When I first saw this picture, and the clues in the preamble, I thought that it might be Linda Thorson. It’s a fairly atypical hairstyle, but then Otto has an uncanny ability to find photos of people that don’t look very much like them. I have since found a website (only one!) which reckons that this picture is of her, so let’s run with it!
Canadian actress Linda Thorson has had a long and quite distinguished career playing a wide variety of parts on stage and screen, but strangely enough, for people of my sort of age, she is best remembered for quite a brief appearance, at the age of 20, playing the character Tara King in the iconic 1960s British spy-fi series
The Avengers.
As assistant to debonair crimefighter John Steed (Patrick Macnee), poor Tara had a tough act to follow, in the form of his previous assistant Emma Peel, played by the incomparable Diana Rigg. Of course comparisons were inevitably made, and some critics were not kind to Miss King. This was perhaps unfair, as the two characters were quite different. Tara King was more vulnerable, and less experienced and capable than the indomitable Mrs Peel. Perhaps more human too – Mrs Peel was more of a fantasy character – and Tara was a good foil for Steed. And you have to ask why, if she supposedly wasn’t very good, this is the role Linda Thorson is probably most remembered for.
But anyway, as for cars, she drove several, but was most often seen in a Lotus Europa. I later found that it was red, but we only had a black-and-white television when the series first aired – colour sets were available, but were incredibly expensive in the UK in the 1960s. Or for something more exotic, in a couple of episodes she drove a convertible AC 428.
As for the "first and second" mentioned in the puzzle preamble, there’s more that could be said, but I’d better wait to see if I’ve got this wrong first…..
