Fearless Frank

The world has just lost a tiny bit of its lustre.

Frank Maher, my friend, passed away yesterday.

A mini-bio from the Cult TV website:

After serving in the Parachute Regiment during the war, Frank Maher worked as a stuntman and actor on many of the ITC action adventure shows. An expert in all forms of fighting, he became a master at crashing cars, falling from great heights and leaping through windows.

A stunt man on The Avengers, he played roles in three episodes opposite Honor Blackman. When Diana Rigg took over as Steed’s assistant he appeared as Nicholls in You Have Just Been Murdered, ultimately impaled on a scythe by Emma Peel.

After working on Man in a Suitcase he acted as the stunt co-ordinator for both Department S and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).

As well as Roger Moore’s stunt double in The Saint, he played Kraft in The Paper Chase and Rip Savage in the two-part story The Fiction Makers. Two years later he doubled for Moore a second time in The Persuaders!, and appeared in the episode The Man in the Middle.

Forging a long association with Patrick McGoohan after being his stunt double in Danger Man, Frank teamed up with the actor for The Prisoner.

As stunt director on the series, responsible for the action sequences and choreographed fight scenes, he played Number Six in the episode The Schizoid Man and appeared as a Gunman in Living in Harmony.

Frank retired from stunt work, after working on Doctor Who and Blake’s 7, and spent his later years writing adventure novels.

I first met Frank when we were both guests at the Cult TV Festival, back in 2000. I was introduced to him by a mutual friend who had worked with him on Blake’s 7, many years previously. We instantly got on, our shared sense of humour and taste for the absurd forging a strong bond of comradeship, which often seemed an unlikely match to observers, as we were both from widely different backgrounds and generations.

Frank had a thousand hilarious and moving anecdotes about the industry, was fiercely loyal, took absolutely no shit from studio types (especially Michael Winner), was a long-time friend of Robert Mitchum and Roger Moore, used to hang out with the Rat Pack and had only (when I met him, in his seventies) recently given up his black belt in shotokan karate.

Frank inspired people. My friend Henry, who Frank immediately christened “Hank”, and I would often sit and talk through the night with Frank, fascinated by his insights and the story of his life. I would tell friends that I knew were going to meet him for the first time that they were “going to fall in love with Frank”. Much like Hank, there are people who you can gauge other people by - if they like them, they’re good people. If they don’t, forget ’em.

My biggest regret is that I never saw enough of Frank, and never managed to badger out of him the full account of his time in Arnhem during WWII (or, “that fucking shambles” as he often referred to it). From what Frank told me, the film A Bridge Too Far came close, but nowhere near close enough.

Ladies and gentlemen, wherever you are, if you’re able, please raise a glass in memory of one of our country’s very finest sons - Mr. Frank Maher.