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Research Christmas 2013: Research

Were James Bond’s drinks shaken because of alcohol induced tremor?

BMJ 2013; 347 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f7255 (Published 12 December 2013) Cite this as: BMJ 2013;347:f7255

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Re: Were James Bond’s drinks shaken because of alcohol induced tremor?

Goodnaturedly, like a Jeeves to a Wooster, the porter opened the door for the eye surgeon. It was seven days to Christmas 2013. From his operating theatre, the surgeon had earlier noticed a first trace of snow, flakes winnowing in the wind above the cold, leafless elms.
“Mind how you go now. Slippy on the roads tonight.”
Passing through, the surgeon gave a sidelong smile to the familiar porter.
Outside, the sky was awash with graduations of light, their margins resembling the breaking of surf along a Grecian coastline. On the horizon, there was the residue of the day, sinking away from Worcester cathedral, the whole ensemble of light sliding onward towards the Atlantic -----and the United States of America.

Crossing the tarmac in brogues, the surgeon’s left hand carried a bag in which lay a bottle of claret and his right hand was ready with the key to the Bentley. At twenty-five yards, he indented the key, and his chariot awoke like a lantern in the quiet of the car park. He looked admiringly at the bottle, a Christmas gift from a patient, the enamelled glass catching a lozenge of light from nearby windows. Reversing, he selected a major work, Beethoven No. 7, on the high-fidelity music system. On the A449 from Kidderminster across to Worcester, the Bentley overtook three cars in one manoeuvre, its warmed exhausts zinging into the collecting layers of the night. Inside the cabin, there were the spell-binding counterpoints of Beethoven 7 in full song at the Royal Albert Hall. On a straight stretch of the A449, he opened up the lungs of the big car, and felt the lurch of five hundred horses pulling him forth along a road in Worcestershire. The phosphorescence from the dashboard lit up his countenance and, for a moment, the face assumed the cruelty of a man and machine hurtling alone and fast into the darkness of a winter.

The proceedings of the day ricocheted within the spaces of his mind. His interior monologue swayed him towards the article freshly published by the British Medical Journal. Dammit. M must be livid. Bond was sprawled all over the newspapers again! Boys and girls had been merry-making over the possibility that the Commander was an alcoholic. Contemptuously, the surgeon reflected, one could use all manner of devices to portray the Commander as an inebriated knight errant. They could purport that the Commander was incurably addicted to what the Australians in their vernacular sometimes preferred to call “grog” rather than “booze.”

Knowledgeable about Secret Services, the surgeon knew that by feeding information into a few opaque agendas one could embroider any required downfall. One could always sneeringly cast aspersions in a world that was laughably hypocritical. Now, they had even anatomised every page and paragraph of the novels to tally up the happy-hour tab of the Commander with the Double-O. But some were shrewd enough to know that had Bond been an alcoholic of gargantuan proportions he would not have functioned with a competence seen only amongst the highest-ranked officers of the Service. Commander James Bond was unswervingly brilliant, and the Double-O prefix on his Number Seven was a cipher which signified only one thing : excellence. The dimmer section of the Service might pontificate – but the very brightest would never quibble.

Brushing aside the discourtesies around Bond, the eye surgeon instead pondered about his creator. Ian Fleming had once leafed through “Birds of the West Indies” (1936) by an American called James Bond, and himself the surgeon had once read “The Life of Ian Fleming” (1966) by John Pearson. Regarding the claimed alcoholism of Bond, Ian’s cheerful words in a clipped English accent spoke from the abyss of time into the surgeon’s ear,”Remember, old boy, today’s news wraps tomorrow’s fish.” From the time he began to release his books to the public, there arose the attractive interpretation that Ian Fleming himself was James Bond. For the sixty years since 1953, in life and after death, Ian had given biographers, journalists, film-makers – and now even doctors – reams of copy. Besides his own mammoth appeal as a topic for study, Ian’s ripping yarns had taken millions away from the grey lassitude of their lives. Had he been a drinker, forever jelly-kneed, Ian Fleming would not have typed out an amount of work which has become a modern treasure trove for all English-speaking areas of the world. Had he been downing martinis with scant regard for professionalism, Commander Bond would not have consistently and altruistically saved Great Britain and the Empire. The indictment of alcoholism was not a misrepresentation that the Commander with the Double-O would ever take lightly. There was, of course, also the Oscar Wildean, “A poet can survive anything except a misprnit.”

Most of the best days in the life of Ian Fleming were spent at Goldeneye, snorkelling in the tepid waters of the Caribbean Sea, accompanying the convivial parrot fish along a ragged reef whilst being wary of the bloodthirsty barracuda which could shorten a swimming leg with extreme efficiency. Through the waters of the ocean, with their slanting sunbeams, Ian Fleming was bronzed by the Jamaican sun. He cared for the luxury of half-sleeved shirts when lounging inside Goldeneye, or chippy-chatting on wicker chairs with his celebrity neighbour, Noel Coward, whose own bungalow rhymed in retort with its tropical name of Firefly. The sixty-year speculations could be simplified : a suave and high-functioning Ian Fleming was James Bond in all practicable ways. Ian Fleming liked alcohol. And for the women he was irresistibly personable. Ditto James Bond. But perhaps not Bertie Wooster.

Competing interests: No competing interests

18 December 2013
Jagdeep Singh Gandhi
Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon
Worcester Royal Eye Unit
Worcestershire Royal Hospital, Worcester, UNITED KINGDOM