The day 007 flew in to southend (From Echo)

The day 007 flew in to southend

3:00pm Thursday 5th June 2008

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SADLY, Southend isn't the sort of place James Bond would frequent by choice.

The secret agent is known to prefer more exotic places, like Barbados or Miami. Yet for one day in the Sixties, 007 came to town.

Southend pops up briefly in the third Bond movie, Goldfinger, still rated by many fans as the quintessential Bond film. It was also the last of the films to involve Bond's creator, author Ian Fleming.

He visited the production unit at Pinewood Studios shortly before his death in August 1964, and told the Daily Mail: "These film boys do a great job with Bond."

Fleming's centenary (he was born in 1908) has caused Michael Buckmaster to dust off his scrapbooks. Michael, 64, who now lives in Witham, was a loadmaster at Southend Airport in the early Sixties.

The shot reproduced here shows him pushing the famous James Bond Aston Martin DB5.

Sean Connery, the car, and the movie crew, spent a day filming at Southend Airport early in 1964.

The day's shooting accounts for about one minute's running time in the film, as Bond arranges for his car to be flown to Switzerland in pursuit of the evil villain Goldfinger. The shoot was conducted under tight security and secrecy. The local press were not notified, though as rumours spread around town, a photographer for the Southend Standard (the Echo's predecessor) turned up at the airport.

He managed to catch a distant shot of the car, with a tall hatted figure inside it.

However, the press were invited to cover the car's return from Switzerland, minus 007. It was at this point that Michael gained the chance to sit inside, and examine, the legendary vehicle.

He recalls: "I used to drive most of the cars from the planes, but there were one or two really valuable ones, like the Bond car, and the odd Rolls Royce, that weren't allowed to be driven."

Although Michael can't claim to have driven the Aston Martin, he did get the chance to examine it at close quarters.

In Goldfinger, the car was presented to Bond by the Secret Service's chief technician Q, making the first of what were to become regular appearances.

Q had fitted it with oil blowers to see off pursuers, along with armaments and an ejector seat.

Nowadays, these effects would be achieved via computer graphics, but with the Bondmobile, what you saw was pretty much what you got.

"The machine guns you see in the film weren't real guns, just hydraulic rods," Michael says. "But they did go in and out. They were operated off the car's engine."

One item Michael didn't try out was the aircraft-style rocket ejector seat, used by Bond to catapult unwelcome passengers through the roof.

"I still don't know whether it really worked," Michael says.

Michael couldn't run to an Aston Martin on his airport wages, but he did run his own version of an eyecatching car.

Our picture shows him at the time of his 1967 honeymoon alongside his yellow Volkswagen beetle.

Quite apart from the colour, the beetle was also marked by its unusual curving windows. The DB5 operation was the highlight of four convivial years Michael spent working at the airport, while living in Rochford.

"There was a terrific social life attached to the airport for those who worked there," he says. "There was a staff club called the Flarepath, where you'd always find an old RAF pilot, with a big handlebar moustache. His wife had to pick him up in the car every night because he was so drunk."

Michael also remembers regular dance sessions organised by the airport. "They were held in an old barn near the airport," he says.

The planes that carried the DB5 to and from Switzerland were Carvairs, the mainstay of Southend airport in the Sixties.

They made regular hops to Basel and other continental holiday centres, carrying five cars and 25 human passengers. The sole remaining airworthy Carvair is now registered to Zambian Airways and flying in South Africa.

When last spotted by an enthusiast, in April 2008, it was under sentence of death by scrapheap.

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