Home, James
Bond is all over the TV - but would probably stay at home, nowadays.
It can't be much fun if you really dislike James Bond, in the month his new movie emerges. It's not just that No Time To Die - surely about the 17th Bond flick with 'Live' or 'Die' in the title - is taking up every screen in your local multiplex, but Bond in particular seems to turn up everywhere else you can imagine too.
Obviously there are all your usual comedy and entertainment outlets to plug a new film - The Graham Norton Show had pretty much the whole cast on, last week. But because Bond is super-cool, travels a lot and uses loads of cars and gadgets, he tends to crop up in all sorts of random places too. There was a jokey TV ad for a courier company the other day, which turned out to be an ad for No Time To Die, too. 360 marketing, they probably call that; Bond's car almost did a 360 along the way too.
The thing is, you can imagine that a real modern-day Bond could probably do most of his important spy work from home these days. A high-stakes meet-up with an important contact? Just do it over WhatsApp - they're always going on about how well encrypted it is. That big important card game in Casino Royale: they'd probably just play roulette online now and save money on all the flights and suits. In fact, online Bond might only wear the tuxedo jacket - why bother with trousers when you've got a world to save?
Actually we have seen a jacket-and-no-strides version of Bond, on our TVs - Basildon Bond, which was Russ Abbot's hapless spoof of the suave secret agent, often to be found in a sort of parade jacket (top half) and a wetsuit (bottom half). The classic John Barry theme would kick in, Les Dennis usually turned up as the villain, with Bella Emberg then getting the major laugh by bursting in as a bizarrely-dressed henchperson, late on. But then Bond's actual villains were a weird enough bunch, when you think about it.
That show was a big deal, at the time. One Basildon Bond sketch was set on a train carriage with all of the dialogue spoken to the rhythm of the locomotive in motion, a sort of less erudite '80s precursor to Inside No. 9's season four opener, Zanzibar, which was entirely performed in iambic pentameter. Was it an influence? Almost certainly not.
Actually that other League Of Gentleman alumni, Mark Gatiss, is a big 007 fan, and as part of this unofficial all-channel Bond season, his show with the journalist Matthew Sweet, Premium Bond, has re-emerged on BBC4 in recent weeks, which is well worth a watch.
And don't believe us about the live and die business? Well, correct, there aren't 17 films with those titles, but enough to be getting on with: You Only Live Twice, Live And Let Die (two for one!), The Living Daylights, Tomorrow Never Dies, Die Another Day, and now No Time To Die. Plus honourable mentions for A View To A Kill and License To Kill.
Our prediction for the next title: You Love To Live And Die, No?.