My friendly e-Bay trader has unearthed another gem - this time a Dutch magazine feature about the series Maelstrom. Anna Pereboom is kindly translating the feature into English for us.

I will be adding a scan of the original magazine article to the Maelstrom section of the website this evening.

The translation will follow.

Andrew Glew, who created and maintains the excellent Alexandra Bastedo website at http://www.alexandra-bastedo.com has busy developing a website for Peter Egan. It is well worth a visit. Andrew has done another fine job.

Egan has quite a bit to say about his work on The Dark Side of the Sun with the promise of more in a forthcoming newsletter.

You will find the website at http://www.peter-egan.co.uk

... and a Peaceful New Year to you all. Thanks for your continuing support. It makes the whole thing fun.

Michael Bird was once asked about any set-backs in his career. The writer said that that Brett, a series he worked on in the early 70s for the BBC, was a failure. "I wrote five or six scripts and initially everything seemed fine but the chemistry was wrong. What had started as a good idea came to nothing. Often thinking up a gripping beginning and a good ending are the easy part. It is the middle part which is difficult. Brett was a glorious but resounding failure."

The series, which was shown from May to August in 1971, starred Patrick Allen.

Thanks to Olive Bird you can view a copy of Compton Bennett and Derek Glynn's 31 page Series Format Document dated October 1969. I have uploaded a copy to the Brett page as a PDF file. Interestingly at that time the series was to be called "Crowther". The Stage reported in February 1971 that the name of the series had been changed "to avoid confusion with comedian Leslie Crowther."