Pierce Brosnan on the piste

French star Sophie Marceau as Elektra King.

Denise Richards and Pierce Brosnan in the drink

double-o nineteen

“Bond is mostly the same character as always, with pretty much the same ideas. But the world has changed around him” Michael G Wilson

I’d better be honest about this: I started reading the James Bond books when I was at school. Not only was Ian Fleming still alive then, he had only written half-a-dozen 007 novels. And no one had even thought of turning one of them into a movie. The best was yet to come. My English master wouldn’t have agreed: for him, more Bond was definitely not better Bond. Coming across me engrossed in Dr No one day, he tore it from my hands and threw it across the room. “What are you reading this junk for?” he spluttered.

Schools were different then: teachers could get away with that kind of stuff. I mean, I wasn’t even in an English class. But it didn’t stop me reading the books. I carried on, right through to the end, until Fleming died (on August 12, 1964). I even almost met him once.

Pierce Brosnan

By 1964, of course, Fleming’s most famous creation had become a movie star, striding (in the shape of a 33-year-old Sean Connery with a full head of hair) along an impossibly white Caribbean beach towards a gleamingly wet Ursula Andress emerging from the waters wearing a bikini never to be forgotten - certainly not by Michael Apted, who has just finished directing Bond 19, aka The World Is Not Enough.

“Like any young man of my generation,” says Apted, “I had been permanently influenced by Ursula Andress and her bikini. My testosterone never recovered from it.”