GOING FOR GOLD

‘In Goldfinger, Oddjob paints Jill Masterton in gold paint and she dies from skin suffocation, but that’s not a thing, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to go swimming.

‘If you cover someone in gold paint and block their pores, they’d get very hot because they can’t sweat. Eventually you might die, but it will take hours and that’s plenty of opportunity to wake up and shower off the gold.

‘Ian Fleming may have heard the story of the first actor to be cast in the role of the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, who was covered in silver paint. He had a violent reaction to the aluminium and ended up in hospital, and I wonder whether Fleming twisted that story and made it gold.

‘Also, at the end of the

1964 Bond classic, the villain Auric Goldfinger is sucked out the window of his private jet.

‘The window is shot out and Goldfinger is sucked out like a tube of evil toothpaste. But that’s not how decompression works and Goldfinger would probably plug the gap quite nicely and rebalance the air pressure inside.’