All ears to I spy

Every afternoon when the Mouseketeers sang, 'So, proudly put on your Mouseke-ears,' I did as I was told. I'd sit with crossed legs on the floor in front of the television sporting my big, black ears. I was a member of the 'club that's made for you and me … MIC – KEY – MOUSE.'

That's one of the great things about television, you can sing and only annoy a handful of people. Some years later, on the other side of the Mickey Mouse Club, I tried singing along to South Pacific in a packed theatre and it didn't go down so well.

In the blink of an eye I was trading moth-eaten ears for a Man from U.N.C.L.E. membership card. I didn't play the part as demonstrably as I had under the spell of the mouse, I think I just needed the card to prove I was a member of the Illya Kuryakin club. And, I was an adolescent and a member of a spy ring, so I didn't sing, I smouldered.

A Russian-born American spy who went to the Sorbonne, did a PhD in quantum mechanics at Cambridge and wore turtleneck sweaters was about as exotic as a girl in country NSW could get. I wasn't alone; David McCallum, who played Kuryakin, received more fan mail than any actor in the history of MGM.

Illya's partner, the charming Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughan), wasn't my type. He was too debonair and too conventional. That is, if you call entering your skyscraper headquarters through a tailor shop fitting room and (in the early 1960s) using ballpoint 'communicators' conventional.

Being a true Renaissance man, Kuryakin left U.N.C.L.E. after a disastrous love affair in Yugoslavia and became a fashion designer. It wouldn't have worked out between us anyway – he was a Scorpio.

You can buy The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete Series on Amazon.