Therefore, to explain it to anyone who may have incredibly missed that epoch-making ops, I cannot do better than repeat the explanatory note with which it was prefaced: When, after many years of noble and lofty-minded resistance, I finally broke down and sold the Saint to the Philistines of Television, I fear that I must have added one more argument to the armory of the cynics who maintain that every man has his price; because I certainly got mine. It must have been a shattering blow to the countless millions who until then had thought I was perfect, even though I myself had never made that claim. However, I did have enough remnants of probity to limit his period of bondage to two years, knowing full well the voracity of the mills which grind out the fodder for what I still regard as the mini-medium of mini-minds, and figuring that in that time, at the relentless pace of one show a week, they would have devoured the entire product of a not inactive writing lifetime, or anyway as much of it as was suitable for adaptation to filmlets of about 50 minutes without the commercial “messages”
