Australia TV - `Ian Fleming: Bond Maker` on ABC, Sunday night

09-Dec-2006 • Media Alert

Show: "Ian Fleming: Bond Maker"
Channel: ABC (Australia)
Date: Sunday 10th November 2006
Time: 21:05

Ian Fleming: Bond Maker is a 60-minute dramatised documentary telling the extraordinary true-life story of Ian Fleming; the creator of James Bond, one of the great icons of 20th century culture.

Fleming was glamorous, urbane and suave, and happy to be mistaken for a real life James Bond. A journalist by training, Fleming did share much in common with his fictional creation. Like Bond, Ian was a serial womaniser who lived life to the limit.

As personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence, the model for M in his books, Fleming orchestrated spies out in the field from the War Office. He spent his evenings dining at the Dorchester or entertaining women in his bachelor pad in Ebury Street.

Incredibly, it was not until he was 43, seven years after the war ended, that Fleming wrote his first novel, Casino Royale.

After the war, Fleming became foreign manager of The Sunday Times, and cannily negotiated three months paid holiday a year so that he could spend the winter in his house, Goldeneye, in Jamaica. It was here that James Bond came to life, and Ian wrote a new novel each winter.

James Bond's combination of cool intelligence, lethal aggression and sexual magnetism was the stuff of classic action heroes. The books were instantly successful, although it wasn't until Sean Connery's first outing as Bond in the 1962 movie, Dr No that sales rocketed.

Thanks to `Vesper` for the alert.