Learning a thing or two from Russ Abbot

“I can’t thank you enough for giving me the line: ‘Now pay attention, Bond’,” one of the actors said to me as he was playing around with accents. Great. But then he added: “What about adding in a joke around Basildon Bond [the stationers]?” That’s a groan gag, I said, trying not to groan.

Along the lines of Premium Bond, I said. I’ve tried to cut those out, I said.

Golden eye: James Edenborough throws himself into Bond rehearsals

 

Then he remembered that British comedian Russ Abbot had also created the Bond parody character of the same name – Basildon Bond in the Man with the Golden Labrador. (Note the evil villain with the cat – as in Bond villains’ pets … and meerkats.)

It’s good to see the cast are getting into their characters, though. And doing their research. One of the cast circulated a YouTube clip of the line ‘DoubleOh DoubleOh’. All 193* instances of a character saying “Double Oh” from all 23 Bond films. (*For the true Bond fans, technically there were 196 but three of them coincided with other loud noise/speaking that made them unintelligible, the clip uploaderers say.)

Julia Collier rehearsing her part of Ms Pennypincher

Rehearsals, by the way, are looking good. “I need to get the energy and the speed up but all that will come once we have finished blocking,” Helen Niland, the director, told me. And no doubt once they have watched Russ Abbot and DoubleOh.