Lady Penelope

[stevezodiac]

Lady Penelope featured in TV Century 21 from the first issue in January 1965 but Thunderbirds did not appear on our tv screens until September that year. What is the story behind this? I know Alan Fennel was the editor of TV21 and also wrote Thunderbirds episodes so did he create Lady P himself and allow Gerry Anderson to use the character in the series or was Thunderbirds well into production in January 1965? Its been bugging me for 45 years now. (Not every day though).

[Digifiend]

The copyright date on the first few episodes is 1964 - so it was in production before Penelope's comic strip started.

A total of 32 episodes of Thunderbirds were made between 1965 and 1966 (although production began in 1964, as indicated by the show's copyright date) for the British production company ITC Entertainment, and first broadcast on ITV.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbirds_(TV_series)

[philcom55]

Yes. The fact that TV Century 21 had unrivaled access to the boys at Slough is shown by the fact that Eric Eden's Lady Penelope masthead was converted to a photographic image long before Thunderbirds launched on our TV screens. Another example was the spectacular Jungle Cat machine from the Thunderbirds episode 'The End of the Road' which appeared months earlier in a Ron Embleton Stingray story (along with photo inserts).

- Phil Rushton

[Lew Stringer]

This richly researched wonderful website gives you all the info you need:

http://www.technodelic.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

Remember that TV 21 wasn't just any old licensed comic. It was part of the whole Century 21 empire.

Lew

[Phoenix]

A full-length coloured portrait of Lady Penelope in a frame has just been valued at between £200 and £300 on The Antiques Roadshow. It looked like an oil painting but the expert said it was a photograph that had been cleverly painted over. The owner is the widow of a guy who worked on the programmes (at Century 21?), and I got the impression that the portrait had been used in one or more of the Lady Penelope programmes as part of some scenery or backcloth.

[philcom55]

If it was a genuine prop with verifiable provenance that sounds like a serious underestimate!

- Phil Rushton