Mystery film footage shows up
Published in The Westmorland Gazette, June 2002, writer unknown

It has been a mystery stretching back 35 years but now the full story of a lost reel of cine film, an amateur cameraman, and some rare colour footage of Donald Campbell's fatal crash on Coniston Water can be told for the first time, reports Michaela Robonson-Tate.

Amateur cameraman Mike Nicholson, 69, has been reunited with extraordinary footage which he had given up as lost many years ago, and which captures the final tragic few seconds in Campbell's life as he attempted to break his own world water speed record in his Bluebird boat in January 1967. Although there is understood to be at least one other example of colour footage of the accident in existence, Mr Nicholson's precious moments of film are likely to be seized on by enthusiasts as a remarkable find. Mr Nicholson, his wife Hazel, and their daughter, Sheila, who was a young girl at the time, were together on the eastern shore of the lake, at a spot known as Beck Leven, when Campbell lost control of the world-famous boat.

Mr and Mrs Nicholson, who still live in Coniston, ran the Lakeland House guesthouse in the village during the late 1960s, and would be tipped off each time there was a record attempt by the many journalists who were staying with them to cover Campbell's efforts. The family headed down to the lake shore, and Mr Nicholson, who describes the experience of filming the crash as like being "hypnotised", kept his finger on the button at the crucial moment.

British Movietonews cameraman Keith Medley, who had been filming Campbell for cinema news footage, was one of the Nicholsons' guests. Mr Medley was also helping a friend, amateur cameraman John Lomax, to make a documentary called Campbell at Coniston, and he acted as a go-between to lend Mr Nicholson's special footage to Mr Lomax. Mr Lomax went on to win a prize for the 21-minute documentary in a prestigious amateur competition run by Cine Camera magazine, and entered it, with some success, in foreign film festivals.

Years went past and Mr Nicholson forgot all about his remarkable film. He thought he had sent it to a nephew, who never received it. After transferring some of his cine films on to video tape Mr Nicholson threw away his old reels, possibly also throwing away the Campbell footage.

The whole story came flooding back to Mr Nicholson last year when Bluebird was raised from Coniston and he saw Keith Medley, who lives in Wallasey and is now 87, being interviewed on television about his memories of 1967.

Now The Westmorland Gazette has tracked down Keith Medley and John Lomax, and obtained a copy of the documentary to give to Mike Nicholson, reuniting him with the footage. "It was almost as if I was hypnotised - it was just an automatic thing," said Mr Nicholson of the moment he captured Bluebird's crash. Delighted to be able to watch again a tiny piece of his handiwork, Mr Nicholson added: "It's the vital few seconds."

Donald Campbell's daughter, Gina, said she would be interested to see the documentary and the footage, particularly because she lost many videos relating to the Campbell's in a burglary more than ten years ago. She said she found it "humbling" that people were still interested in her father.