Bond On Bond (12 page)

Lewis Gilbert, who had directed
You Only Live Twice
, told me how Desmond complained about having to wear shorts in the movie. He didn’t particularly like exposing his legs to the elements, and so whenever Desmond was in earshot I’d say quietly to Lewis, ‘Oh, do you think it would work better if Q were to wear shorts in this sequence?’

‘Eh? What?’ said a worried Desmond.

‘Yes, good idea, Rog!’ Lewis replied. ‘And perhaps in the next sequence too?’

Then I was particularly evil in rewriting his dialogue with the script supervisor, June Randall, and handing it to director John Glen to give to Desmond when he arrived at the studio. My rewrite was, of course, the biggest load of gibberish you can imagine. Desmond had already struggled to learn his lines and went into a blind panic when he was handed new pages so soon before being called on set. Of course, when he was called and saw me slowly shaking with stifled laughter, the penny dropped, as did a few choice words.

Sometimes we had ‘idiot boards’ on set, with his technical dialogue written in large text. As he glanced up to remind himself of the next line, the cards were peeled back one after the other. I helpfully rewrote some of those too. I like being helpful.

Desmond was always keen that his part be extended, and it finally was in
Licence To Kill
in 1989, but in an early draft of
The Man With The Golden Gun
by Tom Mankiewicz, he very nearly has an extra scene with me as Bond at Hong Kong airport. In the draft, Q tried to persuade 007 to take a gadget-laden camera with him on his trip. It featured gas ejection, which, by selecting various shutter speeds, instantly solidified anything in its path. Bond said something like, ‘Most ingenious, but I’m sure there’s one thing this contraption can’t do … take a photo.’ Q castigated him for being facetious before adding, ‘Yes you’re right, but I’m working on it …’

It was quite comical. Perhaps too comical? It was cut. After all, Q is quick to remind us, ‘I never joke about my work, 007’.

While many of Q’s gadgets – highly charged magnetic watches, remote-control cars, a signature gun, underwater cameras, wrist-triggered dart guns, GPS tracking devices, fake fingerprints and acid pens – seemed outlandish and improbable, Desmond always maintained that they were ‘prototypes’ and forerunners of things that did eventually make it into commercial production. In fact, so sought-after were some, that the highest powers in the land weren’t averse to phoning through to the Bond production office for insights into their design. In 1965 the Royal Corps of Engineers, having seen
Thunderball
, asked the then art department draftsman Peter Lamont, ‘How long can a man use your underwater breather device for?’

His answer was, ‘How long can you hold your breath?’

Although more often than not exasperated, Q has always shown a warm and fatherly concern for 007’s welfare, such as at Bond’s wedding in
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
, when he pulled Jim to one side, to say that if there was ever anything Jim needed … oh and the occasion, at the behest of Miss Moneypenny, when Q secretly sneaked gadgets out of MI6 to help Bond survive his vendetta against the drug tyrant Sanchez in
Licence To Kill
. When he arrived, posing as Bond’s uncle, he flatly told a dismissive 007, ‘If it hadn’t been for Q-Branch, you’d have been dead long ago.’

How true.

In 1999, aged eighty-five, Desmond voiced his concern that he may not be around for many more films. He asked the writers to pave the way for a new Q. In what was to be his last movie,
The World Is Not Enough
, Desmond’s Q talks of his plan to retire and go fishing. A crestfallen Bond says, ‘You’re not planning on retiring any time soon, are you?’

Q: ‘I’ve always tried to teach you two things: First, never let them see you bleed.’

Bond: ‘And the second?’

Q: ‘Always have an escape plan.’

He is then lowered out of view.

When in 1998 Desmond asked me to pen a Foreword for his autobiography, simply entitled,
Q
, I wrote one of the things I missed most after leaving Bond was him. That was absolutely true. He bore my childish pranks so patiently and, being gadget mad (as my wife will attest), I used to love playing with all the gizmos in Q-Branch.

I was watching Sky news on Sunday 19 December 1999, when I heard the awful news that Desmond had been involved in a car accident. He was returning home to Bexhill from a book signing. He died from his injuries. I was devastated.

A few months later, I attended his memorial service in London and spoke of the gentle gentleman who, despite having hands the size of spades and a total incomprehension of what he was talking about, always managed to explain and demonstrate his devices with great skill and endear himself to millions of fans across the world.

With the reboot of the Bond series in 2006’s
Casino Royale
and its successor,
Quantum Of Solace
, the character of Q did not appear, though gadgets were still very much in evidence.

Other actors to have played Q on film include John Cleese in
Die Another Day
, Geoffrey Bayldon in 1967’s
Casino Royale
and Alec McCowen in
Never Say Never Again
, with that wonderful line on Jim’s return to Q-Branch, ‘Good to see you, Mr Bond. Things have been awfully dull around here without you. I hope we’re going to see some gratuitous sex and violence …’

Think of 007 and you conjure up images of girls, gadgets and … guns. Yes, Jim’s firearms have played as important a part of his adventures as anything else, and though he has carried many, in the films at least, there has always been one constant in his chamois leather holster – the Walther PPK.

However, the Beretta was the gun Fleming’s literary Bond carried. It was described, by firearm enthusiast Geoffrey Boothroyd in a letter to Fleming, as ‘a lady’s gun, and not a very nice lady at that’. He suggested it had little stopping power and that Bond would be much better served with a revolver such as the Smith & Wesson Centennial Airweight. Fleming thanked Boothroyd for his letter and said he felt Bond ought to have an automatic instead of a revolver, though agreed the Beretta 418 lacked power.