Accomplishment is such a patronizing, dangerous word, isn't it? I haven't really accomplished anything. The most accomplished thing I've done is to have lived this long - 81.
And in the Second World War, you didn't just read about it in the newspapers because you weren't allowed to read it in the newspapers. It was all censored, you know? So nobody knew what we were doing.
And that's what happened to that show. It started ordinary, it started really rather bad. As I said, there was a review that said, really, we think the commercials are better than the show. And then it gradually developed.
And there was a very famous man called Michael Powell, who probably is the greatest director all round, except possibly a couple of men.
At the moment I'm reading The Life of Ken Tynan, which is absolutely fascinating, because it really sort of decimates him - and he was one of the greatest drama critics who've ever been.
But I did an awful lot of work in Hollywood, and in New York for that matter.
I like most of the Humphrey Bogart movies because they had to act then, and they acted very well. Edward G. Robinson is probably the best actor I've ever seen on the movies.
I mean, everyone says Citizen Kane. It isn't that great, anyway. And Orson Welles I knew well, of course. He made other incredible films that no one would let him make, which were much better than Citizen Kane, really.
I was absolutely delighted that those shows have been preserved.
I was producing a series about Sir Winston Churchill, about which I was extremely proud, and earning a lot of money as a producer.
I went to acting school, but only for nine months. If you're an actor, you know, don't really need to learn how to do it.
It doesn't work that way, you know, because most parts that you think you'd do well, most other people don't. So they offer you something - The Avengers is a good example... I fitted into that because I came from that sort of background. It's not even acting.
It was male chauvinism, as you must realize, in the 1960s, particularly in the entertainment business, which was pretty repulsive.
No, I was working in Canada. In fact, the man who asked me to be in The Avengers, I told him, what do I need to be in that, I'm a producer now.
So I find the fascination, the love, the incredible skill and everything to do with acting, writing plays, and doing them, just darling. Lovely. I love actors.
Television has some lovely aspects to it - and some ghastly aspects - but the theater itself was a wonderful invention.
That's probably the most erotic thing I've ever seen in my life - Ingrid Bergman walking around in a theater-in-the-round in a backless dress, not long before she died.
The only danger about websites, you know, is people who remember something you did or said thirty or forty years ago, and bring it up against you, so you're going for a job and you don't get it.
The radio even weren't allowed to say there was a Holocaust and people were being killed right, left and center in these terrible camps.
These things don't just come, arrive and settle like a bird picking up a few bits of crumbs. They develop. I think the best word for these things is develop. They develop because of the human beings who just happen to be there at the time.
They call it The New Avengers but it's really the old Avengers with new people except for me, looking rather fat and rather old.
Until the year 1967, it was a crime, for which you could be put in prison, to make homosexual love to someone in your own house. If they came in and caught you at it, you could be put into prison. This has changed - I'm talking about England, incidentally.
We were the first people in popular television to make the woman an equal partner with the man. You won't believe that, but I promise you it's true.
Well, at the age of seventeen I got into it professionally, and I was in the West End of London in a play. I did a good deal.
Well, I emigrated to Canada in 1952 and came to Hollywood in 1954, and I had a cousin called David Niven who helped me a great deal, a darling man.
Well, you know, I was through the whole of the Second World War and saw all my friends killed.
You can't get a much better actress than Dame Maggie Smith or Dame Diana Rigg. They're the tops, aren't they?
You can't get much bigger than Lumley, she's the biggest star in England now, of anybody. She's got another show that's on now, that's hugely successful, Absolutely Fabulous. She's a wonderful woman.
Patrick was featured on a series of "Avengers" postal stamps released by the United Kingdom Post Office on September 15, 2005.
Patrick has had a long-standing partnership with author Jack Higgins, narrating the cassette/CD versions of his books.
Patrick appeared in two music videos, The Pretenders' "Don't Get Me Wrong" in 1986 and Oasis' "Don't Look Back In Anger" in 1996.
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