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Charlie Higson on James Bond & SilverFin Charlie Higson started his career as part of indie band The Higsons before moving on to write and star in The Fast Show. Higson's appeared in two series of The Fast Show spin-off Swiss Toni on BBC3 and has found time to forge a career as a successful novelist. He is writing a series of books about the adventures of James Bond as a teenager. How did you come to write SilverFin, the first teenage James Bond book? I'd written four adult novels before that were very gritty, nasty, psychological thrillers with a high level of blood. My style was fairly simple and accessible even though the content was incredibly violent, so that played a part in the publishers asking me to do it and they knew I was interested in Bond. James is only 13 in SilverFin, so is there much scope for his trademark womanising? The book's aimed at kids up to the ages of 13 or 14, so there isn't much sex although there are alluring women whom James is strangely attracted to. Do they have the traditional ridiculous Bond girl names? Like Fanny Batter - that kind of thing? Ian Fleming created most of the names that we all remember like Pussy Galore but I'm not being as sexually explicit as he was. The girl in the first book is called Wilder Lawless - although the website says she's called Wider Lawless, which gives it a bit of a different meaning. It's difficult, though. I've got pages and pages of these names that didn't seem quite right. Trying to come up with various names for villains and girls after all the books, films and things like Austin Powers has been quite hard. Are you going to introduce teenage versions of any of the other regular characters? We didn't want to make it too cutesy and in-jokey, so there'll be no Junior M or Little Miss Moneypenny. There are allusions to other Bond books and films for the complete Bond buff but we didn't want him to meet a little bald boy called Blofeld. We didn't want it to be too silly. We also had to fit in with the facts that Ian Fleming established in his books as well about Bond's past. 60 SECONDS EXTRA!: What's your favourite Bond film? Dr No. It was the one I saw the most as a kid because they always put Dr No on as part of a double bill with the new Bond film. Sean Connery was physically at his best and the character was darker than he was subsequently presented. You Only Live Twice is fun, too - with the colour-coded armies in boiler suits and Donald Pleasence and his cat. It established a lot of the clich Back to top Back to Charlie Higson (2005 - 2009) Reply to quoted posts     Clear