It was coming, wasn’t it?

As sure as night follows day, I knew with a sense of inevitable impending doom that one day soon the woke brigade would try to destroy James Bond.

After all, as a white heterosexual man who kills people, seduces random women, brazenly chats up female co-workers, drinks, gambles, smokes cigars and cracks inappropriate jokes, Bond represents the very antithesis of everything the PC-crazed, radical feminist, snowflake world stands for, so must of course be eliminated from public life.

The warning signs have been coming with alarming regularity via leaks from the set of the latest Bond movie, No Time To Die.

First, it was reported that the script begins with James now retired and temporarily replaced as 007 by a black woman, played by Lashana Lynch.

It was reported that the script of the latest Bond movie, No Time To Die begins with James now retired and temporarily replaced as 007 by a black woman, played by Lashana Lynch

Then it emerged that producers have determined James must now ‘navigate the #MeToo movement’ which basically means him morphing from a steely-eyed, murderously sophisticated womanizing caveman into a touchy-feely, over-emotional, wreck to wants to talk sensitively to ladies about his problems - not bed them.

Now, we’ve reached the entirely predictable nadir of this campaign to emasculate the most masculine icon in movie history: he must undergo a sex change and become female.

‘Get out of the way, guys!’ demands feminist-by-proxy Pierce Brosnan, who played Bond four times, ‘and put a woman up there! I think it would be exhilarating, it would be exciting!’

Et tu, Pierce?

Seriously?

Piers Brosnan (left), himself a former bond, follows the current Bond, Daniel Craig and action hero Chris Hemsworth (right) in calling for a female 007

He follows the current Bond, Daniel Craig and action hero Chris Hemsworth in calling for a female 007.

And it’s a virtue-signalling bandwagon that must be stopped dead in its tracks, like a Bond villain in the final ten minutes of each movie.

This is not about equality.

I don’t object to women playing 007 because they somehow lack the requisite skills to do so.

I’m sure there are many female spies operating right now who are just as adept at killing people, seducing members of the opposite sex, chatting up co-workers, drinking, gambling, smoking and cracking inappropriate jokes.

No, I object to it because James Bond is a man, was always intended to be a man, and should remain a man.

You can make Bond a black man – I’d love to see Idris Elba take over from Craig

You can make Bond a black man – I’d love to see Idris Elba take over from Craig – or any other ethnic persuasion man for that matter, but you can’t make him a woman.

Nor can you suddenly make him all ‘woke’ because that’s not what he ever was in any of Fleming’s novels.

Bond, like him or loathe him, is a male, straight, misogynist loner who prefers tuxedos to dresses.

That’s just who he is. Period.

And that’s why he’s been so beloved for so many decades, and retained such a powerful place in British culture.

As Sean Connery once put it: ‘Bond is important: this invincible superman that every man would like to copy, that every woman like to conquer, this dream we all have of survival.’

As with all these stupid ‘woke’ campaigns, very few people outside the radical liberal bubble actually want it to happen.

On my breakfast TV show Good Morning Britain today, we ran a poll asking if Bond should be a woman and 86% of viewers (in a very large response) said no.

I suspect there were even more women than men voting against it, because for many women, and I hate to break this to you my darling feministas, James Bond represents total escapism and the very epitome of protective masculinity.

If Pierce Brosnan needs someone other than me to explain why this is a dumb idea, then he should ask Rosamund Pike, who co-starred with him in Die Another Day.

‘James Bond is a character that Ian Fleming created,’ she said, ‘and the character is a man. It’s a very masculine creation. Why should a woman get sort of sloppy seconds? Why should she have been a man and now it has to be played by a woman? Why not be a kick-ass female agent in her own right?’

Exactly.

Rosamund Pike, who appeared with Piers Brosnan in Die Another Day, also disagrees with her co-star about making Bond a woman

By all means create your own super-spies, ladies, but for the love of God, leave our guy alone.

Aside from the sheer unnecessary PC idiocy of making Bond a woman, there’s also a commercial imperative to not doing it.

Recently, Gillette decided to abandon its traditional, ultra-macho ‘the best a man can get’ advertising for a new ‘woke’ campaign that attacked men for our toxic masculinity.

Suddenly, everything that Gillette had once celebrated about strong risk-taking men, including many of the values that James Bond espouses, were now mocked in an ugly, vindictive manner.

We were ordered to stop beating our chests, protecting our families and wanting to win in life, and instead aspire to be less monstrous in a two-minute film alluding to sexual harassment, sexist behavior, bullying and the #MeToo movement under the slogan ‘the best men can be’.

The clear implication was that all men are despicable until they can be taught otherwise, and the only good man is a thoroughly emasculated one.

I warned when Gillette did this back in January that men would reject this message with blind fury.

And so we did.

Gillette learned the hard way that most men don’t actually want to be sniveling apologetic little snowflakes - and the Bond franchise should take note

In a massive global two-fingered response, Gillette’s male product sales collapsed in the space of just a few months, causing a staggering $8 BILLION writedown in the company’s value and a dramatic U-turn back to macho commercials starring burly firemen who risk their lives.

Gillette learned the hard way that most men don’t actually want to be sniveling apologetic little snowflakes.

And if this ridiculous campaign to turn James Bond into a woman succeeds then I confidently predict an even bigger commercial disaster at the box office.

But if the feminists do get their way, then let me put everyone on notice: I will launch revenge campaigns to have Bridget Jones turned into Brian Jones, Wonder Woman into Wonder Man, and Sleeping Beauty into a bearded bloke.