Apparently, there’s a new Bond film on its way, had you heard? No? It came as a surprise to us too. Since Skyfall is indeed imminent we thought it would be a good idea to gather together fifty of the most interesting, pointless, geeky and useless bits of trivia we could find, from a series which celebrates its fiftieth birthday this year, and present them here for your reading pleasure.

1 Agents 002, 003, 004, and 009 have been killed, while 006 was Sean Bean’s villain in GoldenEye. 008 is Bond’s replacement in the unfortunate event of his death, while neither 001 nor 005 have ever been mentioned.

2


Technically, there have been nine screen James Bonds: Sean Connery, Roger Moore, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, but also Barry Nelson (Casino Royale, 1954), David Niven (Casino Royale, 1967) and Christopher Cazenove (in a 1973 semi-dramatic review show called British Hero.) Blockbusters’ Bob Holness also once voiced the character on radio.

3 Bond’s parents were Andrew Bond, a Scottish man, Monique Delacroix, a Swiss national.

4

The actress playing the Bond girl has only been older than the actor playing Bond twice. They also both starred in the BBC series The Avengers: Honor Blackman was 37 and Connery 34 in Goldfinger, and Diana Rigg was 31 and George Lazenby 30 in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

5 Bond was born in Germany, raised in Scotland and England, and considers himself Scottish.

6

The 22 official Bond films have earned just shy of $12billion at the box office, if ticket prices are adjusted for inflation. Which is, like, pissing loads, innit.

7

At the 1 hour 16 minute mark in From Russia With Love the train Bond is a passenger on passes an old man. This is said to be Ian Fleming, in a rare cameo.


8 Only two official Bond films have foolishly failed to employ the use of scantily clad ladies in the titles: Dr No and Casino Royale.

9

David Bowie was originally lined up to play the villainous Max Zorin in A View to a Kill.

10

In each and every appearance as Bond, Sean Connery wore a hairpiece. Shekshy bashtard.

11 In the official Bond films (i.e. excluding Never Say Never Again and the early Casino Royales) there have been 1299 deaths. Bond is responsible for wasting 352 goons.

12

A View To A Kill was Dolph Lundgren’s first ever appearance on screen. He didn’t speak, so it was also one of his best.

13

In Thunderball, an experimental type of rocket fuel was used to power the explosion of the flying saucer yacht owned by the film’s villain Emilio Largo. Experimental as in, the effects crew didn’t know how much to use. So they used too much. The resulting kaboom smashed windows in a town caked Nassau more than 30 miles away.

14

Goldeneye was the name of Fleming’s house in Jamaica in which he wrote the Bond novels.

15 Goldfinger’s Fort Knox set at Pinewood Studios had a 24-hour guard patrol in case any sticky-fingered ne’er-do-wells tried to swipe some of the fake prop bullion. God bless England.

16

Roger Moore suffers from hoplophobia. No, he’s not a bigot – hoplophobia is a fear of firearms.

17 In the Bond films up to Casino Royale, Bond is seen to consume 114 drinks – the equivalent of one every 24.3 minutes. He primarily drinks champagne (35 glasses) and only enjoys one beer. And is pissed a total of 0 times.

18

The only Bond film since From Russia With Love that doesn’t involve a helicopter at some point is The Man With The Golden Gun. A useless and boring fact, but it is true.

19 The last time Bond smoked was in Die Another Day, in which Pierce Brosnan toked himself silly on a fat cigar. In the books, Bond twatted his way through 70 fags a day, which makes the fact he never once hocked up a vast green docker’s omelette during a tiring scrap or a vigorous bout of lovemaking all the more surprising.

20

Bond is fluent in French, Italian, German and Russian, is handy with Greek, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese, and has a degree in Oriental languages. He also knows how to say ‘where is the library’ in English.

21

Bond was 38 when he became a 00 agent.

22

Quantum Of Solace is the only film in the series that’s considered to be a direct sequel.

23

Actor Michael Collins ended up voicing all of Goldfinger’s lines, which were then dubbed over Gert Fröbe’s performance, because the German actor, unbeknownst to the film’s producers when they hired him, couldn’t speak English.

24 Goldfinger was eventually banned in Israel – it was revealed that Fröbe had been a member of the Nazi party during World War II. The ban was lifted when a Jewish family publicly thanked the actor for protecting them from persecution during the conflict.

25 Roger Moore was the oldest Bond – he was a saggy-ballbagged 58 in A View To A Kill.

26

George Lazenby was the youngest – a positively cherubic 30 in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

27

The great Christopher Lee is Ian Fleming’s cousin, and the Bond author initially wanted Lee to play Dr. No in the first film. Lee made up for passing on the offer by playing tri-nippled tosspot Scaramanga in The Man With The Golden Gun.

28 Timothy Dalton was originally considered for the role of James Bond all the way back in the late 60s, following Sean Connery’s departure, but took himself out of the running because he thought he was, at 25, too young. The 30 year-old George Lazenby then took the role.

29

One early draft of the Dr No script had the titular villainous PhD written as an evil monkey. That would have been fucking brilliant.

30 Actors who’ve turned down the role include Hugh Jackman, Cary Grant, Liam Neeson. Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. Eastwood and Reynolds did so because they believed Bond had to be British.

31

James Bond’s IMDB character page is 0000007.

32

Ian Fleming also wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, while Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay for You Only Live Twice.

33

Roger Moore thought he had a daft run, so in every scene in which he’s required to do so, in every single one of his Bond appearances, a double steps in to do the jogging for him.

34 Daniel Craig is the first actor to play Bond who’s younger than the Bond series.

35

The record for the most times a single actor has played the same role in a film series is held by Desmond Llewelyn, who played grumpy gadget-peddler Q seventeen times.

36 In a New Scientist article, Gordon Stanger estimated that 4,662 shots have been fired at Bond and 130 attempts have been made on his life.

37

The Walther PPK gun that Bond has made his own is the same model of gun that Hitler used to commit suicide.

38

Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys originally had the working title ‘Run James Run’and was intended to be a Bond theme.

39

James Bond was a name Ian Fleming had seen as the author of a dull ornithological tome entitled Birds Of The West Indies, and said he chose the name as that of his superspy as, “I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could think of. James Bond seemed perfect.”

40 Bond has slept with 44 women, two-thirds of whom have tried to kill him. Crikey.

41

Jaws’ real name is Zbigniew Krycsiwiki. At least that’s what they say – try saying ‘Chris Fowler’ or ‘Barry Smith’ with a gob full of indestructible alloy and it will probably sound a bit like ‘Zbigniew Krycsiwiki’.

42

Adjusted for inflation, Thunderball is the most successful film of the series, having taken the equivalent of $1.04bn at the box office.

43 There have been a total of 8 Felix Leiters.

44

Numerous educated estimates state that somewhere between a third and a quarter of the entire world’s population has seen a Bond film at some point.

45

Ian Fleming’s initial reaction upon seeing Dr No for the first time was, ‘Dreadful. Simply dreadful.’

46

‘007’ was the bus route used by Ian Fleming, which ran between Canterbury and London.

47

Bond popped his cherry at the age of 16 on his first visit to Paris.

48 In the ‘unofficial’ Bond film Never Say Never Again, Sean Connery’s fight instructor broke the Scot legend’s wrist. That fight trainer was none other than pudgy-faced punch-grump, Steven Seagal.

49 Roger Moore’s daughter has a cameo in Die Another Day, as a stewardess.

50

Mondays Are Hell was a quite marvelous original title for the book Moonraker.

SOURCES: attendly.com, askmen.com, digitalmediaacademy.org, filmschoolrejects.com, guardian.co.uk, ianfleming.com, movielists.com, sky.com, stfuandplay.com, stuff.co.nz, telegraph.co.uk, the-numbers.com, time.com, totalfilm.com, wikipedia.com