Licence to Kilt: James Bond’s relationship with Scotland

THE BOND girls come and go, but OO7’s most enduring relationship – with Scotland – is being celebrated this month as the film franchise celebrates its 50th birthday, says Brian Pendreigh.

Nothing much happened in this remote part of the Scottish countryside when Colin Ferguson was a boy. It was 100 miles to Glasgow, 40 twisty miles to Oban. There was the birth of the lambs around Easter time and that was about it. But then one summer, when Colin was 11, everything changed. It was the summer of 1963, the summer James Bond came to the farm. “It was quite a big thing in the area,” says Ferguson, who still lives at Leckuary, six miles north of Lochgilphead, where his people have farmed since the 16th century.

Dr No had opened less than a year earlier on 
October 5, 1962 – the same day the first Beatles single came out. Ian Fleming’s novels were 
already best-sellers, but an American TV version of 
Casino Royale made little impression and no-one was holding out much hope for the film of Dr No.

The snobbish Fleming was horrified at the choice of Sean Connery in a role he envisaged for David Niven or Cary Grant. Hitherto Connery’s biggest role was that of a singing Irishman in 
Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People.

Co-star Ursula Andress told a friend: “Everything was done so cheaply, absolute crap.” One executive concluded: “The only good thing about the picture is that we can only lose $800,000.” It grossed $60 million.

From Russia With Love was rushed into production six months later, with Argyllshire doubling for the Balkans after bad weather played havoc with the schedule at the original locations.

Argyllshire is reprising its role in a new James Bond adventure to mark the series’s 50th anniversary. A team of Bond celebrities, including Roger Moore, Britt Ekland and Richard Kiel, are undertaking a mission to take a package from Scotland to London in the course of ‘007 Days of Bond’.

The mission begins on 17 September in the West Highlands at Eilean Donan Castle, which served as MI6’s Scottish headquarters in The World is Not Enough. A digital timer will be 
started by Eunice Gayson, the very first Bond girl Sylvia Trench, and the first day’s activities include a re-enactment of the From Russia With Love helicopter chase in Argyllshire.

Sylvia Trench loses to 007 at cards at the 
beginning of Dr No and asks his name, to which he famously replies, “Bond, James Bond”. Odd though it may seem now, it was intended that she would be his regular girlfriend, and she appeared briefly in From Russia With Love, the only Bond girl to appear in two films as the same character.

“No-one could have predicted back in 1962 that five decades later it would be a huge global phenomenon,” says Gayson. “I am so thrilled to have been there at the beginning and to now be invited to Scotland to launch the 007 Days of Bond relay.”

In a journey that owes something to the Olympic torch relay, the package will travel by helicopter, train, boat and, of course, Aston Martin, with a Bond 50 logo on the side, so fans can identify it as it goes by.

The entourage will visit some of the most famous Bond locations in Britain, including Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire, scene of the golf match with Goldfinger, and Cornwall’s Eden Project, which served as the villain’s diamond mine in Die Another Day. The secret package contains the full collection of 22 ‘official’ James Bond films, which are out on Blu-ray for the first time this month.

Fleming’s protagonist was very much a product of the Establishment and the ruling classes. If not quite a working-class hero, Connery’s Bond seemed classless, more in keeping with the times. Connery’s performance – and the financial returns – won over Fleming, who created a Scottish family background for Bond in one of the later books.

Dr No may have been done on the cheap, but already a lot of the classic ingredients were there – glamour and elegance, sex and violence, exotic 
locations, beautiful women and the sinister 
foreign villain intent on world domination.

From Russia With Love promised more of the same, with memorable adversaries in Red Grant and Rosa Klebb, a particularly nasty piece of work, with a razor in the toe of her shoe. It also featured the first of the classic theme songs that became such a popular part of the series. It was shot in Turkey and Venice, but the climactic motorboat chase was filmed at Loch Craignish and scenes in which Bond is chased by a helicopter were filmed virtually on Colin Ferguson’s doorstep on Barrachuile Hill.

“The base camp for six weeks was at Leckuary,” he says. “I thought it was amazing because it was supposed to be in the Adriatic. There was a crowd of locals that used to go up to see it.”

He vividly remembers a scene in which Bond takes cover under rocks and shoots down a helicopter. And he recalls how one helicopter lifted a second into the air and then dropped it. He can even pinpoint the rocks under which Connery sheltered.

“He was fairly quiet,” Ferguson says, “but then I don’t suppose he particularly wanted to bother with various local children.” Ferguson got Connery’s autograph, but spent more time with the crew, whoallowed him to sit in the helicopter and taught him how to play poker.

Connery did six films in the ‘official’ series, plus the Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again, George Lazenby did one, then Roger Moore began his run of seven movies with Live and Let Die in 1973.

“Bond has to change and go with the times,” says Britt Ekland, who plays Moore’s attractive but rather dim colleague Mary Goodnight in The Man With The Golden Gun – she almost causes a catastrophe by backing her bikini-clad bottom into a big red ignition button.

Ekland agrees it was all a little more light-
hearted in Moore’s day and that the women were often playing the traditional role of “damsel in distress” rather than equal partner. “We were very politically incorrect,” she laughs. “Bond girls are obviously still beautiful and attractive, but not to the extent we were.

“We filmed in Phuket. At the time there was nothing there, it was just a little village. We 
actually lived in the brothel, Maud (Maud Adams) and I. It was really primitive and we had to be beautiful Bond girls. It was unbelievably hot and humid. And they always said, ‘Bond girls don’t sweat’. We had maybe three or four changes of the same outfit and had to change them all the time.

“It’s a great place to be – a Bond girl. It’s like a club, but a big club. If you see a famous Bond person, even if you’ve never ever met that person 
before you just say, ‘Oh, hi,’ as if you’ve known each other all your life.”

By the time she did Bond, Ekland was an established actress, whereas Richard Kiel acknowledges the role of Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker made his career.

Kiel, who will feature in a stunt at the end of 007 Days of Bond, played the villain with the metal teeth and virtually no dialogue. He was supposed to die at the end of the first film, but Kiel says stuntman Bob Simmons suggested they shoot an alternative ending where he comes out on top in a fight with a shark when he bites it.

“MGM had this special blue-collar screening, with wives and children. They snuck me in the back door and I didn’t know whether I would live or die until I popped out of the water and the 
audience cheered and applauded.”

On his famous teeth, he says: “They were made of chromium steel, they went up to the roof of your mouth and they would kind of gag you. The rather stoic look was me trying to keep from throwing up.” He also reveals that the cable he chews through in the famous cable car fight sequence was made of liquorice. “It was quite tasty.”

Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan each had a turn and, most recently, Daniel Craig debuted as Bond in 2006 in a remake of Casino Royale, which cast the actor as a tougher, grittier Bond.

The enduring popularity and status of the series was underlined by the calibre of the most recent Bond girl when 007 visited Buckingham Palace and met up with the Queen. They then flew across London by helicopter and parachuted into the Olympic stadium. It was not really the Queen doing the parachuting, of course, but a stuntman who just happened to be called Gary Connery.

Bond will be back in Scotland in Skyfall, released in October. And this time the country is playing itself. The producers shot at Glen Etive and it is understood Bond visits his ancestral castle, which comes under aerial attack by enemy agents.

“I had no idea that it would go on for so long,” says Kiel. “Each of the Bonds had a style or their own. I’ve enjoyed them all.”

• The James Bond 50 Blu-ray Collection is available 24 September