Derek Bond

(1919-2006) English actor. Born in Glasgow and started acting in London, as a member of the Finchley Amateur Dramatic Society, and found it so stimulating that he abandoned plans to be a journalist. After some small stage parts he appeared, in February 1938, in one of the first television programmes, a 35-minute section of the famous Czech science-fiction play, Karel Capek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). This led to a substantial career largely in film, radio and TV. He however also maintained his theatrical skills by touring in several plays, and he returned to the West End stage in 1982 when he joined the cast of The Mousetrap, then starting its 30th year in the West End. He also took over one of the leading roles in the long-running hit No Sex Please, We're British. Came to South Africa in 1969 with a British production of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, brought to the country by Toerien-Rubin. It also starred Richard Todd, Vanessa Lee, Peter Graves, Jean Kent and Joyce Grant. An occasional writer for radio and television, Bond wrote a play, Unscheduled Stop (1968) for the prestigious television series Armchair Theatre, and he wrote several seriocomic books. His other claim to interest in South Arica is his role as a council member of British Equity in the early Seventies, becoming president of the union in 1984. The right-wing Bond was against apartheid, but supported artists’ rights to work in South Africa. This provoked some of the most heated arguments in the union's history, and in 1986 Bond resigned after a referendum had resulted in a total ban on working in South Africa while apartheid existed.