Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant'
4th October 2012, 10:52
"The likelihood of James Bond having chlamydia is extremely high”
- Dr Sarah Jarvis General practitioner and regular on the BBC's The One Show
For 50 years, James Bond's womanising has been central to the film character's appeal. How does his sex life compare with an average man, and is it healthy?
His chat-up lines err towards the rubbish.
"That's quite a nice little nothing you're almost wearing. I approve."
"Detente can be beautiful".
"Well, as long as the collars and cuffs match."
A typical man deploying these bon mots while seeking female companionship might worry about having his facial features, as well as his cocktail order, shaken, not stirred.
But not James Bond. For all his 1950s attitudes, wince-inducing "jokes" and unapologetic sexism, agent 007 exists in a world where the usual laws of romantic gravity do not apply.
Wherever he goes, the world's most famous secret agent only has to raise an eyebrow to summon an endless array of glamorous, available women with names like Pussy Galore, Honey Ryder and Xenia Onatopp.
It's a pattern of behaviour that, to say the least, does not tally with most of Bond's countrymen.
The Health Survey for England, published in 2011, found that the average man reported 9.3 sexual encounters with women in their lifetime.
By contrast, Bond - vaguely placed in Ian Fleming's novels somewhere in his late 30s, though he has been active on-screen since 1962's Dr No - can boast (and boast he surely would) a somewhat higher figure.
(More at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19812608)
...find it perplexing and hilarious that there's been such analysis of James Bond. It's a fiction; tedious, sometimes entertaining, fiction.
Then again, the prevelance / popularity of this character (with all his flaws) might speak to a cultural hunger for, or acceptance of, casual misogyny and patriachy...I dunno.
- Dr Sarah Jarvis General practitioner and regular on the BBC's The One Show
For 50 years, James Bond's womanising has been central to the film character's appeal. How does his sex life compare with an average man, and is it healthy?
His chat-up lines err towards the rubbish.
"That's quite a nice little nothing you're almost wearing. I approve."
"Detente can be beautiful".
"Well, as long as the collars and cuffs match."
A typical man deploying these bon mots while seeking female companionship might worry about having his facial features, as well as his cocktail order, shaken, not stirred.
But not James Bond. For all his 1950s attitudes, wince-inducing "jokes" and unapologetic sexism, agent 007 exists in a world where the usual laws of romantic gravity do not apply.
Wherever he goes, the world's most famous secret agent only has to raise an eyebrow to summon an endless array of glamorous, available women with names like Pussy Galore, Honey Ryder and Xenia Onatopp.
It's a pattern of behaviour that, to say the least, does not tally with most of Bond's countrymen.
The Health Survey for England, published in 2011, found that the average man reported 9.3 sexual encounters with women in their lifetime.
By contrast, Bond - vaguely placed in Ian Fleming's novels somewhere in his late 30s, though he has been active on-screen since 1962's Dr No - can boast (and boast he surely would) a somewhat higher figure.
(More at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19812608)
...find it perplexing and hilarious that there's been such analysis of James Bond. It's a fiction; tedious, sometimes entertaining, fiction.
Then again, the prevelance / popularity of this character (with all his flaws) might speak to a cultural hunger for, or acceptance of, casual misogyny and patriachy...I dunno.