This week Ace of Wands begins a new mystery called Eye of Ra. It has a complicated plot where Tarot becomes involved with a villain called Ceribraun who wants him to steal a priceless diamond.
The props department at Thames Television had to find some unusual things for the programme. These included three mummy cases, some giant-sized chess pieces and a battery-operated wheelchair.
"Ceribraun spends his life in the wheelchair," explained produced Pamela Lonsdale. "He has a brilliant technical mind and is surrounded by computers."
Computers were more items on the list of props for Ace of Wands. In charge of this list was John Davies from the prop buying office.
"The motorised wheelchair was easy enough because we were able to buy it from a specialised shop," Davies explained. "But the three mummy cases were more difficult."
Although the computers used in Ace of Wands are not real, they do all sorts of extraordinary things – like spluttering out masses of paper punched with holes, and flashing lights.
Davies found the mock computers at one of the film studios. "Unless you happen to be an expert with computers you could easily be fooled by the ones we used on the programme," he said.
The villainous Ceribraun plays a great deal of chess – by computer.
Not unexpectedly, Ceribraun uses unusual chess pieces – larger than life-sized chess men made by the props department. Each piece was about 8ft. tall and 1ft. wide [approximately 245cm x 30cm]. They were made out of aluminium.
"The pieces were moved by different studio technicians who stood behind them," said Davies. "But because each piece was so huge, the men were completely hidden."
Obviously there had to be a chess board for the game to be played on. This was painted on the entire studio floor.
The title of this Ace of Wands story, Eye of Ra, is the name of the priceless diamond that Ceribraun wants to steal.
Davies had to find something which looked like a diamond worth millions of pounds. "Fortunately we knew of a jewellery designer who made just what we wanted from a piece of glass. It looks very valuable."
John Davies has been responsible for all the props used in Ace of Wands. He found this story relatively easy compared with the first one.
"Early on in the series I had to buy a single-decker coach, gut out the inside and build bunk beds inside so people could actually live there, as that was what the story was about," he said. "That was quite an undertaking."
But the most gruesome thing Davies had to do was visit a taxidermist. "It really was horrible being surrounded by stuffed animals – until we got used to them. We had everything from stuffed lizards and cats to a stuffed cow and a pony. I even had a stuffed bison but fortunately it was just too big to use in the studio."
Think I'd rather stick to computers and mummy cases myself – wouldn't you?
The article was accompanied by a photograph of Michael Mackenzie and Tony Selby surrounded by stuffed animals, captioned: Tony Selby and Mike Mackenzie are live: the animals are stuffed.