Bond as a dad? It will be all sweatpants and fromage frais…

James Bond has had many tough assignments in his distinguished espionage career, but he faces the most taxing job yet in the new film, No Time to Die. Actually, as 007 is rumoured to be father to a five-yearold girl called Mathilde, you can forget no time to die. Poor James won’t have time to get measured for a Savile Row suit let alone mix a vodka martini. It will be all sweatpants and fromage frais and watching Frozen five times a day. Oh, and he’ll have to trade that Aston Martin DB5 for something child-friendly or he’ll get Percy Pigs on his gear stick and, goodness, that ejector button could prove a temptation to tiny hands. Social services will be round faster than you can say Thunderball.

In fact, the more I think about it the more I dislike the idea of Daddy Bond. I’m sure billions of male fans worldwide will hate it even more. Ian Fleming’s coolly sadistic hero inhabits a frictionless fantasy world of gorgeous surfaces and beautiful women. How is Bond’s disposable attitude to the fairer sex supposed to survive if Pussy Galore comes back to his place, gets flung on the couch and, at the very height of ecstasy, her coccyx lands on a Lego Princess Elsa? Ouch!

More recent Bond movies have seen British intelligence’s proudest export edge closer to his feminine side. Sitting next to a devastated, weeping Vesper Lynd on the floor of a shower in Casino Royale and not trying to remove her clothes came dangerously close to empathy. “Making Bond a father opens up a whole new world in terms of drama and story development,” reports one insider on the new film. I wonder. It’s a contemporary fallacy that all great characters benefit from depth.

Becoming a daddy means Bond is more likely to hesitate when he’s about to jump from a crane on to a moving truck. A car chase won’t begin until he’s got his seat belt on. He has responsibilities now. That makes him more human, but Bond isn’t human, he’s a god amongst men. Derring-do and domesticity don’t mix.