Sir Sean Connery goes on the offensive against politicians

‘After you ring Sean Connery at his home in the Bahamas,” are my instructions from M, “make sure you eat the number.” Gulp: Connery may no longer have a licence to kill, but clearly 007 remains a role from which there is, fundamentally, no ejector seat - reports The Sunday Times.

As a maid scurries to fetch Britain’s most enduring screen idol, even this jaded hack tingles with excitement. I practise my opening: “Ah, Mr Bond, we have been expecting you.” One pictures him springing from his pool, patting the peachy behind of some bikini-clad lovely, swigging a martini.

“Ah,” begins that familiar Scottish drawl, recently voted sexiest British male voice, “an English journalist from an English newspaper.” A British journalist from a British newspaper, I correct. “Okay,” he chortles: Connery, 75, is leading the fight for Scottish independence as tenaciously as one can from a golf course in the Caribbean.

Within seconds he is fulminating against a dastardly plot that could almost be called From England With Hate, perpetrated by Denis “Goldfinger” Healey. Exposed under the 30-year-rule of released government papers, it shows the then Labour chancellor downplayed the vast oil profits gushing from the North Sea as he feared Scots would demand independence, plunging the rest of Blighty into bankruptcy.

So Bonnie Prince Connery, mildly more reclusive than Garbo these days hiding in the Bahamas with his second wife, has consented to do a voiceover for the Scottish Nationalists raging against the scandal. From On Her Majesty’s Secret Service to a party political broadcast: diamonds may be forever, but oil is for now. “This,” he says, “is dynamite.” It could also be the nearest Connery comes to making another film — his pending retirement is a blow more powerful than a Thunderball to Bond fans, already reeling from news that wimpy Daniel “no guns please, I’m Bond” Craig is to play 007 from behind the wheel of a Mondeo.

Connery discloses he has just undergone surgery for a kidney tumour. “I was opened in five places,” he says evenly, “including a tube up my dick.” Oh James, it is enough to bring Pussy Galore out in a hot flush. And although he declares himself recovered, he is sick of celluloid. It would, he says, take a “monumental” offer to tempt him into a movie. The last straw was filming The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. “It was a nightmare,” he says. “The director (Stephen Norrington) should never have been given $185m. On the first day I realised he was insane.”

Blimey: the man with the golden voice is talking as straight as he once shot. “We did two months of night shooting in Prague in winter — when the light goes at 2.30 in the afternoon. We were filming in the dark.” Was he tempted to walk off? “I knew if I did it would never restart. The only one he was scared of was me. He said, ‘Do you want to hit me?’ I said, ‘Don’t tempt me.’ The experience had a great influence on me; it made me think about showbiz. And I have had other problems: people who raise money on me, then cut me out of it.”

His recent travails reflect graver dissatisfaction: “I get fed up dealing with idiots,” he explains. “There is a widening gap between those who know about movies and those who green-light movies. Then the shit hits the fan. The one thing you can’t say in Hollywood is ‘I don’t know’. You appear in a film and then you realise the director has directed f*** all.”

As an antidote to Hollywood he has tried to persuade ministers to build a massive studio betwixt Glasgow and Edinburgh to make Bond and other flicks. He claims to have offered Gordon Brown £1m towards the studio but is baffled by the silence. He says he had secret meetings, including with Robinson, then paymaster-general. “I think they were more interested in converting me to Labour.” Their lack of enthusiasm, Connery suggests, is because the studio would not be near London. “You could set up a studio in Afghanistan. Scotland could be made to work for film but you would need to improve the tax situation.”

Life with Connery seems access all areas, off-screen and on. Soon he is recounting meeting Peter Mandelson, urging the then trade secretary to forget the Millennium Dome and set up four film studios in each capital of the UK. But Mandy was small fry compared with lunch companions at Chequers in which the Connerys toasted the vote — then imminent — on Scottish devolution with the Blairs, Donald Dewar and Alex Salmond.

“Afterwards Cherie took me aside and said, ‘Now you will really go to Scotland and campaign, won’t you?’ I’ve no idea why she said that. But I did go, and only Brown had the decency to send me a fax thanking me. I never heard a word from Tony Blair.” I resist the temptation (just) to ask if Blair was stroking a white cat.

Ironically, the latest Bond caper was not filmed in Scotland but near Connery’s gaff in the Bahamas. He was invited to an end-of-shoot knees-up but declined, partly as he was still recuperating; partly so as to not overshadow Craig.

There is, one suspects, a deeper reason: while Connery’s lifestyle sounds entirely Bond-esque, his interests are fixated on Scottish politics. He sees Westminster as a conspiracy against Caledonia. His conversion on the road to Dundee occurred when Ted Heath “willingly closed down the Scottish fishing industry to join the Common Market. I found that shocking. And I spoke to Margaret Jay and Kenneth Clarke and neither knew about it”.

The oil scandal, to Connery, is yet another example of England shafting Scotland. What of Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian question: that now, with a Scottish parliament deciding Scottish matters, Scottish MPs still vote on English affairs; doesn’t Scotland enjoy remarkable privilege within the union?

“It is a valid point and I always thought (Dalyell) was one of the great Labour MPs, even if he was an Etonian.” Hmm: Bond wouldn’t make a chippy remark like that. “All I ask is equal treatment for Scotland and we haven’t had that for 300 years. For the first 100 years after union Scotland went into decline.”

But Scotland enjoys far higher spending per head than England — £1,400 more, according to recent official figures. Connery points out Scots’ living standards would have increased threefold if they had kept their oil. “If this was revealed in Bavaria or Catalonia there would be war,” he exclaims. “And,” he adds, “if Healey was such a f****** wizard, why was it when he was chancellor they wouldn’t even accept pounds in Spain?” Gulp.

If England has sometimes taken from Scotland, Scotland has enjoyed plenty of power in return. A third of the cabinet and two of the three main party leaders are Scots, inspiring English nationalist grumbles about a “Scottish raj”.

“It’s a valid point,” Connery concedes, “but it is still run from Westminster. Scotland is just seen as great for shooting, golf and tugging your forelock, which is why so many get out. Why do you think Gordon Brown and those buggers got out?” And, perhaps, he might add, himself.

Still, whether Scotland’s finest would rush home post-independence is debatable. Uh oh, I can feel another top politician anecdote coming on: “I was at a dinner in LA with Neil Kinnock when he was a top banana in Europe. And I said, ‘Neil, don’t you ever think independence would be good for Wales?’ And he said, ‘Listen, boyo, there are only two movements in Britain – them and us, Conservative and Labour.’ What a joke. The Liberal Democrats beat Brown in his own backyard recently and are dominant in the Scottish parliament. And the Tories are nowhere.”

Talking about independence is fine but if Scotland had to pay its way — for a navy to defend those oil rigs, say — would it be so rich? “Listen,” he rasps, “I was in the navy and it was full of Scots and Welsh. The army in Iraq is 5-1 Scots. I know one family with five sons there. Well, we all know what Geoff Hoon rhymes with.” Hang on, surely Moneypenny has told him Hoon is no longer defence secretary.

Normally these days Scottish Nationalists are on the left, but Connery seems slightly more to the right, arguing — rightly — that Scotland is a poor place to do business. Isn’t that Scotland’s fault: its growth trails England’s because it is even more socialistic? “No, it is the chancellor telling Scotland what it can and cannot spend money on.” Hmm.

To his credit, Connery acknowledges post-devolution disasters, such as the Scottish parliament going “10 times over budget”; but says the English can’t be smug after the dome “or Wembley, which is massively over budget and had to be built by Australians”. Despite his “stealth taxes”, Brown is the only Labourite of whom Connery says “I like him”; he reckons Brown has done “a remarkable job on the economy, though he did have 18 f****** years to practice”. As for Dr John Reid, Connery makes him sound more deadly than Dr No.

But if Scotland really were the greatest wee country in the world, how come parts of Glasgow have lower life expectancy than Gaza? Connery is aware of the debate, and throws in sectarian violence, freemasonry and alienated youth “who have just given up”. It makes Scotland sound worse than Baghdad. But this, it transpires, is the fault of Labour for running Scotland like a one-party state and the media for not “encouraging” youth. Hmm: surely Scotland’s problems run deeper, but perhaps it does not suit nationalist sorts to ask the critical questions.

Indeed, while Connery argues eloquently that Scotland gets a raw deal, it is depressing in 2006 to be bogged down in nationalist arguments at all. And Sean, my tartan tiger: this might be cheap, but what of the west Bahamas question; namely, if Scotland is so bonny, why are you never there? “I am in St Andrews every year,” he chips back. But not, one presumes, as a taxpayer?

“I pay more tax in the UK than most MPs put together,” he erupts, giving a long speech about tax on residuals: lost on me, I’m afraid, but as long as the taxman buys it. So if he is not, as reported, a “tax exile”, why won’t he come home? “Well, what kind of life would I have with tabloids following me? That is down to you guys in the media. I brought 95 people over to Scotland and held the world premiere for a movie called Entrapment, and tabloids put their heavies in the hotel just to upset me.”

But Sir Sean, surely you should not avoid an entire country just because of the cheap prints? “I know you are not responsible,” he says charmingly. “Now I really must go.” A case of From the Bahamas With Love. But where must he go: to tend to the Aston? Or perhaps to rehearse another voiceover about the abominable English? Either way, whatever our politics, we will all be sniffling into our martinis if this time it really is a case of “goodbye, Mr Bond” .

Thanks to `brad clooney` for the alert.

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