MARK HARRISON
Maybe you missed it last week, chilling with
a hangover on New Year’s Day an’ all, and it’s
not as if I’ve mentioned my big reveal much,
aside from to every single person I know, plus
some people in the street that I don’t, but
whatever, I can’t deny I’m still buzzing from
my James Bond photoshoot published in this
very magazine last Saturday.
The story so far: back in mid-November,
I interviewed a guy called Simon Waterson,
who for the past 24 years and seven films,
since Pierce Brosnan’s penultimate appearance
in The World is Not Enough, has put the actor
cast as Double Oh Seven through his pre-
production paces. As in, with Pierce twice,
and then on five occasions with Daniel
Craig, Simon’s job has been to get everyone’s
favourite make-believe paid assassin of Her
Majesty’s Government in shape to do his stuff.
Interview in the bag, my subsequent
mission, should I choose to accept it, which
even though the phrase belongs to a different
and inferior spy-caper franchise, I manfully
did, was to submit myself to Simon’s exercise
and nutrition regime to see how close to a buff
Bond body I could get. Craig, then 50, trained
for a year prior to his final outing. I’m 57 and
I was given precisely 24 days.
Under those circumstances, I reckon I did
OK. Togged up in my tux, hair shaped and
sprayed and sculpted just so, I was standing
outside the studio having a crafty smoke
during a lighting change when a young fella
delivering some clobber elsewhere passed by.
“Looking very smooth and suave there,”
he said.
“Why, shank you,” I replied, unwisely
attempting an atrocious Sean Connery accent.
“The namesh Bond, Shames Bond.”
He giggled and gave me a sympathetic look.
A minute later, another courier appeared.
From a distance, he looked like a photographer
pal of mine, who for some reason I decided
must be working nearby. Which is why I made
a pistol with two fingers and a cocked thumb,
dropped into the classic stance, and went,
“Pow, pow, pow!”
This chap, a total stranger, also gave me a
sympathetic look, albeit one mixed with equal
parts confusion and alarm.
I’d had a spray tan a few days before, not
suggesting this time, as I had the year before,
to the young woman spraying the gunk, that
I remove my pants to avoid any tan lines.
The company had obviously remembered
that occasion because they requested, in jestor not I don’t know, that “the subject keep
his underpants on throughout the process”.
I looked a bit orangey but the tuxedo fitted
OK, despite my having lied about my waist
measurement to the fashion desk when they
called the clothes in.
“It’ll be fine,” Desmond the make-up guy
reassured me. He revealed he’d once prepped
Sophia Loren for a shoot and she insisted on
doing her own cosmetics. “Don’t worry, darling,”
Sophia had told Desmond. “Photoshop!”
Outside again, yet another courier asked
me if Bond smoked. I happened to know he’d
given up after Die Another Day in 2002, his
consumption having steadily declined since
Sean Connery’s fagging it up Sixties heyday.
“Not any more,” I replied. “In the latest one
he doesn’t even get a shag. How the mighty
are fallen, eh?” I received my third sympathetic
look from a third different courier in the space
of a morning.
The main shoot relied on me recreating
Craig’s pose from a recent GQ. He’s shirtless,
wearing just jeans, with the flies half undone,
and for some reason holding an old-fashioned
corded telephone, handset in one hand,
receiver in the other. I thought I looked pretty
smouldery, but back at the office I had to
endure a lot of fnarr fnarr comments about how
Craig’s flex was all taut and stiff while mine
was floppy and flaccid. And so on and so forth.
I got a decent laugh by doing a lateral
flow test and, with decent comic timing if I
say so myself, watching the little gizmo and
going, “Hang on... hang on... there’s something
appearing... oh blimey, is it a double line? No...
it’s Oh, Oh... Seven.”
What a clever little LFT that was.
The point is, I’ve got a taste for this Bond
business now and if it’s still undecided, I’d like
to throw my hat in the ring. Fair enough I’m
57, but so was Roger Moore when he made his
final Bond, A View to a Kill, in 1985. I reckon
I might have a couple in me if, unlike Boris
Johnson, I discipline myself and lay off the
cheeseboard. Sir Roger was way better-looking
than me, of course, and taller by three inches
(I’m exactly the same as Craig, 5ft 10 and a
quarter) but I’ve got better hair. I may also
be a better actor. I can do the Roger Moore
eyebrow and also a passably De Niro-esque
crinkly-eyed knitted brow.
If Barbara Broccoli is interested, my contact
details are below. n[email protected]‘I fancy my chances
as the next James
Bond. Barbara
Broccoli knows
where to find me’
Beta male
Robert Crampton
© Times Newspapers Ltd, 2022. Published and licensed by Times Newspapers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF (020 7782 5000). Printed by Prinovis UK Ltd, Liverpool. Not to be sold separately.*