Well I have to admit hat Joan Rice is my own very favourite Maid Marian from the 1952 Walt Disney film ‘The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men’

Only a few years later though we have the Television series The Adventure of Robin Hood with Richard Greene and first Bernadette O’Farrell as Maid Marion and then a very surprised Patricia Driscoll was offered and accepted the role as Maid Marian

She had been doing the Children’s TV programme ‘Picture Book’ when she received the call to go for a test. She was surprised but went along – not really expecting anything to come of it – and lo and behold, she got the part.

Duncan Lamont was Patricia’s husband and also an actor – very busy on Television and in films – in fact he played Victor Caroon in ‘The Quatermass Experiment’ which scared me and my brother so much so that Dad would not let us see the last episode.

His character, on his sick, bed reached out for a ‘cactus-like’plant which gradually grew on him and eventually took him over to become the monster. Memorable Television of that early era.

At that time, he was working a lot, but Patricia on Picture Book had a good but more relaxed life style – that changed with ‘Robin Hood’ when she had to be up at 5-30 am to travel to the Studios, often not getting back home until 7 pm. which left Duncan for much of the time as head cook and bottle washer. Mind you as she admitted her pay rose to three times what it had been.

As we all know this series was a monster hit Worldwide – particularly in America – and Patricia Driscoll received very many fan letters from there.

She had starred before this with Max Bygraves in a really pleasant Colour Film ‘Charlie Moon’ and she was also in an episode of ‘Scotland Yard’ and ‘Fabian of the Yard’ – an episode called ‘The Poison Machine’ one of the only episodes that I have much of a memory of – it was to me at the time quite disturbing.

Patricia Driscoll died in 2020 at the age of 92 but her husband Duncan Lamont had passed away in 1978.

I had always thought that they didn’t have children but in fact they did have two – one was a daughter not sure of the other