Reproduced by kind permission of Private Eye magazine / Jonathan Irwin / Simon Pearsall
Perhaps for Tech Ops, Paddington should be saying:
“Please look after this senior cameraman …”
Dave Mundy
Nice! At least he has taken him to the correct place.
With thanks to Chris Wickham who told Tech Ops about this so appropriate cartoon in “Private Eye”.
Dave Mundy
It is sad news that Michael Bond has died at the age of 91. There was a nice obit on the “One O’Clock News” for 28/06/2017.
Barry Bonner
Sad news indeed. Mike was a true gentleman, and senior cameraman on the first crew I was on.
He taught me a lot about the way management thought!
John Henshall
Sad to hear of the passing of our former BBC Senior Cameraman colleague Michael Bond, author of the Paddington Bear books. Michael is seen here in a screen-grab of his cameo appearance in the 2014 film “Paddington”.
I’m yet another who remembers Mike with great affection and respect. He was a great inspiration, and extremely patient with me on more than one occasion in Crew 7(?).
John Dean
The passing of Mike Bond is very sad.
Mike , Colin Widgery and I had remained friends since the early nineteen-sixties when he was Senior Cameraman on Crew 7 and Colin and I were his Mole crew on many memorable programmes.
Mike led the crew with effortless authority with everyone liking and respecting him. I never subsequently worked on a crew which enjoyed so much laughter together.
A great man, never to be forgotten.
John Vincent
One of the first crews I worked with was Mike Bond’s crew 17. A true gentleman.
Was it true he based “The Herbs” on characters from TVC? Dill was Martin Dilly, Bayleaf was Bill Bailiff, for example.
Tim Healy
As everyone has said, a true gentle man. I’ll never forget the look on his face when I nearly put him into a glass cabinet when tracking the Mole on “Maigret”. No shouting, just a pained expression and a quiet, “That was a bit close, Tim.”
I’m not sure about Martin Dilley for Dill, I can’t recall Martin ever moving that fast.
Dave Mundy
In 1965 I worked on “Poor Bitos”, part of the “Theatre 625” series – see – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0925008/fullcredits?ref_=ttco_sa_1 –
I’ll never forget that the first shot lasted for 17 pages of the script, done superbly by Mike (and his cable basher!), obviously on one fixed lens and continuously tracking round on a ped – amazing!
Alec Bray
On the first Saturday of 1963 (5th January 1963), having left school in the December, I was sitting at home at 5.25 pm (17:25) – watching the first episode of “The Chem Lab Mystery”.
The following Monday I started my “week” (well, in fact, it was just THREE days!) of induction at the BBC (in rooms in the Langham Hotel, at that time used by the Beeb). And then, on the Thursday, I was sent to Studio E Lime Grove as part of the studio crew, Crew 7, working on the next but one episode of “The Chem Lab Mystery”! And of course the senior cameraman on crew 7 was Mike Bond.
On that very first day of really being “at work” – and “wet behind the ears”, so naïve – and even after those three days of induction – the penny suddenly dropped sometime during the afternoon that in Technical Operations the day didn’t finish nicely at 17:00, but rather at 21:00 or 22:00 or 22:30 or whenever the program finished.
Mike took pity on me, and said that, as it was my very first day, I could leave before the official end of the scheduled day as I was still living at home at the time and my parents would not be expecting me back in the middle of the night (as it would have seemed to them). So understanding, so helpful, so considerate!
But what a day that first day was! For six years it had been “Bray, do this, Bray do that …” and now it was “Alec, coil this cable .. and call me Mike, we all use first names around here!” I can not stress too much how Mike Bond eased me into the crew and offered me support on that first day and subsequent days. Mike was such a nice person and a very good cameraman – and a very good senior cameraman as it really felt that we were all working as one.
It was only during the next week that someone on the crew whispered to me that Mike Bond was the Michael Bond of “Paddington” fame – and how apt for me as it was through Paddington station I had to go to get home.
To Mike Bond – my first “boss”.
Peter Hider
I owe the first shot I ever did to the late Mike Bond.
We had a collection of all the large versions of British bank signs laid out in a line on the studio floor along which I had to crab using a tiller ped at the top of its stalk with the camera panned down to the maximum. The only way to see in the viewfinder was to stand on the foot thus leaving me no way of crabbing.
Mike had sent someone home on an early and realising he was the only member of the crew not allocated he said he would track me on the ped. He could easily have reversed the roles but having given me the chance to do a camera he let me carry on.
He was a charming, magnanimous and skilful manager as well as being a creative and unanimously liked Senior Cameraman who I will always hold in fond memory. R.I.P.
It’s a great shame that his cameo role in the Paddington Bear movie finished up on the cutting room floor.
Nigel Taylor
Found on the bt3a.com website …
(ed: with spelling corrected – error noted by John Howell and Chris Woolf)
