Original subtitles

James Bond - the most famous secret agent in the world.

Action hero, womaniser, drinker of vodka martinis

and capable of dealing out death with a cold stare

and an amusing one-liner.

From author Ian Fleming came a series of spy novels

that spawned one of the most successful movie franchises

in history.

How far do the films reflect Fleming's vision

for his secret agent?

Is Bond anything like a real-life Secret Service agent?

Or is it all pure fantasy?

In short - who is the real James Bond?

The 007 character was the turbo-charged version

of Ian Fleming himself.

It's really the best Ian Fleming could be.

The physical demeanour, a love for fast cars,

the fact that he golfed...

He draws upon things he loves so much.

Bond was a case of wish fulfilment and he sort of, like, wrote himself

into this very sort of suave,

sort of a spy - a man of action and adventure

that perhaps he'd always wanted for himself.

There were elements of Ian Fleming in James Bond

but James Bond was not Ian Fleming.

So you have a spy, you have a womaniser,

but in the case of Fleming, it's not quite as glamorous.

Fleming worked very closely with naval intelligence but

he was the liaison between Naval Intelligence and the Special Operations Executive

and other intelligence agencies.

So, he had a very real sense of what spies were actually like.

THEME MUSIC PLAYS

JAMES BOND-STYLED MUSIC

James Bond is a world famous British icon.

It's reckoned that over 1 billion people around the world have seen

at least one James Bond film.

Created by the writer Ian Fleming,

he is the quintessential Secret Service agent.

He's the man that's got it all - the gadgets, the guns, the women,

and the cars.

Ian Fleming was the celebrated English author who wrote James Bond

and in doing so drew upon some really unique experience

he had in Royal Naval intelligence.

Things like Operation Goldeneye and a couple of other,

you know, top secret projects that he oversaw.

So, he wrote about exactly what he knew.

I think with so many American heroes,

it was time to have a quintessentially British hero

and James Bond has fitted that bill,

you know, with his Union Jack parachute

but also, you know, there with the gun, the wry smile,

very well turned-out,

quintessentially upper-middle-class Englishman.

And his tastes, his prejudices, his fighting the wicked enemies.

You know, he is totally English.

Ian Fleming wrote his James Bond novels

on a 30-year-old typewriter in his villa, GoldenEye,

on the island of Jamaica.

To try and understand the character he created,

I'm going to indulge in a bit of the Bond lifestyle myself,

starting with the guns.

One of the key premises of Bond is his so-called license to kill.

This seemingly gave him nearly free rein

to dispatch his enemies in cold blood.

And in the course of 24 films,

Bond has killed nearly 400 people.

I'm at EJ Churchill shooting ground to meet Jon Baker

who is an armourer and weaponry expert.

I want to experience for myself

what it's like to have your finger on the trigger of the very guns

Bond himself used.

Oh, wow.

Well, here we have some Bondish-type guns, OK.

Let's start with the Beretta.

It's very similar to the model 418

that Bond had in Dr No

in about 1962-63 when the film was made, OK.

OK.

Then, we have the Walther PPK.

Ah, yes. Which is a standard, you know, the Walther PPK

that Bond would have used at the time.

Again, he was forced by Geoffrey Boothroyd, who wrote to Ian Fleming.

He said he had the wrong gun - it was a woman's gun

and there was a big discussion about the whole thing,

that Bond had a lady's gun, OK.

Although this is a 9mm version, the earlier one was a .25 ACP

which is much smaller. OK.

Now, this is a classic Bond handgun, right? Absolutely correct, yeah.

Bond's weapon of choice is the Walther PPK.

It's a German weapon, stands for Polizeipistole Kriminal -

the "police criminal pistol".

And the reason why it was recommended

to Fleming that this is what Bond should carry

is because its 7.65mm round was widely available anywhere.

So Bond, being a type who travelled widely,

would never be out of ammunition.

Then of course the more ubiquitous weapons that would have been used.

The Sterling submachine gun, a British standard-issue weapon

to the military - the Air Force, the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy

and the Army and things.

As I say, when the Navy attacked submarine pens,

they were using those.

So, when would this have been used?

This would have been used anything right up to the sort of mid '80s.

They were still in service with the British military in the mid '80s -

Royal Navy Royal, Air Force and the Army.

So, right up to those and still being used today.

They used to be used by the Hong Kong police.

And they're used all over the world, made by Sterling in Dagenham.

Very good weapon - little submachine gun.

Can we try them out? Of course we can. Oh-ho!

OK, all you have to do is cock the weapon back.

You're ready to fire. OK.

One magazine.

One Sterling.

That's it.

Right, the action back.

Like this? Yep, and when you're ready...

Woohoo!

OK. That is awesome!

I thought you might like that one. JAMIE LAUGHS

Wow!

Gun is what a stethoscope is to a doctor for a secret agent.

You couldn't have him with a big rifle or a machinegun.

It would be impractical -

the Walther PPK, which recurs in the books and the films,

is a natty little thing, where it can be discreetly tucked away

in a tuxedo.

But also, I believe it was chosen because this is a gun

that genuinely was used all over the world - not just in Britain

but also in Russia and all the other Eastern European countries

that he visits in the course of the various plots.

So, it's there to add a touch of historical fidelity.

OK, what's this?

This is a AK-47, or this particular one is an AKMS -

it's what the bad guys would use, this particular one.

Nice weapon - got a folding stock.

OK - you can just press the stock release button.

Folds out.

And so, they'd have used real guns in the films?

They would use real guns in the film, yeah. They're modified to fire blanks.

Obviously, we can't fire live ammunition on set cos you kill people, right?

Sure. That's not what we do. But they are real guns because

you need the flash out of the end, the empty case firing, the changing of the magazines.

Occasionally, we use rubbers when the guns need to be thrown around

or special stunts need to be done but all the time, we use real guns.

OK, now put the magazine in, rock it in, lock it back.

I'm just going to stand a little bit further forward

cos it throws the rounds up quite substantially.

Does it? Yeah.

GUN COCKS OK.

Like this? When you're ready. In here? Yep. OK...

Oh, whoa!

That is terrifying!

I warned you!

Now, you could see the flash on it. You can see the whole thing going.

You can't do that with rubbers, you can't do that with replicas.

You've got to have a real gun.

So, in the Bond films, they would have used that?

They would have used that.

Whoa!

Can I have another go? Of course, you can have another go!

Keep in mind this was sort of...

The Cold War-era inspired the James Bond character.

So, all those weapons, all those gadgets,

all the kind of top secret stuff that we look at and think,

"That's really funny - that's kind of ridiculous, that would never..."

Well, that actually DID happen.

You know, there were those kind of concealed weapons.

There were those kinds of gadgets.

It's surprisingly realistic!

Now, guns weren't the only thing Bond carried.

His pockets were also bulging with the latest creations from Q Branch,

a division of the Secret Service

that supplied him with an array of gadgets.

These took centre stage in the films.

From pens that were for far more than writing

to invisible cars with deadly modifications.

Film memorabilia is big business

with collectors all around the world

prepared to part with huge sums of money

for their own little bit of Bond.

The Prop Store is one of the biggest dealers in the world.

And, according to their website, this...

..is Head Office.

I'm quite sure in the right place, but...

..we shall see.

CROW CAWING

Hey! Stephen. Jamie! Hi, how are you?

Very good, thanks - welcome to Prop Store. Thank you very much.

Come on inside. Thank you.

Oh, wow.

Oh, my goodness!

JAMIE LAUGHS That's the sort of response

we normally get when people come in for the first time.

Yeah... Not what I was expecting!

Exactly. We're a bit undercover here.

What's this here - old spacesuits?

Yeah, this is actually John Hurt's spacesuit from Alien.

And this is part of some of the collection of props and costumes

that we have here on display.

But they're not just on display.

Are they for sale or do you rent them out? How does it work?

Yeah, absolutely - we have auctions annually.

We have over 6,000 items on our website.

It's a film buff's dream in here.

I'm particularly after James Bond memorabilia -

have you got anything like that?

Yeah, I think we've got a few goodies we can show you.

Do you want to come upstairs? I'll show you.

This is great!

Come on in to my office.

Let me show you some of the James Bond goodies that we've got

set up on the table for you to have a look at in here. Wow...

This is what I've been looking for.

I know that - can I touch it?

Yeah, please do - as long as you're nice and careful with it.

Now, I know this is a...

..Walther PPK? Absolutely.

Yeah, the signature weapon of choice for James Bond.

It feels real.

Yeah, that was actually a real-life firing gun used for filming.

This is Pierce Brosnan's from GoldenEye. Is that right?

Yeah, the Hero gun. Note - they had two for first-unit filming.

And this is one of those Heroes.

That is amazing. And what about this? Well, I know that's an old mobile phone, right?

Just looks like an old mobile phone, absolutely.

I think I had one like this. If you peel it open a little bit...

Whoa! ..you see it's got a bit of a gadget interface there.

And this is the Bond phone that he uses in Tomorrow Never Dies

to drive the BMW as he's trying to escape Carver in the car park.

And I remember at the time when we watched the film,

this seemed really futuristic.

Yeah. And now, it looks wonderfully quaint.

Absolutely - I mean, you could do way more than that

on a regular mobile phone today, couldn't you?

So, how much would something like this be worth to a collector?

That one just sold in the Prop Store auction that we had in September,

actually, for close to £17,000.

Please be careful with it.

You're kidding me! No, absolutely.

Bond props are in demand, they're very rare - they're hard to find.

B...

£17,000? £17,000.

For this toy phone?

Yeah, I feel like you want to make a bid here.

BOTH LAUGHING It's WAY out of my league!

That's an extraordinary amount of money!

I mean, there's two things that have happened to the Bond franchise

if we want to talk about it in those terms.

And one is it's been going a long time,

but now it's a global franchise

and people are reaching back for memorabilia right back

to the earliest films.

And, of course, it's extremely stylish.

You know, it's always been top brands, you know?

And the fact that you can buy a top brand associated with James Bond

gives it so much kudos - hugely attractive to collectors.

Now these bad boys... Got some big guns for you. Yeah.

They're the heavy artillery, right?

It's the heavy... Yeah - this is Cigar Girl's machinegun

that she's firing at Bond in The World Is Not Enough

on the Thames.

It's...

It's made of rubber.

Yeah, absolutely. So during the filming process,

you've handled a real-life gun there for the stunt sequence,

for the action sequences, as well.

You have to use these lightweight versions.

So, if you pop that one down,

and then have a go at picking this one up, perhaps,

you'll see the difference in weight and feel to it.

JAMIE LAUGHS Yeah. Go on - have a go, pick it up.

STEPHEN LAUGHS

Oh!

That is REALLY heavy! It's very heavy.

So, this was the live-fire gun that's used on set again.

God - I'm not sure I can actually lift that up. Wow! Yeah. So, this isn't...

STRAINING: I have to put that down!

Please do. Can you give me a hand? Yeah, absolutely - there we go.

And so what about values for these?

You're probably talking about somewhere around about £10,000,

maybe a little bit more for the Hero version,

and probably 3,000 to 4,000 for the stunt version.

Something along those lines.

The Bond memorabilia market is extraordinary.

So many people seem to want to get their hands

on a genuine prop. People are willing to pay £50,000,

possibly even more, to get their hands on what they see

as an authentic slice of cinematic history.

And that's before we've even got into the sort of postcards and...

..all the, sort of, the albums and various little pieces

of merchandise, as well.

Now, I recognise this because this is exactly the kind

of thing I'm after.

This is one of Daniel Craig's training...? Yes, all right.

Yeah - so when he's in rehabilitation,

goes back to MI6 training,

retraining, that's his training outfit.

So you've got the little emblem on the crest there on the chest, as well.

And that's actually the costumer's tags still attached to it there from filming.

Right - Skyfall, yeah? Skyfall, yeah... And if I wanted to own

Dan Craig's track suit, how much would that set me back?

I think you want to become one of our customers. You seem very interested in these.

I'm just trying to find something I can afford!

How much is that worth?

Somewhere in the region of £15,000 to £20,000 - something like that.

OK.

There is an astonishing market in Bond memorabilia

and associated objects.

As a woman I find it slightly amusing, I have to say,

because I doubt very much whether there's an awful lot

of even very rich women who actually go to the auctions

and buy the stuff.

Perhaps it's because men want to BE James Bond

and women want to be WITH him.

So, Jamie, I've got something else I'd like to show you.

Come this way. Oh, my goodness.

So, here's another Aladdin's Cave of props.

Look at this!

This is the piece - this is the boat that Q designs

for Bond from the opening title sequence

of The World Is Not Enough.

This is amazing!

So, how many of these would have been made?

There were 15 made originally.

There's probably only about eight or nine still in existence.

Some of them got destroyed during filming or just after filming.

And each of the boats would have had a different use, as well.

So, you would've had special effects

for the one that comes up on wheels.

You had the gag ones which went underwater and jumped up and around.

And this particular boat is the boat that was used for the air cannon sequence.

Right. I mean, as a collector

and as a Bond fan, it's amazing - but, I mean, where on earth

would you keep something like this? HE LAUGHS

Maybe in your own warehouse?

In your own gallery?

That's it. This is it - yeah.

So, the gag with this was that it jumps out of the Thames - he flies up out of the Thames,

bounces on the grass and then back into the water again

just in front of the O2, or what was then the Millennium Dome.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

MUSIC IN STYLE OF JAMES BOND

The ultimate prize for the Bond fan is to own an Aston Martin DB5.

The car that made Bond famous in seven films and that cemented

the connection between Bond and Aston Martin.

Peter Croll has achieved a childhood dream

and has lovingly restored this Aston Martin DB5 from rusty barn find

to an exact replica of the car from Goldfinger.

So, how long have you had the car, Peter?

I've had it since 2002 - so, about 15 years now.

And what kind of state was it when you bought it?

It was a total restoration.

So, it was in various states of repair, if you know what I mean.

Bits taken off and in boxes - it was a...

A car with loads of boxes.

Didn't have any glass on it or anything like that.

Everything was with it.

So, apart from the gadgets,

this is pretty much as Bond would have driven it, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's the same car - he had the navy seats and that, yeah.

So, pretty much this is...

It's what it would look like in the day.

And what's it like to drive? Yep, it's nice - the longer you drive it, the better it gets.

It sort of warms up and becomes,

like, more refined the more you drive it.

But, yeah, it's nice to drive.

A bit heavy steering and parking but other than that, it's lovely.

So, I guess this is like the ultimate piece of 007 memorabilia, isn't it?

I think so, yeah. I mean, there was two stars in that film,

Goldfinger - Sean Connery and the car, really, wasn't it?

It sort of made them both.

Not surprisingly, Fleming was obsessed with fast cars

and he gives that character trait to Bond.

And so the Bond cars are as memorable in the films

as any other aspect of the films.

I mean, who could forget the Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger?

You know, it lets oil out the back

so that cars behind it just wipe out.

It even has an ejector seat.

I mean, it has all the mod cons and things we've never seen before

in a car and yet we're just riveted every time it's on the screen.

I mean, cars have been very central to the Bond movies,

to the Bond proposition.

I tend to find the Roger Moore era, where it went off under the sea,

rather silly, and some of the gadgets later on a bit naff.

I mean my personal favourite is Goldfinger, the Aston Martin.

It's the fact the gadgets all set up great dramatic devices, you know,

when Connery's told there's an ejector seat but he uses it

in a very precise way at a very precise moment,

and the gadgets and the drama really match.

I don't think it's ever been better, actually, than that film.

Well, this is about as close...

..as being James Bond as I'm going to get.

Pulling up here at Stoke Park...

..in the right car. Getting out of an Aston Martin, yes.

The films have certainly garnered a legion of fans around the world

but I want to find out where it all originated.

And that means going back to Fleming and the books.

Peter's kindly dropping me off at Stoke Park, the film location

where Bond humiliated his nemesis, Auric Goldfinger, in a game of golf.

Perhaps surprisingly, James Bond was a keen golfer

but so, tellingly, was Ian Fleming.

Obviously, here at Stoke Park, you need the appropriate caddy,

so we've got an Oddjob of our own.

And to find out where Bond all began,

I'm meeting Ajay Chowdhury - co-author of Some Kind Of Hero -

an expert on all things 007.

What I'm trying to figure out, Ajay, is how similar was Fleming's Bond

to a real-life secret agent?

I think James Bond in Fleming's books

was actually not really a spy.

He was more of a sort of commando, an SOE-type person

that Fleming would have come across during the war.

He was more of a counterinsurgency sort of SAS type.

And that's why his Bond is a lot more adventurous,

much more kind of action-packed, than a George Smiley le Carre-type.

Yeah - so, he wasn't...

Was Fleming himself a sort of pen pusher,

or was he was he an active agent in naval intelligence?

Well, during the war,

Ian Fleming was more like an M character giving the orders.

He was a commander in naval intelligence, but he sent commandos

LIKE James Bond out into the field

behind the line, German lines, and in continental Europe.

And, um... But James Bond then represented the sort of agent

Fleming probably wished he could have been. Right. A man of action.

Where does a whole sort of licence to kill come from?

Is that... Is that Fleming's invention, or was that an actual...?

Well, the licence to kill, the double O in the 007,

is the licence to kill prefix.

That probably is fictional but I think during the war, Fleming was

keen to emphasise that agents had to do the unthinkable.

They weren't always wearing white hats and, you know, on the side

of angels. Sometimes they had to be as ruthless as the enemy and I think

that it underpins some of the ethos of the James Bond character.

As with most authors, a significant degree of the character

is actually autobiographical.

So, there are definite similarities between Fleming and Bond.

They're both commanders.

They both have a naval link.

They're both womanisers.

But there are also real differences.

I mean, Bond is who Fleming would probably like to have been.

Fleming is involved in his intelligence work,

in some pretty hairy and gritty things

but he's resolutely a desk man.

He sits in the Admiralty in Whitehall.

And he comes up with these ideas

yet Bond is who he'd like to have been.

And we mentioned the 007 moniker.

Did agents have numbers?

I mean, was that a thing that was given to them, or...?

I'm pretty sure agents had all sorts of code numbers... Right.

..and what they call legends. They had different names.

Most famously, there was Agent Zigzag and people like that.

And Fleming obviously drew from that, although the 007 is widely

believed to be drawn from Rudyard Kipling.

There was a 007 train that featured one of Kipling's books

and Fleming was a Kipling fan but the actual realistic background to

all these things is a combination of myth, reality,

and Fleming's own imagination.

So, like James Bond, Ian Fleming was an intelligence officer.

In fact, he was involved in some very complex operations,

training people in guerrilla warfare, in being spies and so on.

So he had that in common. He liked the same drinks as Bond,

he liked to gamble.

He liked to play golf.

He certainly like to womanise but... And there's also a kind of a slight

element of rough play with Fleming,

but I think his play was rougher than Bond.

One of the reasons Bond was a cut above the other thrillers

was due to Fleming's vivid, fast-paced writing style

which took the reader right into the heart of Bond's world.

In a grey and dreary Britain, still adjusting to the reality

of life post-war,

his novels added a dash of colour.

And, engrossed in his books, more than a few readers have missed

their train stops over the years.

The Bond books were a tearaway success and one of most important

factors you have to remember is what the '50s were like.

We often think of the '50s as glamorous.

We think of America, and Fender guitars and Cadillacs,

and all that great stuff. England wasn't like that.

England was really depressed, really dreary, coming out of the war

still with rationing.

I think James Bond came at the right time for Britain.

It was the end of the Second World War.

And along comes a character who, if you want, is best of British.

You know, reminds British people what they like about themselves.

And also there's a tinge of luxury, of glamour, you know.

So Fleming drops in the brand names, it's stuff that people at that time

couldn't necessarily afford.

But they could live that life through James Bond.

Though, if Bond was gambling in a casino or drinking a drink

or driving an Aston Martin like this one,

then chances are Fleming had been there and done that.

And this is why he was able to bring these experiences to life

unlike any other writer.

And, of course, one of the things most closely associated with Bond

was his signature drink, the vodka martini.

Fleming is said to have been inspired by the evenings he spent

drinking at the Duke's Hotel in London.

Alessandro, how are you?

Very well. How are you, Jamie? Nice to see you.

I think you know what I'm going to order.

Vodka martini. Bond style.

Shaken not stirred. Shaken not stirred.

I always wanted to say that.

OK.

So, we're going to put a little bit of vermouth.

OK.

But you know Bond drinks also his vodka martini very, very dry.

So we just wash the glass, and then we sink it.

So, why, Alessandro, is Duke's Bar so synonymous with James Bond?

It's mainly with the martini, because Mr Fleming used to come here

during this time when he was in Jamaica.

Like a few people, they'll tell was mainly patronised by people

in politics and in the army.

So, the bar was only this very small bar. It was quite exclusive.

As we are in St James, all the clubs, all these wonderful people

do their business, they lunch in the club, but when you want

to do something that will be secret, you come here.

Nice. Yeah.

There you are, Mr Bond.

And then of course, an olive. Oh, yes.

And why did James Bond like his martinis shaken not stirred?

Ah-ha. That's a very good question.

In those days you would not dare to shake a martini.

It was completely taboo.

Now when Mr Fleming started writing about Bond, Bond in the books break

all the rules, to be different, because Bond...

I mean, it pisses me off that class of English class, whatever he does

is perfect. Everybody would copy. Right.

But that is in the imagination of Mr Fleming.

So he was a bit of a renegade? On the Bond.

But Bond, not only, is also...is a fashion.

Whatever he does, like when he created Vesper, the way he dress,

the watch, everything. People copy. Right.

So, that's what he's trying to achieve.

That's wonderful.

It's nice, isn't it? Yeah, I like that.

When the novels first came out in the '50s,

few people had even heard of vodka.

You know, it was the most astonishingly,

glamorous Russian thing.

Certainly, very few people apart from the upper crust,

like Fleming himself, would have actually drunk it.

But there's something else about it, of course. It's Russian.

And this was during the Cold War and he was

On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

So, what was really going on here? What was the message?

Maybe the seeds of the anti-establishment 007

that we see today in Daniel Craig,

actually started there, with a vodka martini.

Even though elements of Bond, strictly speaking, are quite

old-fashioned, nevertheless he still managed to be stylish

and it even comes down to his preferred tipple.

You know, the vodka martini which actually

describes his character. The drink is him.

You know, it's... It's ice cold.

It's strong.

It's shaken, but not stirred, you know...

It is Bond.

He drinks what he is.

When not behind his desk working on the latest scheme

to thwart the Nazis,

Fleming immersed himself in London's nightlife.

And with the German bombs raining down,

he lived a life of drinking, dining and women.

Like the character of Bond that he would go on to create,

Fleming was not much of a one woman man and his own experiences would go

on to provide the templates for many of the women that Bond

encounters in the books.

However, the way he portrayed such women did, on occasion,

land him in hot water.

One definite connection between Bond and Fleming

is their attitude towards women.

Both of them were fairly mechanical, were fairly ruthless.

Yes, there was charm. Yes, there was lovemaking

but these weren't romances.

These were people who left the hotel room early in the morning and that's

something that Fleming at least was pleased to see was carried

through in the early Bond, in the Connery Bond, on film.

Apparently it was true that Fleming was well into his 30s before

he actually spent a whole night with a woman.

So, that is telling about his idea about relationships and when he got

married, Fleming, he... Basically, it was an open marriage.

So he had real problems with commitment.

I mean Fleming's attitude towards women was definitely pre-feminist.

You know, he regarded them as being like pets.

I think he regarded men as being real human beings and women were

just objects, you know, to be used and abused.

And on the abuse front, you know Fleming liked a bit of S and M.

There's no doubt about it.

It comes across in his correspondence between women.

You know, it really was bring your whip,

if you're going to have a night out with Fleming.

And also, you know, you look at some of the books, some of the movies...

Licence To Kill, a good example where, you know, I think it's

Sanchez, who's the villain there, is beating the woman with a whip.

And you can kind of sense that that is Fleming coming through

and his attitude to women.

The Bond girls were equally, if not more important, in the films

with cinemagoers eager to learn the identity of Bond's latest

love interest, and to find out more about Bond's relationships

with women, I'm meeting a very special lady.

Maryam d'Abo played the Bond girl Kara Milovy in 1987's

The Living Daylights.

It was in this film that the film-makers decided to try

a rather different approach and giving the girl a far more

substantial role to play.

As a Bond girl yourself,

how do you think the role of the Bond girl has developed?

Well, the Bond girl has definitely developed from Bond girl to

Bond woman. Right.

Can I... Should I say Bond women? I was a Bond girl.

I consider myself a Bond girl.

But now, you know, the actresses say, "No, no. Bond women."

But they have, of course, they've completely changed

and have evolved over time.

In the '60s, it was that whole period of, you know, action girl

which Ursula Andress played.

But sort of had, sort of an innocent, naive

or the girl with the superpowers, you know.

And then you had these wonderful names, so much humour, you know.

Pussy Galore. Honor Blackman playing, you know, the villainess,

the head of a whole little empire of girls,

sort of championing judo and had sort of powers.

So there was a lot of humour and they were bigger than life

and they were... They were, yeah, cartoon characters but with a wink,

you know. A lot of fun. I actually think they're hilariously funny

when you watch them now.

It's often said that Bond women, you know, get short shrift.

Who can forget Sean Connery actually deflecting some bullets by putting

a woman into their path? You know, it's not very gallant.

But at the same time, there are women

in the Bond movies who are very strong. I mean, Pussy Galore even

despite the silly name, is a very strong character.

Honey Ryder and Kara Milovy,

who was in The Living Daylights, are all strong independent women.

You know, they're not fluff, and even though Fleming's attitude

to women wasn't great, he nevertheless, he did create strong

female characters and those come through in the movies.

Maryam d'Abo from The Living Daylights

was sort of a new Bond woman.

I mean, she was beautiful just like the rest.

But she was kind of on a par with Bond, a bit more intelligent.

They worked together as a team and it kind of changed the public's

sort of perception of what a Bond woman could be.

I came along in '86, '87, with Timothy Dalton

so they brought a new style of Bond.

And they wanted to go for a less cartoon character and bring more

of a heart to the character, more of a relationship between Bond

and his leading lady...

Because that was interesting, because in your role, he hadn't

really had a relationship in the past.

They were sort of fleeting... sort of... Yes. ..one night stands.

He did, it's one night stands.

He was a loner, just like in the books.

The films took one very major departure from the books

in the creation of the Bond girls because in the books,

Bond is the hero.

But in the films, actually, people are much more interested every year

in finding out who is going to be the Bond girl in this year's Bond

film and the status they have is iconic in cinema, and the range

of Bond girls that have been used over the years

is incredibly diverse.

The way in which they tried to alter and modernise the role of the Bond

girl in The Living Daylights to reflect more current attitudes

to women is not the only way in which the films have differed

from the books.

And this calls into question how far the films actually represent

Ian Fleming's creation.

The Bonds that we see in the films, in the books,

it's hugely romanticised.

It's much more of a glamorous, fast-paced lifestyle

than what being a spy is and was actually like because much

of the art of being a spy

is not being conspicuous,

and Bond is probably one of the most conspicuous people you could ever

imagine, cos he turns up in his fast cars.

He's always got a beautiful woman draped over his arm.

This is a man who'd rapidly become famous if the whole thing were real.

What the books and the films do have in common is the Bond trappings

of fast cars and fast women,

guns, gadgets, and boats.

But Bond is an agent for the Secret Service,

which in the films became MI6.

So, how far does Bond reflect the reality of working...

in the building behind me?

Back on dry land,

I'm going to meet someone who'll be able to answer this.

Many people say he was an MI6 agent himself.

Though he of course couldn't possibly say.

So how accurate was Fleming's depiction of a spy back then?

Well, I think the first thing is was Fleming actually depicting

a spy in James Bond?

I mean Bond is not a spy as we normally understand it.

We normally understand a spy to be someone who goes somewhere to find

something out, to get information. Right.

Bond doesn't actually get information.

He's usually there to kill someone.

Or blow something up or get something, get hold of something.

So he's much more like a special operations operative

from the World War... World War II.

Right. And that was the world from which Fleming came,

as part of the Director of Naval Intelligence,

a world in which you were doing things,

or if you were finding out things, you were finding them out in order

to do something about them. Right.

In the early days of the Bond books and movies, 007 was quite

like a real spy.

Um, you know... The adventures that he had, you know,

this is inspired by the Cold War.

So, there were all sorts of crazy espionage events

going on.

But as the Bond films and books go further and the action

sequences get a little out of hand,

it no longer is based in any kind of reality.

There's no spies in the last 30 or 40 years who are having dinners

with the Queen and driving fast cars and sleeping with whoever

they want to sleep with and getting away with it.

Everyone would have known. So at the beginning,

yeah, it resembled in reality what some spies were like

back in the day.

But in modern times, no, it's strayed pretty far from reality.

So characters like Q and M, they were based on...

..on real people?

Well, um...

Q is a fairly common army designation for someone

who supplies equipment.

The Q side of things, and that I think was used in MI6,

possibly in MI5 as well, at the time.

M... M is more disputable.

There wasn't an M in MI6. There was a C, who is the chief,

and there still is and there was from the very first chief.

Before MI6 and MI5 were set up or when they were set up in 1909,

there was an M, a figure known as M who was a chap called Melville,

who was a retired Special Branch man,

and he was their dog man as it were.

He went and did a lot of... found addresses for them

and that sort of thing. So, whether Fleming had that somehow in mind

or something else, I don't know.

A lot of what being a spy about is spying, is watching

from the shadows, and collecting information, reporting back.

They're often faceless men and women who don't enjoy the kind of

glamorous lifestyle as depicted in the books.

That's not to say, you know, some spies don't get killed or don't have

to make tough calls and sacrifices and do occasionally

have the odd gun fights, but I think what Fleming did was take some of

these isolated incidents, and some of the characteristics of the spies

and sort of compound the whole thing into this...

sort of action man who is James Bond.

Tell me about some of the other similarities that you find

in Fleming's books with the way in which spies operate today?

Well, what is similar is that Bond might be summoned by M

and told there's someone in, I don't know, in Cairo,

who we believe is a very bad man and we want to find out

what he is doing. We want someone to get alongside him and find out more

about what he's doing.

Can you go and meet him?

You know, that kind of thing is based on some sort of reality.

Sure. What about being sent to seduce an attractive lady

in a casino...

Generally, I'm not sure seduction, yeah... ..in Monaco?

..is always a useful thing in intelligence.

The East Germans did make very good use of it in the Cold War.

Right. The Stasi. Stasi, yes. Seducing West German secretaries

and that sort of thing. They did a lot of that.

But as a general rule, pillow talk doesn't involve the very directive

qualities that you're looking for. You know, you're talking about...

the latest nuclear power station or something like that.

You don't generally, you know, turn over and say... No.

It struck me from reading the books and watching the films

that he did it more for pleasure rather than information.

I'm sure he's sought to combine business and pleasure,

as so many people do.

And what about martini, shaken not stirred?

Is that the drink of choice... I think most probably as a joke.

Much more likely the drink of Fleming's choice.

And I think probably the intelligence community went for

gin and tonics a lot. Stirred not shaken. Yes, as the forces do.

People endlessly argue about how real a spy Bond was.

But what one can say is that Fleming knew spies.

He worked in naval intelligence and he was the liaison officer

with the other spy and intelligence agencies in Britain.

He worked with the SOE, he worked with MI5 and he worked with MI6.

So he had a very real, first-hand experience of Britain's spies

in the period.

Now, the more you look into the character of James Bond

and where he came from, the more you realise that if there is a real

James Bond, it's actually Ian Fleming himself.

OK, so the books aren't a documentary account of Fleming's

time in the Admiralty during the war, but they do reflect the kind of

spies of that World War II and the post-war era, and less so,

modern MI6.

Well, over the last 55 years, Bond has really changed dramatically.

You know, in the '60s Connery was confident, smooth, suave...

Then via Lazenby, you go into the kind of comedy era in the '70s

which became completely ridiculous.

You then have Dalton, I suppose, in the kind of yuppie 1980s and then

we're into Brosnan, who I think unfortunately got overwhelmed

by the gadgetry. I mean... You know, he had an invisible car,

at the end, it all looked very silly. But Daniel Craig, I think,

really sums up the zeitgeist today, which is this kind of super serious,

slightly psychotic, probably needs to go into therapy,

but, you know, he's... You know, he's at the same time

extremely cool and clearly appeals to a global market.

Bond is firmly on the map and Bond is here to stay.

Where we are now with Daniel Craig, this is superstar status.

The bond franchise has never been so popular.

And there's every indication it'll go on being so.

You know what, the entire debate on whether or not Bond can continue

any longer rages on.

But I've got to tell you that...

an intelligent, good looking, leading man with

fast cars and faster women, you know,

that's a recipe for success that it's going to continue, I think,

into the future. Just look at Skyfall.

The first Bond film that grossed over $1 billion in ticket sales.

This whole drama is not ending any time soon.

The films are all very different.

As time went on they became so full of gadgets and slick one-liners

that they really shared little more with Fleming's dark gritty novels

than the titles.

I guess you could say that Timothy Dalton's was closer,

but it's really with the Daniel Craig films that they've returned

back to Fleming's original character,

and I guess you could say back to the real James Bond.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media