On golden Bond

2The Bond producers were US agronomist Albert R “Cubby”

Broccoli and Canadian-born Harry Salzman. They set up Eon Productions in England to make the movies.

3Cubby’s children, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, now oversee the Bond franchise – the longest-running film franchise in the world.

4James Bond was created by Ian Fleming, pictured right, in January 1952.

He was named after the American ornithologist and a bird expert, James Bond.

5After watching Dr No, Bond creator Ian Fleming is reported to have called it “dreadful, simply dreadful”.

6Daniel Craig lobbied to have Oscarwinning director Sam Mendes helm the 23rd in the series Skyfall. The actor worked with the American Beauty and Jarhead director on The Road To Perdition in 2002. “I knew Sam would put everything behind it,”

says Craig. “He would put all of his knowledge of movie making behind it, but also his knowledge and love of Fleming and Bond”.

007Sean Connery, pictured right, was the first – and some would argue the best – 007. George Lazenby was the most criticised, although On Her Majesty’s Secret Service has its champions now. Roger Moore made an eyebrow-raising Bond, Timothy Dalton was deadly serious, Pierce Brosnan was a suave secret agent. Daniel Craig is a Bond for the 21st century – cool and calculating, well able to handle himself in battle and in bed.

Among the actors who’ve screen tested or linked with the role are Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, Cary Grant, Sam Neill, Rex Harrison, Mel Gibson, Michael Caine, Richard Burton and Michael Gambon.

8The introduction of Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) in Dr No is one of the bestknown Bond scenes – she emerges from the sea, wearing a small white bikini with a hunting knife tucked in one side, singing Underneath The Mango Tree.

9Noel Coward and Christopher Lee were both considered for the role of Dr No. Lee eventually played a Bond villain Scaramanga in The Man With The Golden Gun.

10Bond’s gadgets have included a tear gas cartridge disguised as a tin of talc, a car with a front ejector seat, a watch that doubles as a laser beam cutter and a ski pole that fires explosives.

11Ben Wishaw becomes the fourth actor to play Bond’s quartermaster, known as Q, in Skyfall. The role began with Peter Burton as Major Boothroyd in Dr No, followed by Desmond Llewelyn (in 17 Bond films) and John Cleese (as Q’s assistant R) in The World Is Not Enough, and later promoted to Q in Die Another Day.

12Goldfinger produced one of the most quoted Bond lines as villain Auric Goldfinger straps 007 to a table and points a lethal laser between his legs. Do you expect me to talk?, asks the agent. “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die,” replies Goldfinger.

13Skyfall is the sixth Bond movie to feature the Aston Martin DB5.

The car first appeared in Goldfinger in 1964, followed by Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies and Casino Royale.

14Sean Connery was persuaded to return to play Bond in Diamonds Are Forever for a then recordbreaking salary of $1.25m.

15Three female stars of TV series The Avengers have been Bond girls.

Honor Blackman was Pussy Galore in Goldfinger and Diana Rigg marries 007 in OHMSS. Joanne Lumley was one of Blofeld’s girls, also in OHMSS. Patrick MacNee, who starred as Steed in The Avengers, appeared in A View To A Kill.

16The first Bond film to win an Oscar was Goldfinger for best sound effects.

17Harold Sakata, who played the bowler hatted henchman Oddjob in Goldfinger, won a silver medal for weightlifting for the US at the 1948 Olympics.

18M’s house in Skyfall is the former home of Bond composer, York-born John Barry. Film-makers used it as a tribute to the composer, who died last year.

19From Russia With Love, which President John F Kennedy named as one of his favourite books, was screened at the White House on November 20, two days before his death.

20Pierce Brosnan met his late actress wife Cassandra Harris on the set of For Your Eyes Only in which she had a role.

21Drivers in Skyfall’s pre-credit chase scene in Istanbul include motorcross champion Robbie Maddison, former Top Gear’s “Stig” Ben Collins and British rally car champion Mark Higgins.

22During the motorbike chase in Skyfall, Bond’s tie had to be weighted to stop it flying around when he drove a high speeds.

23Maud Adams has been a Bond girl twice, in The Man With The Golden Gun and Octopussy.

24The Queen became a Bond girl when she appeared with Daniel Craig and her corgis in the film, directed by Danny Boyle, shown at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics.

25Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once appeared in a Bond movie – played by impersonator Janet Brown in For Your Eyes Only.

26Bond girls have, shall we say, colourful names. Think Pussy Galore, Holly Goodhead, Plenty O’Toole, Mary Goodnight and Kissy Suzuki.

27Licence To Kill was originally titled Licence Revoked until the marketing people pointed out that Americans might not understand it.

28Skyfall stunt coordinator Gary Powell comes from a dynasty of stuntmen.

Between them, the Powell family have covered every James Bond film. His father Nosher Powell and uncle Dinny worked on all the Connery and Lazenby films, his brother Greg worked on all the Moore and Dalton films, and Gary has worked on all the Brosnan and Craig films to date.

29It took nine weeks and 250 crew to build the underground MI6 headquarters on the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios for Skyfall.

30Judi Dench, returning for her seventh film as M, said Bond and M are two people who work well together.

“She’s obviously very fond of him, and she’s often accused of being preferential towards him – but she can also be ruthless about him,” she says. “Daniel and I struck up a good relationship the first time we worked together, and the relationship has developed as each script requires something a little bit more from us.

That is especially true with Skyfall.”

31Julie Christie, Raquel Welch and Faye Dunaway – then relatively unknown – were all considered to play Domino in Thunderball but the role went to a former Miss France Claudine Auger.

32Exterior shots in London’s Whitehall in Skyfall during a chase sequence involved 750 extras, 100 background vehicles, 300 film crew and multiple agency cooperation (including Westminster Ctiy Council, Royal Parks, Network Rail and the Met Police).

33Javier Barden describes the latest Bond villain Silva as “an angel of death –a very clean-shaven person who happens to be rotten on the inside”.

34In order to film Skyfall scenes on a remote beach in Turkey, the locations department had to negotiate permission with the 613 part-owners of the area. 35Latest Bond girl Berenice Marlohe’s favourite Bond girl is Famke Janssen, who played Zenia Onatopp in GoldenEye. “She was very brave to do that, and she showed a great sense of humour and self-deprecation.

35Latest Bond girl Berenice Marlohe’s favourite Bond girl is Famke Janssen, who played Zenia Onatopp in GoldenEye. “She was very brave to do that, and she showed a great sense of humour and self-deprecation.

It’s an unusual choice to play a psychopath who orgasms when she kills people”.

36Bond likes his martini “shaken, not stirred”, a line first spoken in the novel Diamonds Are Forever. Sean Connery says them in Dr No, although he says, “Shaken and not stirred.”

37Shirley Bassey, Sheena Easton, Paul McCartney, Madonna and now Adele have all sung Bond theme songs.

38Octopussy’s song All Time High is one of six musical themes that don’t refer to the title. The other five are Dr. No, We Have All the Time in the World from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Nobody Does It Better from The Spy Who Loved Me, You Know My Name from Casino Royale, and Another Way to Die from Quantum of Solace.

39Roger Moore saying he developed his approach to playing Bond from a line in Fleming’s novel that “Bond did not particularly enjoy killing”.

40Tennis player Vijay Amritraj appears in Octopussy and uses his tennis racket as a weapon during an auto-rickshaw chase.

41Timothy Dalton was first approached to play Bond in 1968 for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service when he was 24 or 25, but he told producers he was too young.

42Bond was first played on US television by Barry Nelson in a one-hour adaptation of Casino Royale on the 1954 anthology series Climax!

43When Prince Charles and Princess Diana visited the set of The Living Daylightsin 1986, she hit him over the head with a prop bottle (made of sugar glass). 44The Skyfall cast went through 200,000 rounds of ammunition during weapons training.

45Coca Cola was sprayed on the streets of Istanbul to stop the motorbikes from sliding in Skyfall.

46A recent survey by Shortlist magazine named Sean Connery as the best Bond, Ursula Andress as the best Bond girl and Blofeld as the best evil villain.

47Could Daniel Craig play Bond forever? “That’s not going to happen. I’m doing it again because I’m contracted to, and I get a kick out of it. As long as I’m getting a kick out of it and people want me to do it, I’ll try to do it.

We’ll see,” he says.

48James Bond has featured in other “unofficial” non-Eon movie, including the 1967 spoof Casino Royale (in which Woody Allen was one of several 007s) and Never Say Never Again with Sean Connery.

49The 22 official Bonds have earned something like five billion dollars around the world.

50The 23rd official Bond movie Skyfall opened in UK cinemas yesterday. US releaseis November 9.