Shattered Visage - The Village Idiot

In Shattered Visage Number Two has authored his memoirs entitled The Village Idiot (after a twenty-year internment) which became a runaway bestseller despite the security services' attempts to ban it. The Village Idiot resembles ex-MI5 agent Peter Wright's book Spycatcher. There were several attempts by the British Government to ban the publication of Spycatcher, but was successfully published in a number of other countries.

Topics removed from the fictional The Village Idiot included;

• Project: Operation Pennyfarthing
• Prisoners of Power
• Protect Other People
• Price of Peace
• all references to The Arch-Angels
• Directive 17 - The status of The Prisoner

The shared acronym of the first four topics: "POP", pops up in several places during the course of the program. It is the code word referenced in rough drafts of the original series - McGoohan saying that if humans couldn't "put it all together", (that is, bring our human morals up to speed with our technological abilities and overcome the animal within), we would "POP" and destroy ourselves. It featured prominently in an early version of the series' closing credits (which can be seen in the early versions of "Arrival" and "The Chimes of Big Ben") and as a lyric included in the POPular, cryptic and obtuse rhyme "POP Goes the Weasel", a much-used musical-motif in the series, and particularly heavily referenced in the closing two episodes "Once Upon a Time" and Fall Out.