Mr Flibble Talks To... Dr Strangeflibble
Gil Taylor has worked on more movies than Mr Flibble's had fish, and has worked with a host of legendary talent. In part two of Mr Flibble's exclusive interview, he talks about the many, many takes he spent on Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb...

1 December, 2000

In '42, I was then a corporal, I went to see the adjutant, and he said, "You've got to go up to the air ministry." They said they wanted to form a unit for film work, and also they wanted some operational work done as well. I wasn't air crew, but anyway I was made up to sergeant. I did quite a lot of work with this unit, and then eventually they wanted some operational stuff shot in the air, so I volunteered - like a fool, I suppose - and I did an air-gunner's course and flew with the pathfinder squadron taking photographs. I was the first one ever to do it.

The first time was with a Pathé news camera, because they couldn't come. And I stayed with that outfit. Right after the end of the war I went into Belsen and all those places, all the prison camps, just about everything.

It's the strangest thing when you're operating a camera under those conditions. When you've got a camera, you're after exciting things. Like one day the 95th Spitfires were shooting up at some artillery and they shot up a graveyard! And I happened to be in there, in the tower. They killed the poor old man who was looking after it and shot the place to pieces.

I came down from this tower and there was a grand piano in this hall, that was left, and all the top was out, and I stood there... And then, in the smoke and God knows what, this soldier came in. And he'd been gunned down, and I thought, "Jesus!" and I turned the camera over, and he sat down and played this piano!