If Craig can walk looking like a 1970s sofa the next Bond can be a woman

My pal and her husband in Edinburgh are going to see the new James Bond film, No Time To Die, tonight, in one of the capital’s – and indeed, probably the country’s – few independent cinemas.

Even with almost two years’ worth of Covid cancellations under its gun belt, the Bond phenomenon is very possibly one of the few entertainment events that could single-handedly revive an arts industry particularly hard-hit by a pandemic that has taken over the world more effectively and horrifically than any gold-fingered, bleeding-eyed, metaljawed, cat-stroking supervillain could ever have dreamed of.

My chums, anticipating a level of interest and desperation to get out of the house that has grasped the population even more firmly since the raving incompetence and idiocy-all-round of shortages and panicbuying became the new ways to have fun, booked weeks ago, being somewhat quicker off the mark than the Significant Other and I can claim to be these days.

Like it – or him – or not, Bond is an event and this one is underlined by the fact that it is Daniel Craig’s fifth and last outing as the secret agent created by that descendant of a Dundee banking dynasty, Ian Fleming, back when men were men, women were decoration and “woke” meant what Bond did the morning after the night before, having usually spent it cavorting with a compliant glamour puss who did little, if anything, to further the plot or the cause of equality.

Why does Bond exert such a continuing fascination? Fun, sex, untold wealth, cartoon violence, skullduggery on a global scale and over-the-top villains bent on domination, only ultimately to be foiled by a plucky loner?

We may be a third-rate nation in what Irish playwright Sean O’Casey once described as “a terrible state o’ chassis”, with a ruling class incapable of running a bath but in this world of fantasy, we still have Bond plugging away there in the background, the indispensable, if increasingly craggy, face of MI6 and thus of innate British bulldoggery and superiority.

Even Sir Keir Starmer, in the throes of trying to channel his inner serious Batman in opposition to “trickster” and “lightweight” Boris Johnson’s shock-haired Joker (to reference another bombastic film franchise) has come out swinging.

Setting aside green deals, £15 minimum wage levels and slapping down those redcard-wielding left-wing hecklers at the Labour Party conference, he has also found

time to declare that the next Bond should be a woman.

Technically, in the new “woke” world of Bond (or as we might like to think of it, one with a stronger grip on its contemporary context) the new 007 (without revealing any spoilers) is already a woman, a black female agent having taken over the rank and serial number if not the name of the superspy.

Daniel Craig – and he knows whereof he speaks – reckons that women should have their own, better parts to tackle rather than have to wait around for the times to change enough to “allow” them into the boys’ club roles.

It’s a good point and one would like to think that writers and casting directors of the not-too-distant future will take him up on it.

One might also plausibly argue, however, that if Glenda Jackson can play

King Lear, Helen Mirren turn The Tempest’s Prospero into Prospera and Maxine Peake take on Hamlet, James Bond would be a Bake Off-sized piece of cake.

Interestingly, Mr Craig’s next dramatic outing is as Macbeth on Broadway with British actress Ruth Negga as Lady Macbeth.

Now, it’s not the title role but one could make a very reasonable case for Herself as the protagonist of this piece. Having sung Verdi’s version of the Lady, I can tell you I wouldn’t take a broken pay packet home to that dame.

As it is, Daniel Craig’s feminist credentials are pretty well-established. And if you saw the pictures of the film’s premiere last week, you will know that he thought nothing, in the face of royal sequins and dramatic plunging going on all around, of sashaying down the red carpet in a pink

jacket. He looked like a Dralon sofa from 1974. A very well-tailored Dralon sofa, it must be said, but nevertheless… it was as camp as pants. He may be “woke” but he is well butch enough to get away with a berry-shaded shag-pile tux.

Go Daniel, I say. With that kind of costuming, can a gender-fluid Lady Macbeth be far down the CV?

Daniel Craig’s feminist credential are pretty well-established

DEBATE: Daniel Craig believes that a strong female character should be in a James Bond film, rather than portraying the character itself.