It had been Lloyd's plan to create an in-depth feature on hovercraft but at Pegwell Bay, gale-force winds had prevented the hovercraft from flying. "Hoverlloyd" had been very cautious, as earlier that same month – on 4 March 1972 – an SR.N6 travelling from Ryde, Isle of Wight to Portsmouth had overturned in strong gale-force winds on the Solent killing five of the 27 passengers. The freak accident had happened just 400 yards off Southsea beach. To compensate for their disappointment, Lloyd's press officer suggested that when they next be in the vicinity, Lloyd and Perry would be most welcome to be given a free ride over to France. Perry telephoned Lloyd's press officer and was immediately invited to the launching of the company's third SR.N4 craft. The launching would be blessed by the inventor of the hovercraft, Sir Christopher Cockerell, CBE. Taking assistant art editor Bill Kidd along as staff photographer, Perry found he had enough material to create the first in a long line of "The Man From TV Action" features. This was not the first time that Perry had been involved in this type of informative journalism. In 1961, while employed as a designer on "Eagle", Perry's image had been used in a weekly continuity strip called "The Roving Reporter". Although Perry never actually left the confines of his office, the illustrations created, by (amongst others) "Countdown" artists John M. Burns and Eric Kincaid (better known for his "Toad of Toad Hall" and "Riverbank Tales"), gave the impression that Perry (a.k.a. Larry Line) was always out and about somewhere in the ever-expanding world. "Countdown" sought to benefit from the closure of "TV21" and the consequent availability of the licence to publish strips based on Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation TV shows, which had been popular throughout the 1960s. So the comic featured a strip based on the latest Gerry Anderson TV programme, the live-action series "UFO", along with reprints of strips from "TV21" based on the earlier Anderson successes "Stingray", "Thunderbirds" and "Fireball XL5", in addition to some original material. However, Polystyle Publications had only taken into account the fact that "TV21" had been discontinued, which they looked upon merely as an opportunity to acquire the licence to use the Anderson shows, without noticing that the popularity of the puppet-based strips in "TV21" had drastically declined because those shows were no longer in production, and were no longer being seen on TV every week.