Roger Moore<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n <\/p>\n
To be honest, in my opinion, anyone who doesn\u2019t<\/em> think that Connery is the best Bond needs his or her head examined.\u00a0 He swaggered in at the start of the film series, dark and Byronic but equipped with that inimitable Scottish burr, and made the role his own.\u00a0 He invested Bond with a ruthless but suave lethalness, a threatening but graceful physicality, a cruel but entertaining laconicism.\u00a0 In fact, 58 years ago, Connery was such a revelation in the role that even Bond\u2019s literary creator Ian Fleming, still alive and still writing at the time, was sufficiently inspired to put a bit of the brooding ex-Edinburgh-milkman into his spy-hero.\u00a0 No doubt Fleming had Connery in mind when he ended his final Bond novel The Man with the Golden Gun<\/em>, published posthumously in 1965, with Bond turning down the offer of a knighthood.\u00a0 \u201cI am a Scottish peasant,\u201d he retorts, \u201cand will always feel at home being a Scottish peasant.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
It has to be said that at the turn of the century when Connery himself was offered a knighthood, he displayed none of Bond\u2019s reluctance.\u00a0 He took it and promptly became Sir Sean.\u00a0 (Or Shirrr<\/em> Sean.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/TD-as-JB.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Eon Productions<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Yet having just said that Connery is the best<\/em> Bond, I must confess that he isn\u2019t quite my favourite<\/em> Bond.\u00a0 That accolade goes to number two on my list, the Welsh actor Timothy Dalton, who played him in the movies The Living Daylights<\/em> (1987) and Licenced to Kill<\/em> (1989).\u00a0 Mainly this is because I\u2019d read most of Ian Fleming\u2019s novels at an early age, before I saw any of the films; and Dalton struck me as the actor who came closest to portraying Bond in the way Fleming had imagined him and the way I\u2019d first imagined him from the books.\u00a0 (While researching the role, Dalton read the original literary canon, so this was to be expected.)\u00a0 His was an edgier and more troubled 007.\u00a0 It\u2019s fitting that The Living Daylights<\/em> begins by using the plot of the Fleming short story of the same name, which has Bond refusing to kill an enemy sniper \u2013 a woman \u2013 and declaring bitterly that the secret service can sack him for all he cares.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Alas, Dalton didn\u2019t capture the imagination of the public, who still seemed in thrall to the jokey tone of the previous Bond movies of the 1970s and early 1980s.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t helped either by Britain\u2019s fickle film critics.\u00a0 They\u2019d spent years moaning that the Bond films had become \u2018too silly\u2019.\u00a0 But as soon as someone tried to toughen up the films, they started moaning that the series had lost its lovable silliness.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ironically, Daniel Craig has approached the role in a similar way \u2013 a minimum of silliness, a maximum of seriousness \u2013 and won much acclaim in recent years.\u00a0 Today\u2019s world just happened to more ready for Craig\u2019s approach.\u00a0 It was less ready when Dalton did the same thing 30-odd years ago.\u00a0 Anyway, I\u2019d put Craig third in my list of Bonds, while fourth place goes to that genial Irishman Pierce Brosnan.\u00a0 I like Brosnan as an actor and at his best he brought a believable toughness to the role; but overall his version of Bond was a bit too bland for my tastes.\u00a0\u00a0 He also was unlucky with the quality of some of his films.\u00a0 His swansong in the role, 2002\u2019s Die Another Day<\/em>, is a particular stinker.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/PB-as-JB.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Eon Productions<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Fifth, and second from the bottom, is Australian George Lazenby, who definitely wasn\u2019t much cop as an actor.\u00a0 Ironically, his single Bond movie, 1968\u2019s On Her Majesty\u2019s Secret Service<\/em>, is perhaps the best one of the lot.\u00a0 It\u2019s arguable that because it\u2019s very different from the usual entries in the series \u2013 wistful in tone and tragic in its ending \u2013 the awkward and uncertain Lazenby actually fits the bill nicely.\u00a0 Here Bond appears vulnerable and wounded and Lazenby is believable in terms of what the character has to go through.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t imagine \u2018Big Sean\u2019 breenging through the movie in his usual insouciant manner and having the same emotional impact.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
And in last place\u2026\u00a0 Well, I’ll say one thing for the late Sir Roger Moore, which is that his Bond movies were massively popular in their day.\u00a0 (In fact, I\u2019ll say two<\/em> things \u2013 offscreen, he was clearly a good guy.\u00a0 He did masses of work as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF on behalf of the United Nations Children\u2019s Fund.\u00a0 He was also involved in the campaign by PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, against the gruesome processes used in the making of foie gras<\/em> and he helped to persuade the department store Selfridges to stop stocking the stuff.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
During his reign as 007 the franchise flourished and made millions.\u00a0 So even if I didn\u2019t think much of old Roger as James Bond, or of most of the Bond films in which he appeared, vast numbers of other people evidently did.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/RM-as-JB.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Eon Productions<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
The above-mentioned Radio Times poll saw Sean Connery secure first place in the battle of the Bonds.\u00a0 Surprisingly but gratifyingly, Timothy Dalton finished in second place, while Pierce Brosnan finished in third.\u00a0 (I’d ranked Daniel Craig third, but I shan’t begrudge Brosnan his success.)\u00a0 So that\u2019s Connery, Dalton and Brosnan: a Scotsman, a Welshman and an Irishman.\u00a0 For the Radio Times\u2019 readers, the Celtic Bonds are evidently the best ones.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a9 Eon Productions A news story printed last week raised a few eyebrows.\u00a0 It even raised some ultra-stiff, Roger Moore-style eyebrows.\u00a0 It transpired that the Radio Times magazine had just announced the results of a poll in which its readers were asked to identify the best actor to have played James Bond. \u00a0 … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Britain’s number-one pub argument answered”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[286,288,285,65,287,290,289,95,275],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","tag-daniel-craig","tag-george-lazenby","tag-ian-fleming","tag-james-bond","tag-pierce-brosnan","tag-radio-times","tag-roger-moore","tag-sean-connery","tag-timothy-dalton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264,"href":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions\/264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/SC-as-JB.jpg\")
<\/p>\n