I WAS saddened to hear that Gerry Anderson – the creator of Thunderbirds – finally snipped his puppet strings and left this life on Boxing Day.
Gerry, who passed away in his sleep at the age of 83, had given the world "supermarionation" – but had regretted it ever since.
He was an extraordinarily creative man, who felt his true talents were obscured by the ties of the puppet strings he had created.
I was lucky enough to interview him a few years ago when he visited Bristol to give a talk at The Watershed.
For the rest of us, the puppets of Thunderbirds, Stingray and Captain Scarlet may have been iconic representatives of the Sixties, but he told me that they were the bane of his life.
"I hated the puppets," he said. "I had imagined that I would be a great film director, but all I became known for was these puppets. I couldn't escape them. It's a bit like an actor being type-cast. That's how I felt."
It could have been a very different story. As a child, growing up in pre-war London, Gerry had dreamed of becoming an architect. He went on to study plastering at building school, but his experience was short-lived when he discovered he was allergic to plaster.
He applied for a job in the Colonial Film Unit, a branch of the Ministry of Information, and was taken on as a trainee – it sparked his life-long career behind the lens.
But it was Gerry's work on children's television in the Fifties that first brought him to the attention of the great and good of the industry.
Gerry found himself making a series called The Adventures Of Twizzle, and another called Torchy the Battery Boy.
"I'd never picked up a puppet in my life, so I quickly had to get to grips with the limitations of the medium, and I soon developed my real hatred for puppets," he said. "I was constantly trying to work out ways I could make the puppets look more real. For me, it was a way of showing people I was capable of more than puppet shows."
With each series Anderson improved the realism of the puppets – a process which eventually led to his "supermarionation" development. He wanted to create a word to show they weren't just normal puppets – so simply joined together the words 'super', 'marionette' and 'animation'.
Anderson's company, APF, had its big break with Four Feather Falls, a puppet Western for Granada Television, which featured Nicholas Parsons as one of the lead voices.
It was around this time that Lew Grade, the head of ATV, discovered the puppets. Suddenly, Gerry had a very influential fan.
With Grade's enthusiastic backing, Gerry's career took off in a big way throughout the early Sixties, as the world was introduced to Fireball XL5, Stingray and eventually Thunderbirds itself.
When he had finished Stingray, Lew Grade was so impressed he called Gerry to his office. He wanted to know what the next series would be.
Gerry told him he had an idea of doing a show about 'international rescue', but that he had thought he mightn't be keen on it.
Grade picked him up by the scruff of the neck, dragged him to the middle of the room and pointed up at the lamp. 'See that lightbulb,' Grade said. 'Gerry, if you wanted to make a series about that lightbulb, I'd back you all the way.'
Gerry had no reason to worry. He made nine half-hour episodes of Thunderbirds and took them in to Grade. He watched the pilot, and at the end he stood up and walked over to the screen. Wagging his finger, he said, 'Gerry, that isn't a television series'.
"As you can imagine, I was gutted," Gerry recalled. "We'd put a lot of work into the series. Then he came closer to me, and wagging his finger again, he said, 'Gerry, that isn't a television series – it's a feature film!'"
He told him he wanted all the episodes extending to be an hour in length, so the team had to go back and add half an hour's worth of material to each one.
The name Thunderbirds came from a letter written to Gerry by his late brother – who had served with the RAF at an Arizona airfield called Thunderbird Airbase. His brother was shot down and killed later in the war, but when I came to filming the International Rescue series, the name was a nod to his late brother's memory.
With shows like Captain Scarlet and Joe 90, Gerry's puppet shows proved a hit throughout the decade, and with the advent of television repeats, Gerry's reputation was set in stone.
But he still had a dream of being a "great director". He thought his moment had come when he was invited to make Moonraker in 1969, but following a dispute between producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman the Bond film was put on hold, and when it was eventually made two years later, Gerry's version was not resurrected.
"It was devastated," Gerry told me. "It was a massive disappointment."
By the time I spoke to him in 2008, Gerry had overseen the production of modern CGI versions of Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. But he clearly felt little but resentment towards his most famous creations.
"The puppets' appeal is obviously still there," he said with a shrug. "Now they seem to have taken on a sort of cult appeal. But I guess that happens with everything if it stays around long enough."
Feature writer David Clensy writes The Post's daily Focus features
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