First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on August 31, 1969

It is perhaps just as well that actor Patrick Macnee – better known as John Steed of The Avengers – is an extremely amiable man.

For he could be dangerous.

In about 200 episodes of The Avengers, of course, he was; assorted villains were bowled over by his hands and umbrella like nine pins.

In real life, however, Mr Macnee has sedulously avoided personal violence. But he reckons the old Avenger training would stand him in good stead in an emergency.

The unarmed combat he displayed so convincingly on the little screen was mostly learnt at school and in the navy.

"I've noticed when I've been walking down strange streets at night in places like New York where you're likely to get mugged that I instinctively adopt my old Avengers walk," he said this week.

"I'm tense and ready to spin round into action like I used to for the cameras. I think if I really had to I could defend myself pretty well.

"But I'd rather not be put to the test."

He is happy at the moment to be able to put all that behind him for the next few months. For his next project, which brought him to Sydney this week, is a gentle one.

He will play the lead role in the The Secretary Bird, an English comedy that Harry M. Miller will stage in Sydney at the Palace Theatre.

It is about a decade since he appeared on stage and he was finding the experience rather strange.

"I had rather forgotten just how much work you put into the early rehearsals of a play," he said. "I've got used to television, which is quick, and films, where you just go on and do your little bits.

"But I'm enjoying it."

It was the Steed we know so well talking. His face was redder than you would imagine – the result of a couple of days on a Californian beach rather than high living – but the voice, mannerisms and gear were right.

The red cravat struck the right informal note while he sipped Scotch, ice and water in the elegant bar at the Town House Hotel at Kings Cross.

And it wasn't an act, for The Avengers was devised around Patrick Macnee rather than Patrick Macnee being devised around The Avengers.

"They were fun days," he said. "Hard work, but fun. They put a bunch of brilliant young producers and writers into the show and spent a lot of time and effort getting everything right.

"I'll always bless them for that. But it's probably why the series didn't make money."

Macnee projected his histrionic dreams of glory into the part and had a lot to do with what went on.

For instance, he could write a lot of his own lines.

In real life he is not the wine expert he portrayed on camera.

"I'd just learn a lot of meaningless wine jargon and rattle it off," he admitted. "I'd do that with any expert field. The whole show, of course, was a complete send up."

But he is most grateful to the series for making him what he describes as "almost a professional" actor.

"Film and television over the past decade have given actors some sort of status," he said.

"In the early 1950s, when I was getting into my stride, an actor was generally little more than an itinerant worker scratching a living.

"Today there is so much activity around the world in good class production that the actor has got to the position where he is almost a professional worker.

"It's an encouraging and gratifying trend."

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on August 31, 1969