– A journalist? I hope you haven’t come to write lies about us.
– Well, that’s a difficult question, Colonel, because what is truth to me could be lies to you.
This month, our guard of honour continues with an episode of Danger Man from 1960, in which the glorious Honor Blackman stars as the wife of a journalist falsely accused of espionage. Will the eponymous Patrick McGoohan be able to save him from the clutches of the opportunistic Colonel Rodriguez? And, more importantly, can he do it in less than 25 minutes?
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at bondfinger.com. And if you rate or review us on iTunes, we promise never again to release a Bondfinger episode longer than twenty-five minutes.
– Well, well. The Saint, no less. I know a great deal about you.
– I’m flattered.
– Don’t be. I follow your exploits with extreme distaste. That article about you in The Times last Sunday was the most nauseating thing I’ve seen in print.
– Tried reading your own columns?
This month, our tribute to Honor Blackman continues as we revisit the earliest days of Rogertainment with the seventh episode of The Saint — The Arrow of God. A gossip columnist and blackmailer has been murdered, but who is the perpetrator? Richard, with his history of embezzlement? Peter, who can’t stop cheating at tennis? Nathan, with his dubious parentage? Or James, with his dark, bigamous past?
After that, you can buy it on Amazon Prime Video in the US, and as a DVD box set containing all the black and white episodes in the UK and in Australia.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at bondfinger.com. And if you rate or review us on iTunes, then some day, when we realise how much you care for us, we’ll reciprocate.
You didn’t really think you could take over this country with a few fanatics in fancy dress.
This month, we celebrate the life of Honor Blackman, who died this week at the age of 94, by watching one of her early episodes as Cathy Gale in The Avengers. In this episode, The Mauritius Penny, Mr Steed and Mrs Gale team up to defeat a gang of murderous dentists and stamp collectors who plan to overthrow the British government and install a fascist dictatorship decades before that sort of thing became fashionable.
See the episode
In the US, you can buy episodes of Series 2 of The Avengers on Amazon Prime Video. In the UK, Amazon will let you import a Region 4 box set from Australia, oddly. While in Australia, it seems that Series 2 is impossible to buy. Baffling.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at bondfinger.com. And if you rate or review us on iTunes, we’ll find you a British Guiana 1856 four-cent black with four perfect margins. (Psych!)
Thank heaven for English theatre bars. We’ve had two acts of this play, complete suffering both onstage, and off.
This month, we head back to the earliest days of Rogertainment with the very first episode of The Saint (1961), in which Roger Moore teams up with a future Bond girl, the glittering Shirley Eaton, to thwart a serial wife-killer who will one day control every computer in the galaxy. Or something. It’s all a bit confusing really.
After that, you can buy it on Amazon Prime Video in the US, and as a DVD box set containing all the black and white episodes in the UK and in Australia.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at bondfinger.com. And if you rate or review us on iTunes, we’ll buy you a pint from the barrel — warm, flat, nourishing and very British.
I don’t trust a man who makes toys in a land where children are forbidden.
It’s Christmas, and to celebrate we’re heading back into James Bond territory by watching a film produced by Albert Broccoli, based on a novel by Ian Fleming and a screenplay by Roald Dahl. It’s like You Only Live Twice with a much nicer car, and we love it: it’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at bondfinger.com. And if you rate or review us on iTunes, we’ll marry both your father and his newfound wealth and we’ll all be happy and blond together for the rest of our lives.
I love you madly. I love the way the hair curls on the back of your neck. You’ll make a beautiful corpse. I’m going to do you the honour of letting you die superbly.
This month, we’re watching The Prisoner (1967), more specifically its weird antepenultimate episode The Girl Who Was Death. So while Nathan puts the children to bed, James does some ball-tampering, Brendan drives around on the ceiling, and Richard enters a deadly alliance with the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. No, we don’t know what’s going on either.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at bondfinger.com. And if you rate or review us on iTunes, we’ll tuck you in bed and read you a violent and upsettingly incomprehensible bedtime story.
– Oh, I’m sorry about the explosion. It doesn’t happen every day.
– I don’t come every day.
This month, we’re watching the camp 1966 spy-fi classic Modesty Blaise, starring a very attractive Italian lady, Dirk Bogarde and Bernice off Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. There’s diamond smuggling, spycraft and racist comedy Arabs, but it’s mostly all there to get in the way of the lovely location work in Amsterdam and Italy and the upsettingly psychedelic wallpaper.
See the film
No one seems to want this film on their streaming services or digital stores, for some reason, but you can still buy it on Blu-ray or DVD. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at bondfinger.com. And if you rate or review us on iTunes, we’ll consider rewatching this film until we undertand it enough to make up a funny and relevant promise to put in the show notes.
– Where do these guns keep coming from?
– I get ’em wholesale.
This month, we’re watching The Persuaders! Season 1 Episode 17, Five Miles to Midnight, in which TV’s Roger Moore and sometime lady saxophonist Tony Curtis team up with Joan Collins to smuggle some guy out of Italy, accompanied by a series of excellent jokes written by Terry Nation.
And in the process, we answer the age-old question, “What did Tony Curtis call Joan Collins during the production that got her so annoyed?” Over and over again, I’m afraid.
The upsetting Joan Collins interview to which Richard refers can be found here.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at bondfinger.com. And if you rate or review us on iTunes, we’ll overlook that time you destroyed a hotel bar on the Côte d’Azur and send you on a series of groovy adventures instead.
– The Americans have put a tail on Palmer.
– Have they? How very tiresome.
This month, we head back in time to 1965. While James Bond is in the Bahamas enjoying some painfully slow underwater harpoon fights, Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is having a much more prosaic time spying for the Ministry of Defence, trying to locate a kidnapped scientist. That is, until the psychedelia kicks in.
The Ipcress File was produced by Bond producer Harry Salzman. The score was by our very own John Barry, and the production designer was our beloved Sir Ken Adam.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at bondfinger.com. And if you rate or review us on iTunes, we’ll have you over for dinner and cook you some delightful foreign muck with capsicums in it.
– Steed! I thought you were an old lady with a bale and knitting needles.
– They do say I take after granny.
This month, we go back to Richard and Brendan’s first love — 1960s spy-fi classic The Avengers. Brendan has taken up knitting, James is achieving better living through self-help books, Nathan is wondering why Graeme Garden left his computer here, and Richard is relaxing in a leotard and a giant birdcage. Watch out, everyone: it’s The Girl from Auntie.
See the show?
The Girl from Auntie is the 17th episode of Season 4 of The Avengers. It’s a bit hard to find now, to be honest, but the existing episodes have been released on boxed sets and can be found on your local version of Amazon. It can’t be watched online, alas. I’ve tried.
