I couldn’t wait to get home and tell the family that I had finally met Roger Moore. At times I felt a bit juvenile, as I was 38 and not a teenager, to be so thrilled at meeting someone famous, but still I felt that he was so special that I was honoured to have been able to meet him at last. My family all decided that I should introduce Roger to them and so I had to arrange, at a later date, and various times, to take them each in turn to meet the wonderful man himself. On these days Mr Thomas allowed us to sit down for our lunch free of charge. He must have had an ulterior motive, although he never tried to touch me again after that first time.

The next day as soon as the work of cleaning and polishing was done I set off to find the set that they were filming on. The Bond films had their own special set which was a huge building, which could be adapted to hold the three life size submarines, that were in “The Spy Who Loved Me”. The set was supposed to be the ship owned by Stromberg called The Liparus, and, of course, Superman was made there as well. It was quite a walk from the restaurant to the set but most of it was inside and I went along wide corridors with photos of all the stars that had filmed there in the past and of course there were photos of Roger, two of them, in different corridors, which I didn’t like very much because they had touched one of them up to remove the mole which was on his face, it seemed strange to see him looking so different, and the other was printed back to front so although he still had the mole it was on the wrong side of his face, I thought it was a bit strange for a huge studios like Pinewood to make such blatant errors in the printing of one of their most famous stars. Although now I understand that Roger has recently had the mole surgically removed to prevent a skin cancer scare.

When you are approaching the set there are huge doors with a red light above them, if the red light is on it means that they were actually shooting and the doors could not be opened, luckily that first day the light was not on and I walked straight in. I made a mental note of how long it had taken me to walk there so that I could get back to the restaurant in time for the lunches, it was five minutes so I had until five to one before I had to leave.

I was very nervous that first day so I stood in a corner and watched, there was so much going on and cables and lights all over the place, some people were running and others were slowly walking to their various positions that they had to be in so that when the actual filming started they would not be seen unless they had a part as an extra and had to be in the background. I could not see Roger immediately but kept on looking, and then, yes, there he was, talking to Cubby Broccoli the Producer and Lewis Gilbert the director. He didn’t see me, well he didn’t know me so it would not have meant any thing to him if he had seen me, not then anyway but I made sure that he did know me before too many days had passed by. One of the first scenes I watched being shot was where Roger & George Baker and the Minister of Defence aka Geoffrey Keen and some of the others were in a submarine and they had to go through automatically opening doors to get to a map room. Well they tried to shoot it several times, each of them said their lines perfectly and then The Minister of Defence, Bond’s superior had to push a button and the doors were to open. Needless to say, they didn’t. In the end two of the stage hands had to hide behind the doors and when the button was pushed they had to open the doors manually, obviously you didn’t see them on the finished film but it only went to prove that even with all the preparation and precautions that goes into making a huge blockbuster film like Bond, there are still many things that can go wrong. Roger seemed to enjoy it every time something went wrong he has such a lovely sense of humour, but Lewis Gilbert didn’t always share it with him as he had to watch the budget carefully.

At five to one I left to go back to the restaurant and made it just in time to wash my hands before the first diners came in. This time Roger did not slip on the floor, he was very careful not to repeat the previous days mishap. He collected his lunch and strode to his table with a smile and cheery hello for every one. When he had finished his lunch I took the sweet trolley to his table and he selected the blackcurrant flan, which turned out to be a great favourite of his. After eating it he smoked one of his famous cigars, which he had written into his contract that they were supplied for him, he had a coffee or two then left to resume filming. He left on the table a napkin that he had wiped his mouth with and it had some of his makeup on it so I put it in my pocket and kept it for many years. On another day he took an apple for his dessert and presumably didn’t like it because he left that on his side plate with one bite out of it. I took that and ate it myself feeling very satisfied that I had some of his DNA inside me. I am also a very avid non smoker but when Roger left a half smoked cigar on the table I just had to add it to my souvenirs and I took it home and wrapped it in the napkin.

One day while I was on the set there was a technical hitch and filming was held up for some time. I was standing in the background and then Roger started singing, “Why are we Waiting?” so I plucked up courage and approached him, I asked him if I could stay and talk to him while he was doing nothing and he said of course, you don’t need to ask, what do you want to talk about? Well my mind immediately went blank and I felt so stupid that I couldn’t get anything out. After all this was the first time that I had actually talked to him face to face and one to one. But in the end I managed to ask a few questions about his other films and just things that he was interested in. I also asked him, because I am a rider, if he rode horses as there had been a scene in “The Persuaders” where is was galloping through our local park where I often rode, but he said unfortunately no, but he admitted to being a very nervous “non-rider”, even though he did go on a short ride in “Moonraker” and “A View To A Kill” some years later, which was also filmed in the local park which was situated just behind Pinewood.

Another day while watching on the set they started filming just before I was due to leave to get back to the restaurant and I was locked in! I was in a real panic because some of the takes took quite a few hours to shoot although most were only several minutes. I was really lucky that on this particular day it was only a few minutes and I made it just in time by running the whole way back. On another day when I had been working there a bit longer I was not so lucky and got locked in for about 20 minutes, which took some explaining when I did get back to work. I also found out then that we were not allowed to go on the set while in working hours, the girls that I worked with had mislead me deliberately and I was told after getting back so late on this day that I was not to go on the set anymore but I had to rest for the two hours break that I had. Some hopes, never being one to waste any time I had no intention of sitting about for two hours when I could be watching Roger work or even better having a chat with him so I continued with my lunch time routine making doubly sure that I did not get locked in again. It seemed that my work mates resented the fact that as there were three of us and only two divans they would get rid of me at rest time by telling me I could go on the set, well it worked, so they had the divans all to them selves. One day Cubby Broccoli approached me and asked me “Just who are you”? I became a little flustered as I had not spoken to him before so I said that I worked in the restaurant and I was just a humble fan of Roger Moore’s, he seemed to accept that because he never questioned me again about being on the set.

Another thing about the making of films is that they are not filmed in order, the sequences are all put together later in the cutting room, that’s why the continuity is so important, on one particular occasion they were filming the very last scene when Roger and Barbara were in the rescue pod in bed well before the actual end of the filming. I was standing on a platform where M and co were, peeking into the pod and asking, “Bond just what are you doing”? Roger replies “Keeping the British end up Sir” then lowering the curtain. Before the dialogue and filming the camera man tossed down to Roger a tape measure meant to measure from his nose to the camera and Roger, being a bit naughty, used it to measure another part of his anatomy and declared “Nine inches! Not bad” amid lots of laughter.

It’s amazing the things they do to make the special effects look realistic. For instance when the Lotus Esprite that turned into an amphibian vehicle went under water they filmed Roger & Barbara in the car with a huge tank of water behind them, then to make the bubbles appear as they “submerged” they dropped alkseltser into the tank of water. In the shots where you couldn’t see the driver and passenger they used a three foot model, which was made to exact dimensions of the original. There were also six cars in all, all of which had a different special effect. I must say that I was very impressed when I saw the film; it seemed so real you would never have known that they were not really in the water, nor that it was more than one car. One day I was talking to Roger at the side of the set when he was called to come in front of the camera. He excused himself by saying that he had to go and jump through a window. I must have looked concerned as he added, don’t worry its only about six inches from the ground. On seeing the film it was the scene where he is in Cairo and after the murder in the telephone kiosk he looked out of the window to see Jaws walking away so he jumped out to chase him. To think that one part of the same scene was filmed in Cairo and the other in Pinewood studios proves what an important job the Editor has, and the continuity, as they had to make sure that all the actors had on exactly the same clothes some three or four weeks after the first part of the scene had been filmed. Roger introduced me to the continuity girl and told me that she worked on The Saint with him as had a lot of the stage hands, they all enjoyed working with him so much that they all wanted to work with him again and again.

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