“So I’m lying in bed at 2am, fast asleep, when it hits me. I sit bolt upright, turn to my computer and start emailing immediately: we’re going to have to blow up a tube train.”

This kind of evil eureka moment has been part of Chris Corbould’s job since 1977: as special effect supervisor on the last 11 Bond movies, his chief assignment has been to assist 007 with saving Queen, country and the world in the most spectacular way possible.

Happily, from his first movie (The Spy Who Loved Me) to Bond's latest outing in SPECTRE, Corbould has done his duty heroically – leaving a liberal sprinkling of pyrotechnics, hydraulics, car chases and demolished buildings in his wake.

Even if that means, he admits, going beyond what is entirely possible. Take, for example, his idea to crash a London Underground train, which he came up with for the chase through the subterranean tunnels in 2012’s Skyfall.

“Sam [Mendes, director] asked for a jaw-dropping moment to really shake the audience – so I pitched that to him in the middle of the night,” Corbould recalls. “He loved it, the producers loved it, and it went into the script. It was only when I chatted to my team that I realised how impossible it actually was: I’d committed myself to dumping a load of 60ft-long tube carriages, each weighing about 40 tons, through the roof of the 007 Stage. What was I thinking?”

Corbould bunked off school to help out on a film and never went back. 40 years, an OBE and an Oscar later, he’s one of the most sought after SFX experts working in films today Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/ Danjaq, LLC/ Columbia/Jonathan Olley

In the end, his team of craftsmen and technicians made the impossible happen, building a series of lightweight fake tube carriages that could be lowered by crane into the soundstage at Pinewood. It wasn’t the first time Corbould had spoken first, asked essential logistical questions later.

Another Corbould action sequence, in 1999’s The World Is Not Enough, showed Bond being chased through a caviar factory by a helicopter with a giant saw blade attached underneath. Simple enough? Not a bit of it.

“It utilised every single skill my section had,” Corbould recalls. “We had to build the saw blades ourselves, as well as the BMW Z8 and buildings that the blades would cut through. We then had to suspend the helicopter from the biggest tower crane in Europe so we could control it with winches and hydraulics. And then we used computers to time every single explosion and bullet, along with the mist that engulfed the set.” He grins. “That scene alone took six or seven weeks to film – and many, many months to prepare.”

Then there’s the scene in 2002’s Die Another Day: a car chase across a frozen Icelandic lake. “Yeah, that was a bit of naivety on my part,” says Corbould. “I pitched it at the initial creative meeting, just assuming I could wander down to Aston Martin or Jaguar and request their four-wheel drive versions. But they don’t exist.

“So we had to take four Aston Martins and four Jaguars, cut off the front ends, and reconfigure everything inside – gearbox, chassis, suspension and so on – until we had the four-wheel drive versions. Just to give the stunt guys the best opportunity to achieve spectacular stuff.”

“Sometimes you’ve just got to roll with it. And if you err on the side of what you think you can achieve every time, you won’t come up with your best work. But yeah, I probably should have done a little bit more homework on that idea.”

And yet arguably it’s precisely a lack of homework that has made Corbould who he is. Aged 16, he bunked off school to help out on the filming of The Who’s rock opera Tommy. He never returned to class, instead taking up what he says was a “lucky” apprenticeship for a special-effects firm based in Pinewood. Spend long enough in Pinewood, of course, and along comes Bond: in this case Roger Moore’s The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977, where a 19-year-old Corbould first worked uncredited.

Since then, special effects have become something of a family business for the Corboulds: both of Chris's younger brothers would later join that whizz-bang world, and on a handful of Bond films they've all worked together. Otherwise you’d know Neil Corbould’s work from the likes of Gladiator, Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, while Paul Corbould earned his stars on films such as Children of Men, Captain America: The First Avenger and, most recently, Guardians of the Galaxy. “We’re not actually competitive,” says Chris. “I don’t think we’ve ever been pitching for the same film.”

Corbould rigging the SPECTRE set for a bang Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/ Danjaq, LLC/ Columbia/Joathan Olley

In the 40 years and 54 films since Corbould got his first break, he's become one of the most sought-after SFX experts working in films today. If proof were needed: last December he stepped onto the Pinewood set of SPECTRE – one of the year’s two biggest movies – just a month after finishing work on the Pinewood set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the year's other blockbuster behemoth. (On this, Corbould’s south London drawl becomes apologetic: “Sorry, I can’t tell you a thing,” he says. “With the Bond films, they’re happy to tease you with clips and so on. But Star Wars is a total clampdown. I’d get shot. And also never work again.”)

And then there’s the other cinematic titan Corbould associates with: director Christopher Nolan, with whom he worked with on Inception (winning an Oscar for best special effects in the process) and all three Batman films. “I have total respect for the guy,” says Corbould. “He’s the Great Extractor – he squeezes every creative element out of everyone who is around him.”

Including Corbould himself, it seems. It was Nolan who would convince him, against his wishes, to carry out perhaps the most memorable special effect of his career: flipping an 18-wheeler articulated lorry head over heels in 2008’s The Dark Knight.

“I kept putting it off and putting it off,” admits Corbould, “I was hoping Chris would forget about it and it’d go away before we spent too much time and money on it. But he wasn't going to let the idea go. So I was trying to reason with him – maybe we just flip the trailer unit over the cab? Or maybe we use a shorter truck? But he wasn’t having any of it. So in the end I told him I’d go away and do a test on it – but he should be aware it probably wouldn't work, and we’d have to part-CG [computer-generate] it instead.

The most memorable special effect of a career: flipping a lorry in The Dark Knight

“So we did a test with a lorry with the biggest air piston I’d ever seen in the back. And blow me – the whole thing actually flew over.”

Part of Corbould’s longevity in the film business is down to precisely this: he’s still learning. His education has never stopped, as he accumulates a peerless knowledge of everything from pyrotechnics and atmospheric effects to the mechanical engineering, electronics, robotics and pneumatics that make up the majority of his job today.

And still do, despite the new technologies of modern film-making. “I know what you’re going to ask me,” he laughs, “how do I get on with CGI? But genuinely, my answer is: it’s not a problem. It’s a great tool – from embellishing our special effects to helping measure the safety parameters. And it means that I’ve never had to say, we can’t do that, it’s impossible. There’s always a way.”

The Bond franchise has had something of a poor record on computer graphics, culminating in the risible special effects created for Pierce Brosnan’s final outing as 007, in Die Another Day. “Look, by the time we got to that film, I had a few issues with the way the films were going,” he admits. “I wasn’t a great advocate of the invisible car, for example.”

And what about when Bond surfs a tsunami? “I think that was a real low point in Bond history – and it taught us all a lesson: don't get blasé about it. But sometimes you need a bit of a boot to get going again. And then Casino Royale brought everything back to a grittier, darker Bond – character-driven. So Bond is forever evolving into hopefully what the public want to see.”

Hence why, he says, SPECTRE has been the best Bond he’s ever worked on. “They set the bar very high with Skyfall, but I had a great time, “ he says.

“As you’ll have seen in the trailer, there’s several pieces in SPECTRE that were particularly challenging. A building collapses onto Bond in the opening sequence – that was very difficult to work out. There was also the helicopter 360° corkscrew, where we had to mount cameras on hydraulic rigs for the close-ups. That pilot was absolutely phenomenal – and I’ve seen my share of helicopters in my time.

“And then there’s a car chase in Rome, driving flat out at 100mph-plus within inches of 5,000 year old buildings. That takes precision planning, as there’s a human element in the car chases – and you have to eliminate every single possible glitch that could go wrong. The last thing you want is a wheel coming off at 100mph, believe me.

“But every film will have some sort of challenge to it. And I absolutely adored it. I love the collaborative process –we’re very lucky that the Bond producers are very supportive, and give us carte blanche to do our wildest dreams.”

Daniel Craig has recently said that he's unlikely to return to the franchise after SPECTRE. Does Corbould understand how the actor feels? “I can sympathise with Daniel,” he says, “He’s always been my favourite 007. I worked with him on the first Tomb Raider film, and even then I thought he’d make a great Bond. He makes our effects look good. And he puts a massive amount into it – he’s under a lot of pressure.

The pilot who managed the jaw-dropping helicopter corkscrew in the SPECTRE trailer was "absolutely phenomenal" according to Cobould

“Add the fact the films are utterly exhausting, and at the end of them you just want to lie in a dark room for a couple of weeks and chill out. But personally, I can’t wait for the next one.”

And if Craig doesn’t return? Or when his 007 contract ends after one more movie – who would the man behind Bond like to see don the tuxedo next? “Personally?” he hesitates. “I’m a massive fan of Michael Fassbender. I worked with him on X-Men: First Class, and he’s a class actor. So professional, not afraid to take a challenge – and a lovely guy to boot. He gets my vote.”

Which must mean something coming from Chris Corbould. Unlike the fictional James Bond, he’s actually been honoured by the Queen: he was awarded an OBE in 2014. What's more, he’s outlasted Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig. Doesn’t that in some way make him the ultimate Bond?

“No,” he laughs. “Although with all the technology involved, it probably does make me the ultimate Q.”