Spectre of middle age sparked my 007 midlife crisis
While many chase their youth as they age, admits he’s hooked on Bond
YOU DON’T get to choose your midlife crisis. Be it slobbering over work colleagues 20 years your junior or swapping a familyfriendly Ford C-max for a Viagracharged Mustang, no one deliberately sets themselves up for humiliation.
Middle-aged men like me just aren’t clever enough. Some crises are more public than others.
British TV viewers get to see one particular highprofile man’s descent into later life hell most mornings from 6am on Good Morning Britain as he works himself up into a temper about the opposite thing he was angry about the day before.
Another extreme form is so dark it defies detailed description and is only referred to by the name “The Laurence Fox”.
Acute cases have the power to destroy lives.
Mine?
I’m fixated with a muscular 40-something man with a drink problem.
Don’t get me wrong, I am still happily married to Mrs Booker and I’m by no means trying to steal Philip Schofield’s thunder. No, my obsession is with James Bond.
Growing up I’d never been too bothered about 007, I’d seen the films with Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan but had never got the bug. Then in the early 2010s I bought a polo shirt.
Not just any polo shirt, it was the navy blue ‘muscle-fit’ top worn by Daniel Craig in Casino Royale.
As you would imagine years sat at a desk picking up the phone and being sarcastic to newspaper reporters hadn’t made me what you would call body beautiful.
It turned out I didn’t have a ‘muscle’ to ‘fit’ and if I did it wasn’t making itself known on the top half of my body. Undeterred, I moved on to the bottom half and bought a pair of the swimming shorts he’d worn in Skyfall. Unfortunately, where he wore his while on the trail of an assassin who’d stolen a hard drive containing details of undercover agents, I looked more like I was trying to infiltrate a budgie smuggling ring.
Since then the Bond paraphernalia has mounted up; mountaineering sunglasses, water bottles, tea towels, you name it I’ve got it.
The main focus of my film fetish, though, has been the clothes – and lockdown hasn’t helped.
Some people have turned to drink or criticising the bookshelves of people interviewed on TV news shows for diversion during the long nights at home.
Me, I’ve spent the time scouring the internet and expanding my collection.
So far I’ve bought a £20 version of the £350 navy jumper Craig wears in the new film, No Time To Die, that makes me look more Captain Haddock than Commander Bond and, even more ludicrously, a pair of the ‘technical military gloves’ from the same scene that I suppose may come in handy keeping me virusfree on public transport.
Before lockdown it wasn’t too much better, and each day I’d set off for work suited-up like a poor facsimile of Connery or Craig, albeit in a far cheaper two-piece and knitted tie than the £3,000 Tom Ford outfits Daniel gets to wear on-screen.
It only recently struck me what had led me into this madness. I think my Bond ‘uniform’ has become my way of putting on a confident front to face the harsh realities of modern life.
After all, adulthood sees many of us fighting a secret mission against our inner fears while dealing with the challenges thrown up by family, career and staying healthy.
I’ve faced mine dressed up as a fictional spy.
IADMIT it, Bond’s missions are sexier and more thrilling. He battles international killers and ends up battered and bruised by his brushes with death. On the other hand I struggle with the frustrations of public transport, regular job turbulence and haemorrhoids.
Although when you come to think of it Scaramanga sounds like a painful skin condition, having an Oddjob could also be the sign of a poor diet and SMERSH could be a Russian pile cream. As for Pussy Galore, well how dare you – as I said, I’m very happily married, thank you very much, but any long-term relationship is far more, more complicated and delicate than any gadget dreamed up by Q branch.
But as the current 007 prepares to hand back his Licence to Kill and let a younger man take his place, I think it’s time for me to give up my Craig comfort blanket. My children are now approaching 21 and 17 and these days I’m rather more like Ralph Fiennes’s M, staying back at ‘HQ’ waiting to hear how their own missions in the big, wide world are going. For me I think the crisis is finally at an end and once the new film comes out (November if we’re lucky), it’s time to grow up.
But not before I’ve Googled where Ralph Fiennes buys his underpants...
‘I think my Bond uniform has become my way of putting on a confident front to face the harsh realities of modern life’