Produced by Julian Wintle
Diana Rigg’s wardrobe designed by John Bates
ABC Television Network Production




International broadcasts
Broadcaster | Date | Time |
---|---|---|
ABN2 Sydney, Australia | 9/08/1966 | 8.00pm |
ABQ2 Brisbane, Australia | 23/08/1966 | 7.30pm |
ABV2 Melbourne, Australia | 19/08/1966 | 8.00pm |
ABS2 Adelaide, Australia | 15/08/1966 | 8.30pm |
ABC New York, USA | --- | |
ORTF2 France | 20/7/91 FR3 | |
Suisse Romande, Switzerland | 4/02/1967 | 9.20pm |
French title | Du miel pour le prince | |
ZDF Germany | 4/07/1967 | 9.15pm |
German title | Honig für den Prinzen | |
KRO Netherlands | 8/08/1968 | 9.15pm |
Dutch title | Honig voor de prins | |
Italy | 25/11/80 C51 | |
Italian title | Miele per il principe | |
Spain | ||
Spanish title | Miel para el príncipe |
Italy did not show this episode in the 1960s, the Italian titles are from the Tele Torino International broadcast in the 1980s, and DVD releases. Spain and France did not include it in contemporary broadcasts.
This was the first episode of the second series of The Avengers in Germany, and was marked as “Für Jugendlich nicht geeignet” (Not suitable for young people). The second series was a combination of 23 episodes — the first four from series 4 and the remaining nineteen from series 5, shown mostly fortnightly until May 1968.




Episode Rating
Subject | 0–5 |
---|---|
Direction | 4 stars |
Music | 3½ stars |
Humour | 4 stars |
Intros/tags | 3 stars |
Villains | 3½ stars |
Plot | 4½ stars |
Emma | 4½ stars |
Sets/Props | 4 stars |
Overall (0–10) |
8 stars |
We end the season with a bang — a middle eastern fantasy on many levels. Fantasies within the fantasy devolve to reveal the ways and means, and the evil hand behins the scenes. Great stuff.
The Fashions
Emma’s Fashions | Steed’s Fashions |
---|---|
|
|
The Cars
Marque/Model/Type | Number Plate |
---|---|
Mini | 37 ONU |
Mini | - |
Ford Prefect utility | - |
Who’s Killing Whom?
Victim | Killer | Method |
---|---|---|
George Reed | Vincent East V* | machine gun |
Ronny Westcott | Vincent East V* | machine gun |
B. Bumble | Vincent East V* | pistol shot |
Ponsonby Hopkirk | Vincent East V* | pistol shot |
Bernie V* | himself V* & Emma | fell on discharging pistol |

Continuity and trivia
- 2:39 — Steed and Emma return drunkenly from an all night party over Tyke’s Water Bridge.
- 3:27 — Those aren’t bloody handprints, they’re paint-dripping handprints!
- 4:54 — Steed tells Emma to ring Colonel Robertson, let him know what’s happened and arrange for the body to be removed. When he returns to his flat later and sees Bernie’s feet sticking out from behind the sofa, he calls Robertson again (18:32/19:10), angry that the body is still “making the place very untidy”. Robertson appears to be someone Steed reports to, and is probably the same Colonel he rings in How to Succeed …. At Murder and is also mentioned by the same name in The House That Jack Built. Brian Clemens inserts him, only ever contacted by phone, into these three episodes at the end of series 4 and may have been toying with adding a “Mother” boss figure two years earlier than he did..
- 6:20 — Macnee does some of his own stunts here, although in the long shots it’s Joe Dunne standing-in, and I think Mike Stevens for Roland Curram.
- 7:49 & 10:00 — Is that honey? The liquid is sloshing around inside the jar like no honey I’ve ever seen, and I’m a beekeeper!
- 12:00 — the address of the QQF is 10 Belvoir Street (or maybe 10 Beaver Street).
- 12:50 — When Steed gets no response from the man dressed as Napoleon, he addresses him in French: “Je vous en prie, monsieur; pardon mon général, mon brave général… je cherche M. Hopkirk” — brave général elicits a smile from him but nothing more.
- 13:39 — Hopkirk tells Napoleon, “Won’t keep you long Napoleon, Wellington’s just getting his boots on.”
- 15:00 — the stairs outside Steed’s flat are extremely shabby!
- 15:28 — Peter Diamond may be a great stuntman but he’s terrible at dying on stage without melodramatics.
- 18:18 — Hopkirk tell Steed, “I know, you’re a secret agent. Licenced to kill, pitting your wits against a diabolical mastermind;” Steed initially thinks his cover is blown but then Hopklirk continues, “It would make a change from your everyday humdrum existence”.
- 20:33 — product placement for a Philips reel to reel tape machine.
- 23:02 — Yet another silenced revolver offered by Hopkirk — which is actually a camera. Another one, this time a gun, is used by Vincent later on. Silencers don’t work on most revolvers due to the gap between the barrel and the cylinder.
- 25:54 — in a rare glimpse of the view out Steed’s front windows you can see his baclony has a fine view of buidling which look suspiciouly like the Houses of Parliament.
- 25:57 — when they go to look at the newspaper, Mrs. Peel is so close to Steed that her breast is rubbing his upper arm.
- 25:57 — the Daily Mail News Chronicle is dated Friday, December 10, 1965.
- 34:03 — the prop money is clearly hand drawn and marked as One Rend on one side and ONE ROOID from the BANK OF ENOLRND on the other, presumably to steer clear of counterfeiting legislation.
- 36:09 onwards — the reverse shots of Steed and the Prince while the Vizier is taste-testing the food are slightly out of focus.
- 37:25 — Steed give Prince Ali a full commentary of the last Test Match — a fictitious recording involving the players Scott Gordon and Farnes-Barnes. Charlie FarnsBarns/Farnes-Barnes is a placeholder character name for unimportant or non-existent characters in British comedies from the 1930s to the 1950s, much like Joe Bloggs or John Doe today.
- 40:34 onwards — Emma performs the Dance of the Six Veils, with Steed joking afterwards whn Ali queries the number that she was poorly educated. There was a claim in the Daily Express at the time that this episode was censored, with Carmen Dene’s tiger claw scene trimmed and the dance originally being all seven veils, but I suspect the reporter was being dim and not appreciating the joke. The seventh veil is on her face and she briefly considers plucking it off, which makes Ali smile. To counteract any wowserism in the United States, she wears a jewel in her navel.
- 43:49 — Diana Rigg hurriedly hitches up her pants which are in danger of revealing more than she intended.
- 44:17 – 49:00 — There’s a duty roster for the wives, Emma being added by Henry as she start to search for the assassin:
SUN. No. 51 — Jessica No. 186 — Jose No. 104 — Carol No. 53 — Babie MON. No. 76 — Rose No. 45 — Naja No. 72 — Zena TUE. No. 42 — Sharron No. 238 — Miffy WED. No. 61 — Freda No. 78 — Zoie THU. FRI. No. 119 — Mary SAT. No. 321 — Emma The rooms in the harem are arranged thus:
--------
238 — Miffy
119 — Mary
76 — Rose
?? — ??
?? — ??
45 — Naja
--------
78 — Zoie
72 — Zena
61 — Freda
93 — Babie
51 — Jessica
?? — ??
--------There’s no sign of Florrie, Ethel or the unnamed wives 4 and 33, or the rooms for the other wives on the roster.
- 47:26 — It’s Diana Rigg doing the throwing, but it’s regular stuntman Mike Stevens being thrown as a stand-in for Roland Curram.
- 47:57 — When Steed turns at the sound of the sword fight in the harem, the shadow of the boom microphone passes across the back wall.
- 47:26–49:00 — When Emma runs down the hall to save the Prince, it’s outside the rooms of Freda & Babie (Vincent already having been shown to be hiding in Freda’s room but he’s emerging from Babie’s room). After Vincent is thrown across the hallway, they’re fighting outside the rooms of Zoie and Zena, which is further down the corridor but he looked to have been thrown up the corridor.
- 49:10 — Emma turns over the QQF fantasy to read the subject, but in the long shot it’s turn back over again.
- 50:30 — you can see the wires holding up the back of the “flying carpet”.
- 50:55 — The Avengers depart down Silver Hill as usual, but this time it.
- Ron Moody returns in The Bird Who Knew Too Much as the feather-brained Professor Jordan.
- The set of Prince Ali’s palace was used for the filming of the short promotional film for the upcoming colour season, The Strange Case of the Missing Corpse.
- Running time: 51′50″ (the dialogue sheets from 1966 record the length as 4,719 feet of film which is 52′26″, including Avengers I.D. cards at the beginning and end of the commercial breaks which would easily come to 34″).
A note on the timecodes
Timecodes for episodes are problematic as each release has its own quirks so the 2009–11 Optimum Releasing/Studio Canal DVD sets have different run times compared to the A&E and Contender DVD sets from a decade beforehand. The newer Studio Canal & Via Vision blu rays seems to be back in line with the earlier releases, except they often have StudioCanal idents lasting 20 to 22 seconds added to the beginning.
The Optimum Releasing/Studio Canal DVD releases were remastered and their frame rate has been changed, resulting in a shorter running time. However, the picture quality has increased markedly. I assume this is because they used a simple 2:2 pulldown (24 @ 25) when converting from the original film masters (film runs at 24 frames per second, while PAL runs at 25fps, the new DVDs are in PAL format).
This pulldown was also the cause of audio errors on many episodes, especially for Series 5, as the audio sped up to match the new rate (4% faster), rather than being properly pitch-shifted. Checking the dialogue sheets, which list the feet and frames of the reels, it looks like the speed change is around 5.04%, so there may be some cuts as well — probably from around the commercial breaks and ends of reels, as they amount to about 25 seconds. All my assumptions are based on the episodes having been filmed on standard 35mm film, which has 16 frames per foot and runs at 24 frames per second, so a minute of footage uses 90 feet of film (1,440 frames).
The audio errors have been corrected in the currently available DVDs, but the 2:2 pulldown remains. There is also the addition of a Studio Canal lead-in, converted to black and white to match the episode for Series Four, but colour for Series Five, adding an extra 18 or 19 seconds to the running time and making it harder to match timecodes with previous releases. It’s annoying that it has been slapped on every single episode, Series 1–3 didn’t suffer this indignity.
The previous Contender and A&E DVD releases didn’t seem to suffer from these problems, so I assume they either used soft telecine and preserved the original 24fps rate of the film (my preferred option in DVDs) or they used 24 @ 25 pulldown (2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:3 Euro pull-down).
Thankfully, the new blu ray releases for series 4–6 appear to use native 24fps with soft telecine so the running times and pitch all seem to be correct again along with a much greatly improved picture quality, most notably in the Tara King episodes which are finally (mostly) back to their original glory.