By Jonathan Morris

Hammer into Anvil was written by Roger Woddis, famous for compiling the Radio Times crossword and the Radio Times weekly poem, 'Woddis on...'. Back in the days when the letters on the Radio Times letters page had more than one paragraph. Whatever happened to Roger Woddis? And was there any truth to the rumours about the long-running feud with his arch-rival, Clive Doig?

Who is the new Number 2? It's many happy returns to Patrick 'We're not all Rob Roys' Cargill. So, if he's the same character, that means in Many Happy Returns he was definitely working for Them.

The episode begins with a woman who has been subjected to interrogation killing herself. This incurs Number 6's wrath, and one thing you don't want is Number 6 when he's had his wrath incurred. Leave that wrath alone. Don't incur it, whatever you do. Leave that wrath unincurred if you possibly can.

This is quite late in the run, because Number 6 has given up trying to leave The Village and instead gets his kicks from trouncing Number 2s. The latest Number 2 - Patrick 'It's just a small prick' Cargill - has something to prove and tells Number 6 he will beat him, like a hammer into an anvil.

He forgets that anvils are somewhat bigger and stronger than hammers.

I'm not sure why Number 2 is so shirty. I don't recall Number 6 doing anything to incur his wrath in Many Happy Returns.

This is one of the episodes where the audience's point of view is omniscient, rather than based around the perceptions of Number 6. It's an interesting thing about The Prisoner, how it makes use of viewpoint characters to tell a story, as that's more a novel device. Usually we're with Number 6, and everyone else is an enigma - this time we're with Number 2, and Number 6 is the unknowable one.

What is particularly amusing about scenes in the control room are the control room doors. There's a lot of coming and going - no sooner have they whooshed shut than they have to whoosh open again. In never quite the same way twice.

But what is this episode about? In essence, it's Some Mother's Do Ave Em.

I should explain. In each episode of Some Mother's Do Ave Em there would be two things that always happened. The episode would always end with Frank Crawford roller-skating under a lorry or hanging off a cliff, or in the cheaper episodes, having a mild accident in the loft.

The other thing that would always happen was that Frank would meet an authority figure - someone at the employment office, or an immigration official, or a psychiatrist. They would then embark upon a tedious 'comedy' scene where the authority figure would become frustrated as a result of Frank's haplessness, his misapprehensiveness and, in the early episodes, his implicit homosexuality. The authority figure would be reduced to a wreck, popping pills and gibbering.

And that's Number 6's plan. He will reduce Number 2 to a nervous wreck by doing a Frank Crawford impersonation. He will be irritating. He doesn't wear a beret, pout perplexedly with a finger on his lips and look left and right, but that's only because he can drive Number 2 mad in many other ways.

Two problems with this plan. Firstly, we know there are people in The Village called 'jammers' who timewaste by making up pretend schemes. Why doesn't Number 2 think Number 6 is 'jamming'? And secondly, and this is the real problem with this otherwise delightful episode, the things Number 6 does aren't quite irritating enough to justify the hysterical reaction they induce in Number 2.

It's a one-idea plot, and that one idea only really has legs for 20 minutes. It would need another couple of legs to make a proper episode. And the real problem with making the episode about someone being driven to distraction is that Patrick Cargill arrives at distraction far too early. He starts frothing in the first 10 minutes, and after that he has nowhere more bonkers to go.

What was needed, I feel, was for Number 2 to be perfectly sane, collected and sceptical to begin with. Instead, it looks like he is on the verge of a breakdown due to his paranoia, rather than Number 6 playing upon that paranoia.

Number 6 gets himself sent a birthday message from number 113. Number 113 is dead, and of course it isn't Number 6's birthday because if it was everyone would have left The Village to allow him to escape as a birthday present. These birthday presents must be very tricky to organize, I wonder if they do them for all the other prisoners? 'Okay, everyone, it's number 43's birthday today, everyone hide in your bins?' 'It's number 25 and 48's wedding anniversary, could everyone please lock themselves in their cupboards, try not to make a noise.'

Oh, and you remember about Frank Crawford being annoying because he was implicitly homosexual? Well, Number 6 pulls the same trick... He tries to pull Number 14! He even invites him to join him for some rough-and-tumble in the Koshu play-pen.

Number 6 meets The Village bandleader, who is played by an actor known as Dock Green Dick. This because he is famous for a) trying to buy Chitty Chitty Bang Bang off of 'Q' and b) saying Dock Green Dick a lot.

I really liked this episode - particularly the humorous business, like Number 2 getting the computer to analyze 'patta cake'. It's also significant that by this stage Number 6 is becoming institutionalized - he identifies himself as Number 6 for the first time.

Number 2 eventually goes so doolally that he fires the fat enigmatic midget! The fat enigmatic midget leaves the control room through the eccentric double doors.