Denis Bond (writer)

Bond was trained in drama at the Rose Bruford College and acted on stage and TV. After a period of working as a teacher, he was commissioned to write 26 episodes for the ITV series Pipkins. He also wrote for the series Rainbow, Let's Pretend and The Munch Bunch.

Although Rainbow remains a cult classic, the Munch Bunch stands alone among the three for being written entirely by Bond. He had already begun writing a series of Munch Bunch books (launched under the pseudonym Giles Reed) a year previously.

His next publishing venture was a series of books about Dagon, a boy from space. These were published, like the Munch Bunch, by the Ipswich-based Studio Publications, but both ranges were terminated when a fire at Studio Publications destroyed all of the original artwork.

Dagon is also known as the original work of a Japanese anime television series Dagon in the Land of Weeds (Ikinari Dagon).

Bond had, however, already moved on by then. He had two novels published by Methuen but success really came when he began being published by Scholastic. His first book for the publishers was The Dragon Who Couldn't Help Breathing Fire (1990) and, by 1994, he was having books for teenagers published as well. These included three books for Scholastic's Point Romance series under the pseudonym Denise Colby, a clear reference to the US TV series Dynasty, as well as a feminisation of his own name, No 1, an in-depth look at the dark side of the pop music scene, and Avenue, about a soap opera.

Bond returned to the field of television with Picme an animated educational series written for the Irish broadcasters RTÉ. This has been nominated for a BAFTA.

As well as continuing to write, Denis Bond regularly conducts writing workshops at schools and libraries both in the UK and abroad.

• Denis Bond's website
• The Denis Bond page at www.contemporarywriters.com
• Denis Bond at IMDb