Pub trivia: James Bond
James Bond
Girls, gadgets, guns. Throw in a cool car, a couple of sharks and a villain obsessed with dominating/destroying the world and you've got the recipe for one of the most successful fictional characters of all time. Here's a 007 fact debrief.
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Fact
The most outrageously named Bond girl must surely be Goldfinger's Pussy Galore. But the producers originally wanted to play it safe by calling her Kitty Galore instead. Director Guy Hamilton stubbornly refused, reasoning that "If you were a 10-year-old boy and knew what the name meant, you weren't a 10-year-old boy, you were a dirty little f*cker."
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Fact
Sean Connery was not the first James Bond. Barry Nelson played the role in a 1954 TV adaptation of Casino Royale, and two years later Bob Holness – yes, the future host of Blockbusters – played him in a radio adaptation of Moonraker.
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Fact
George Lazenby is famous as the man who only played Bond once. But that isn't quite true. He reprised the role in an 80s TV film, The Return of the Man from UNCLE – although for legal reasons his character was only referred to as "JB".
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Fact
Roger Moore's Bond never once ordered a vodka martini, "shaken not stirred".
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Fact
According to Ian Fleming, James Bond's parents were called Andrew Bond and Monique Delacroix. Both died in a mountain climbing accident when Bond was a boy.
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Fact
Ian Fleming named his iconic spy after a real-life James Bond who was a bird expert and author of "Birds of the West Indies". Fleming, a keen bird watcher himself, owned the book and decided the writer's name suited his spy perfectly.
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Fact
Unlike any of the actors to play him on screen, the James Bond of the novels has a large scar down one cheek. Lean, skinny and with short dark hair, the book Bond was based on American musician Hoagy Carmichael – a fact that Fleming explicitly mentions in the first Bond novel Casino Royale.
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