l Our Yesterdays
Article dated: Friday 17 May 2002
The Man From UNCLE

Or United Nations Command for Law Enforcement. When the programme was first devised, as a way of cashing in on the Bond craze, the initials meant nothing, but the series quickly became wildly popular and fans needed answers to their questions. The meaning of THRUSH, though, UNCLE's enemy organisation, was never explained, unless it was a veiled reference to a fungal disease.

Although UNCLE stopped just short of being an out and out spoof like Get Smart (qv), there was a strong strain of parody, not least in Robert Vaughn's knowing performance as the smooth debonair Napoleon Solo, and in some of the secret agent business surrounding the UNCLE organisation; the entrance through a hidden door in a tailor's shop, the two-way radios in fountain pens, the agents' triangular badges, and so on. The plots rarely varied. Napoleon Solo and his sidekick Ilya Kuryakin (David McCallum) went to the aid of some innocent in peril, and discovered an evil THRUSH plan to take over the world, which they foiled, often in some unconventional way which was not altogether approved of by their stern boss Alexander Waverley (Leo G Carroll, conjuring up memories of fine performances in Hitchcock films). Inexplicably popular, possibly because of McCallum's steel grey eyes and polo-neck sweaters.