I can see how someone could grow up here and not see any Bond. All you'd have to do would be to avoid the telly at certain times. And I can certainly see how some people could dislike the films.

But I love them! The first one I ever saw on the big screen was On her Majesty's Secret Service*, and I was hooked. It's still my favourite Bond film, and I think George Lazenby is very underrated as Bond. Considering he'd been a male model up to that point, he makes a damn fine actor.

I'm not so keen on the books. They're rife with snobbery, racism and misogyny, and Fleming was obsessed with status symbols, wearing the right kind of clothes, drinking the right kind of cocktails and driving the right kind of cars. His is not a world I'd want to visit often.

Thankfully the films water Fleming down and put much more emphasis on action and spectacle, and the best ones are hard to beat for pure cinematic entertainment.

As for the actors, I think they're all good. But the quality of the films varied over the years. So my least favourite period was the mid-late 80s, meaning that Moore and Dalton had the misfortune to appear in the worst Bond films, but that doesn't make them bad actors.


*It was a re-release, I'm not that old!