A fan is born!

A long, long time ago, during the glorious 80’s I grew up in Mexico City, watching TV shows and films. Instead of being crazy of Tom Cruise or I don’t know who else, I was crazy about Clint Eastwood : I loved the Dirty Harry films and one of my favorites still is The good, the bad and the ugly. OK, so when did Robert appeared? Well, one day,  in the morning before going to school I was “reading” the newspaper (Excelsior, I liked it). I was about 12, and if you ask what I was reading it was mainly the tv schedules of course (shame on me!). The tv schedules were illustrated with pictures, so the only picture I had of Clint Eastwood came from the newspaper (b&w). OK, back to that wonderful morning, I came across with a picture of a new show : Hannay and to my eyes, the guy in the picture looked so much like Clint Eastwood! So I decided to watch this show.

Just add a bit of imagination! Don't you think they have a little something in common? (Eastwood on the left, Powell on the right)

  

Hannay was broadcasted in Mexico in 1989 – 1990 by Canal 13 of Imevision. Imevision was a public service broadcasting company and I liked it very much when it existed : it had great shows and most of them European (most of the British). I ignore if British shows were cheaper and if that’s why this public company – that sadly disappeared in the 90s, well it became a Private company, but it wasn’t the same – broadcasted a lot of tv shows like The tomorrow people, Armchair tales and Hannay of course, among others (curiously, Shaka Zulu and Frankenstein but I didn’t know it at that time and I don’t remember if I’ve noticed him).

Cutting from the newspaper

So, when I saw the show I just became crazy! I fell in love of those beautiful eyes, that perfect nose, that lovely curly hair! And the period of course was one of my favorites! The turn of the XXth century, the wardrobe, the stories, everything was perfect in that show! Even the voices! Yes! Robert’s wonderful voice was dubbed and the voice he had was lovely, it really helped so much to my fascination. Of course I prefer Robert’s real voice, but that voice was just perfect to the character! If you want to hear, just follow the link. Just for the detail, that was the same Mexican voice for Tom Selleck’s Magnum.

At that time I didn’t see all the episodes, I’ve missed some of them because it was late (10 PM at that time was late for me! That’s the reason I’m not tall, I should have slept more at that age!). But for the few episodes I watched, I decided to memorize everything! As I didn’t have the chance to record any episode, I had to record every detail in my mind, so I’d never forget the show, nor the wonderful actor that played Hannay. It’s incredible, but something told me that I could see more about him. The two episodes I recorded in my mind were Terrors of the Earth (which was and still is one of my favorites) and Coup de grace (which I loooooved when I watched it). Then, the show was cancelled and I was very sad!

Why? Because nobody knew Robert Powell! I knew nothing about him! I supposed he was English and that was all! When you become fan of your idol, you want to know everything about him and want to have his picture in your room and talk about your idol with other people, so that was a bit frustrating that nobody knew him (in Mexico and people of my age). Later on, around 1996, Hannay was going to be back on tv, in Canal 11 IPN, the cultural channel of Mexico City.

About 20 years ago, thanks to the website, I was so happy to discover that at that time, in Mexico, there was another girl of my age that was a fan as crazy as me about Robert Powell. Incredible, isn’t it?

A fan was born.

From that day, I started to look for Robert Powell in every tv guide, film guide, magazine, etc. I was sure that I’ll find more about him. But, of course that will be the subject of another post.

Thanks for reading.