Miserypuss Rupert Murdoch may have decided that deindexing his news content from Google may be good for business, but it would be terrible for Halfthoughts. Whatever people are searching for in life, or at least on the web, a surprising number of them find themselves being pointed the way of this website. Heck knows if they are satisfied but what they find here, but I thought I would share some of the highlights from the public’s searches. Even without Murdoch, Google can send people to over 1,000,000,000 webpages - that is a trillion to those of you who could not keep tracks of the zeroes. Obviously a trillion is not enough unless Halfthoughts is one of them, judged by the wacky search strings that lead people here…

“Poem about being 30″

Entering the third decade leads to a downturn in the prosaic? There are some lyrical consolations for those that turn 30 here.

“Stephen Hawking voice simulator”

Stephen Hawking is so cool, that all the kids want to sound like him. That, or they just want a share of his lucrative voiceover revenues. The readers who came here did not find out much about the NeoSpeech product that Hawking uses, but they did find this.

“Harry Hill beds beds beds”

I am not alone in remembering possibly the longest gag that comedian Harry Hill has ever told. But as the joke revolves around the simple idea of two competing bed shops, each one taking turns to add another word ‘beds’ to their shop’s name, so that ‘beds beds beds’ becomes ‘beds beds beds beds’ becomes ‘beds beds beds beds beds’ and so forth, what did they want from me? The punchline? I remember it well: ‘what a ridiculous situation to find yourself in’. A bit like the situation when people register web domains like www.wwwwwwwww.com…

“Bora Bodur”

Misspelling the name of Borobudur, the Buddhist monument in Java, leads the unwary to one of the comic characters in my series of Star Wars spin-offs…

“bananasplits.com”

If it is not odd enough that people search for a website instead of just going straight to the URL, it is even odder that people looking for a web dose of the Banana Splits’ mayhem end up at Halfthoughts instead.

“Isobel McKendry”

Presumably I am not alone in wanting to get in touch with the Head of Service at internet bank ‘Intelligent Finance’.

“Let em all go to hell except Cave 76″

Searching for this line from a classic Mel Brooks comedy routine will take the unwary to my very first Halfthought.

“Probability of navigating an asteroid field”

Google points people at another one of my parallel universe Star Wars episodes. The real question is who tries to plan their space journey by raking through the internet?

“World without porn”

Whatever this person was looking for, they will not find it on the world wide web. Rather the opposite. But at least there is no porn on my site. For some reason, readers have never asked for me to post shots of myself in revealing poses.

“Actors that run”

Clearly there is a need for a resource that analyses how well actors run, because actors can act, and they can run, but they cannot hide from how bad they run. This was my breakdown of the best and worst running jokes in acting.

“Did King John sign the Magna Carta mostly because he agreed with it, wanted the barons to stop moaning or did he want to make a date in history?”

That this question generated a hit for Halfthoughts should prove the site deals with the really serious academic questions, as well as what actors look like when they run.

“The Official Report, House of Commons (5th series), 11 November 1947, vol. 444, cc. 206–07.”

Hmmm… I hope they did not confuse Halfthoughts with the parliamentary report they were looking for. Halfthoughts should be taken seriously sometimes. Official reports, in contrast, tend to be works of fiction.

“What if vampires were real?

Whilst you might be amused by my alternative to Vampire folklore the answer to this question is obvious. If vampires were real, they would have their own website and a vampire FAQ.

“Do women objectify men because they like their personality?”

I do not think this question is answered anywhere in Halfthoughts, so let me answer it here. No. They objectify men because they like their firm butts.

“How long would I live if zombies were real?”

A peculiar question if ever there was one. It depends on cholesterol levels, diet, family history of heart disease, whether you look both ways when crossing the road, and if the zombies think you are tasty. My advice would be to turn down offers from zombies wanting to give a massage using olive oil.

“How to draw a charlatan”

Another peculiar query. Just sketch any mainstream celeb claiming they designed their own range of clothes, wrote their own novel, created their own perfume or even gave an interview without twelve handlers lurking behind the scenes.

“What do we have too much of?”

There are lots of right answers to this question, but you cannot have too much of Halfthoughts!

Gutenberg and his Bible… The Little Red Book from Mao Zedong… The Guinness Book of Records setting the bestseller record for a copyrighted series of publications… discussing the future of printing using the (gulp) internet. Is the heyday of printing now a footnote of history?

Less paper can add up to more content, if we learn to print only what people want, when they want it. The danger with this argument is that it lends itself to the digital competitors, who might reasonably argue that even less paper equates to even more value. How can printing on paper compete with the instantly updated, interactive and seemingly endless resources of a digitally connected world? It can, in the same way that cinema has persisted despite the arrival of video, and radio has survived the arrival of television.

What is good about the printed word? It can be used without a power supply or technology. It can distributed universally. There is no up-front cost for a special device to read the material with, or to connect to a digital network to obtain it. Because there is no device, there are no costs or risks associated with having a device. Printed material is very transportable in limited amounts. The ‘interface’ for printed content is both well known and well liked by users. Printed material is harder to copy, which is good for the owner of the content, but not necessarily for the user. On the other hand, the printed word has its disadvantages as well. Once printed, there is no way to update the content, an impediment for either correcting errors, issuing new versions or presenting topical information. The communication is one-way only; you can read, but cannot respond. In large volumes, printed material is heavy and bulky. The marginal costs of raw materials and of distribution will be higher for printed material than for digital material. The options for formatting, structuring, and browsing through material are limited; there are no hyperlinks and no search functions.

The future for printing depends on finding compelling business propositions that maximises the advantages of the printed medium and are unaffected by its weaknesses. Reducing wastage will greatly reduce the costs for printing, but selling printed words and pictures has the same fundamental cost disadvantages as selling music on CDs or movies on DVDs. A pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap strategy may slow the decline of sales in printing, but cannot reverse the trend towards digital transmission of content. Using the analysis of generic strategies developed by business thinker Michael Porter, printing will be the loser in a competition based on cost. This leaves the printing business model two options: differentiation or focus on a few select markets.

Focusing on a few select and specialized markets may be viable for small print-oriented businesses, and there are many possible and imaginative uses for printing, but adding a lot of niche markets together is not the same as dominating one big market. There will be room for novelties, like printed albums that capture all the photos of a child as it grows up, personalized gifts, and souvenirs of historical events. However, we should assume that the total time and total expenditure on leisure, entertainment, education and information gathering is not going to change overall, just as people made time for increasing their internet use by reducing the time they spend watching television, which in turn has seen advertising budgets move from one medium to the other. New applications of print technology, devised to entertain and amuse small groups with one-off publications may garner some interest, but they are not likely to generate sizable business models. It is inevitable that much of the content that used to be supplied in printed form will be supplied digitally in future, because it has a cost advantage, and also has some differentiation advantages in terms of the ability to support two-way interaction and to provide rapid and frequent updates of content. For printed material to really thrive in an evolving economy, and to hold on to a significant share of the existing entertainment and knowledge markets, it will have to play to its strengths and support new products that are suitably differentiated and will generate consistent and large-volume demand.

One of the most obvious advantages of printed books is that they make good gifts. They are tangible. They look good on shelves. You can feel the quality of the paper with your fingers. People will keep giving books as gifts simply because it permits them to give something physical, in contrast to the gift of downloaded content. The hardcover, high quality and gift-oriented end of the book market will be relatively protected from the threat of digital incursion. The kind of personalization made possible by printing individual copies for individual customers is a natural complement to this kind of product. Whether offering children’s stories that feature the name of the child, anthologies of love poetry especially selected for the reader, a copy of a classic text with customized footnotes, or printed to suit the reader’s tastes in terms of page size, typeface and style, there are many possibilities. The same kind of bespoke changes could just as easily be delivered digitally, but will be much more attractive and meaningful when delivered within a beautifully bound and printed book. Though this sector of the market can embrace new opportunities presented by micro-publishing and tailoring of its content, its fundamental strategy is defensive in nature; it is about augmenting an established product and maintaining sales in the face of a new competitive entrant.

Digital material would seem to have the advantage when it comes to tailoring the content to suit the reader, because the reader can go online and be selective in what content they get. For example, HP’s Tabbloid allows readers to aggregate their preferred RSS feeds and format them into a printable magazine. The final stage, printing the content, is more of an option than a necessity. However, not all tailoring needs to be done by the reader. Sometimes it can be done for them. Tailoring may be even more important when trying to communicate common messages to a broad cross-section of people, not all of whom will be keen on technology or will chose to read digital content, but where the end same end result can be supported by different specifics to suit different individual tastes. A good example would be campaign materials from political candidates. Politicians are currently not that sophisticated at keeping a track of individual voters and why they vote the way they do, but the frontrunners are making rapid improvements. Instead of candidates tailoring their message to the reflect the issues that seem most important from a poll of people living in an area, what if they tailored the messages to the topics that each individual voter cared most about? A campaign mailshot could highlight the politician’s views on the policies that most interested the individual voter, and could list endorsements from people that the voter most admired. Where the campaign team lacks all the information specific to the individual, the next best guess can be inserted, based on polling and what is known about the voter’s age, job, and any political and social affiliations.

Because internet use is dominated by the model of users ‘pulling’ the content they like from a endless supply of resources, whether paid for or free, it is tempting to try to think of how printing can emulate this approach. However, printing has the disadvantage in terms of both cost and the natural mode for interaction with the recipient, who will tend to be using a digital and connected device of some description. There are many organizations that might want to push content to the user, and would prefer to supply it in a tangible format delivered direct to their home. Vanity publication may represent a growing proportion of print services, as demonstrated by the surge of interest in self-published books and in novelty items like this limited-run newspaper which was given as a gift to friends of its makers. However, the demand for vanity publications will ultimately be limited because the writer’s enthusiasm is unlikely to be matched by that from readers.

Of much greater advantage to printing is the possibility of ‘pushing’ content that might be of interest to the user but where the cost is paid for by the organization wanting to send them promotions and advertising. There are organizations that possess and will want to push content that may be of genuine interest to the recipient, even if the recipients would never think to ask for it. By joining forces, aggregating material, personalizing content and taking on some of the aspects of today’s traditional mass media, they could both cut their costs and offer differentiated content that would be hard to compete with. Consider three currently disparate models: (1) free local newspapers, which are paid for by local adverts, (2) supermarkets, credit card companies and other businesses which regularly gather data about customers, knows where they live, and which may want to push bespoke discount offers to them based on their purchasing habits, and (3) government agencies, transport bodies, and other public services that would like to give information relevant to the specific recipient, depending on such things as whether they hold a driving license, claim welfare benefits, are taxpayers or have children at a particular school. Personalized content could be pulled together to create a local weekly journal without any of the sponsor organizations needing to share any data. Costs would be covered by the commercial organization using the journal for their paid messages. These costs would be lowered because of the economies of scale that come from pooling their efforts with other organizations. Local and personalized content can be padded out by syndicating national and international news. The result would be a news bulletin that tells you about big events in the national news, tells about crime suffered in your neighborhood and investment in your children’s school, includes coupons relevant to the products you buy from the supermarket, and reminds you to submit your tax return. Consider also the benefits to advertisers. A classified advert to sell a used car would only go to those households where somebody has a driver’s license, and the local pizza delivery franchise can send a coupon enticing a known customer to order their favorite pizza. The complexities involved in managing multiple content providers can be ironed out, probably using a mixture of the techniques that local newspapers currently use to sell advertising space and that direct marketing businesses use to manage cost relative to the scale of a promotion. If they are, there is the potential for a genuinely new and attractive print product, made possible by the digital age but uniquely designed for the print medium.

Print will go into inevitable decline if it tries to be a paper-based version of the internet, and will be pushed back into defensible but small niches. A more aggressive approach to finding new products would yield better results. New products should utilize the data available to personalize content, whilst exploiting the advantages of a medium that is still universal in a way that digital media is not yet and may never be. These advantages will be most cheaply delivered to big organizations that want to connect to a very wide cross-section of people in a personal and tangible way. They may be promoting a commercial enterprise or trying to support a community. With intelligent use of print technology, they may find seamless, cost-effective and attractive ways of doing both.

After a leisurely lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel, looking out across the pool and beach, I found myself in the peculiar position of being unable to leave. The main entrance to the hotel was roped off, holding back fans and autograph hunters. The crowds were drawn to some tall, lean and fit young men, walking across the foyer to the coach waiting outside. Some of the men had nicely shorn hair, but the gap toothed smiles and wonky noses amongst the group told me these were no movie stars. I did not recognize any of the men, but the casual sporting wear finally gave it away. Those men were the Brazilian football team, staying at the Four Seasons Hotel in Doha, off to a training session on the eve of their friendly game against England.

Their bodies may be toned, and their manner relaxed in the style of the rich, pampered and lauded, but there was something distinctly ordinary about these men. And then it struck me. They are famous, and they have that attractiveness that comes from youth and physical fitness, but otherwise they are not handsome. Sport is a bastion of meritocracy. Maradona, Cruyff, and Rooney may have played the beautiful game, but their beauty was in their feet, not their faces. There may be stars like Beckham who are as effective as models as they are as midfielders, but they are the exception. Good looks is the exception for all humans. Ordinary people tend to look ordinary, which is as it should be. In a meritocracy, looks does not matter, but looks do matter in lots of ways in this world. That is why there are billboards showing off Beckham’s briefs, but we will never see one displaying Rooney’s jockey shorts. Is that fair?

There are lots of prejudices with names. Racism, sexism, ageism. Prejudice relating to looks has no name, but of course it exists. We are just not allowed to give it a name, because it is hard to simplify and categorize it. In sport, ability supposedly trumps all, not least because sport has become a business where results pay. But even in sport, that most meritocratic of activities, there is prejudice. Whilst racism is being kicked out of football, more insidious prejudice, like the cult of beauty, is sliding in. When Wimbledon paid more to the winners of the men’s singles than the women’s singles, Tony Blair felt necessary to take time out from starting wars to comment on the unfairness. He and the Williams sisters got their way, and the prize money was equaled up. But nobody can enforce parity in endorsements, where makers of pretty sportswear and jewelery want their wares to be be worn by athletes who are as pretty as they are successful. If the marketeers cannot have both, they will take trade-offs between the two. Money has helped the rise of meritocracy in sport. No fan dislikes a black footballer who scores a thirty goals a season for their team, and the nationality of a match winner is secondary to the joy of defeating a derby rival. Fans pay to see winners, and prizes go to the victors. Yet selling perfumes and lingerie also pays, and hence the rise of the pretty footballers like Beckham. Christiano Ronaldo is hence set to make a lot more money as a good-looking footballer than a goofy but talented individual like Ronaldinho ever will.

Fighting prejudice is important, but the problem with fighting prejudice is that the fight, even more than the prejudice, takes the line of least resistance. Quotas, laws, even the naming of prejudice is easy when the issue is one of black and white, or men and women. When prejudice is subtle, the crude techniques to fight it are powerless. Fashion models that complain about an obsession with size zero and unrealistic body images make a valuable point, but how far does the point go? A woman might have a great body that makes a dress look fabulous, whilst having a face like Carlos Tevez. Such a woman would have less chance of striding down a catwalk than a woman with a nice face but a fuller figure that makes more work for the designer. Why is this inequity tacitly accepted by our society? In a meritocracy your face would not matter, when the customers are supposedly looking at the goods, not the mannequin within them.

Actors are expected to look good. Why is this? It is because, no matter how much actors believe in ‘the method’, the profession of acting is as much about entertaining people as it is about truth, whether that be the truth of the emotion or any other truth. The truth that plenty of people do not look as good as actors takes second place to the truth that people like looking at good-looking people. But what if the audience did not want to look at blacks, or whites, or people of hues between? What if the audience did not want to look at men, or women, or people of a certain height, or age, or listen to people with a certain accent? One approach might be to make an audience looks, but this only begs the question of where prejudice stops, and choice begins.

The fight against prejudice has become much like the fight for organized labour. The evil is supposedly best waged through a union - a group of people with common cause who negotiate for better treatment. Whilst the model appeals because it may be effective, it is flawed. The world will never be fair just because one group of people gets a superior deal relative to another group of people, even if they are just seeking to get what they see others can get. The problem lies not in the disparity between groups, but the existence of groups judged by irrelevant and incidental properties. Pay somebody according to their talents and efforts at their job, not according to their looks or colour. People should be judged by what they do, and what they can do. Despite this simple truth, we accept that we live a world where people are well rewarded to wear clothes and to kick balls. Others spend their lives picking out the most valuable rubbish in heaps of trash. That unfairness is part of the fabric of our lives, so we have become blind to it. I do not much care if someone feels underpaid when winning a sporting tournament, just because they feel the opposite gender gets more for winning the ’same’ competition, if the prize they get is millions of times more than will ever be earned by someone with the bad luck to be born into poverty. It is bad luck to be born a woman in a man’s world, but it is also bad luck to be born into a poor family in a world that favours the rich. It is wrong to treat women worse than men, but it is easier to set that straight. Tackling an easy challenge is of little merit when gross injustice surrounds us. Some born into this world never get the opportunity to learn a trade, never mind handle a tennis racquet. That is a prejudice too, but one so endemic to our way of life that it has no name.

We live in a world of prejudice. Prejudice based on where somebody is born, prejudice based on who somebody is born to, prejudice based on the colour of the skin they are born into, prejudice based on the wealth inherited from their forbears, prejudice based on their very skin and bones. The debate about prejudice is flawed. You cannot ask a union of people to fight against all prejudice. Any such group will just further their own ends. Unions look after their members, not after the good of all. Tipping the scales may seem like a route to fairness, but none of us are so simple for our lifechances to be only measured on the binary scales of the unions that fight prejudice. Obama is not a black man. Obama is a black-and-white man, yet even he is painted black to suit a polarized debate. There should have been no surprise, though justifiable outrage, when a majority of black Californians voted against gay marriage. The black agenda is the treatment of blacks, not gays, and only a minority will belong to both minority camps. Unions fight for the interests of their members, not for the interest of all.

Rather than measuring people on scales, seeking to equalize them and inevitably getting bored as we tire of the endless categories stretching from religion to sexual orientation, a better approach would be to bar every irrelevant measure. Only then would ugly people get a fair deal, and only then will we see a sustained effort to treat the children of the poor as well as the children of the rich. That is beyond us for now. To achieve it would take a striving for a true equality based on everyone being who they are, and not based on the union they belong to. That may not suit some of the union leaders, so whilst they claim to fight prejudice, they institutionalize prejudice at the same time. It is hard to fight against prejudice that has no name, but vital all the same. Prejudice will only be defeated when there are no unions of common cause any more - only the single union of all mankind with love and respect for all. But if we lived in a world like that, then the Brazilian footballers would not be so rich, and they would be as likely to ask for the autographs, as to give them.

In a swish apartment overlooking London’s Docklands, two scriptwriters, Whale and Purview, sit down to discuss ideas for a new James Bond script.

Whale: Okay, the studio wants four exotic locations for this film.

Purview: Only four? They must be cutting back.

Whale: Nah, they’re thinking about global warming. They want a more responsible Bond who thinks about the impact air travel has on the environment.

Purview: Okey Dokey. Let’s have an early scene where ‘M’ tells Bond that MI6 has adopted a carbon neutral policy.

Whale: Yup. Let’s make this some kind of sexy eco-thriller.

Purview: I’m not sure we can. We did the environment with Quantum of Solace and that plot about controlling water supplies and calling the antagonist ‘Greene’ and having him run an ecological business as a front for his criminal activities. Let’s make this film about terrorism instead. That’s topical.

Whale: We did international terrorism in Casino Royale.

Purview: Then what’s it going to be about? We’ve got to keep it topical and relevant.

Whale: How about making it a combo eco-terrorist story. With nukes. Iranian nukes.

Purview: That’s a good idea. Let’s hang on to that. Let’s start with the four locations.

Whale: One hot, one cold, one pricey, one wild.

Purview: St. Petersburg. We should use St. Petersburg as the wintry location.

Whale: The Winter Palace at Winter. Shots of crisp white snow contrasted with lots of lavish opulence with lots of gold and jewels everywhere.

Purview: We cut from a scene with a Bond girl skating on the ice of a frozen river to her putting on her diamonds in the evening.

Whale: Ice and diamonds - I love it. Okay, St. Petersburg works for me. We can have a Russian oligarch as the baddie. Yeah - good. Now what about the hot location?

Purview: I don’t we should actually set it in Iran. It would be too sensitive to have Bond going there undercover. How about doing a segment in Jamaica?

Whale: Bond’s been to the Caribbean so often that the audience will expect him to end up speaking like a West Indian.

Purview: Western Samoa?

Whale: Nobody knows where that is.

Purview: Nobody knows why you’d build a swanky hotel in the middle of the Bolivian desert but that’s what we wrote into the last script. What about Rio de Janeiro?

Whale: Puh-lease. Pictures of girls in skimpy bikinis and guys juggling footballs. So corny.

Purview: Somewhere in the Middle East then.

Whale: Not a bad idea. Bond can be involved in a chase through a shopping mall in Dubai. He pushes past a lot of Arabs all dressed in white. The baddie’s henchman is dressed in white too, so Bond momentarily loses sight of him in the crowd… I’m liking this idea. Lots of opportunity for product placement, as he throws the henchman through the window of a Louis Vuitton shop. Plus they’ll pay top dollar for the boost to tourism. We can have a scene with Bond flying off the top of that fancy ’sail’ hotel using a one-man helicopter pack on his back.

Purview: I like it. We’ve done rocket packs before, but not helicopter packs. As he helicopters down, Bond can set off some smoke flares, leaving a red, white and blue trail in the skies.

Whale: What about the glamour location?

Purview: New York. Perhaps we could stage a shootout in Grand Central Station. The crowd screaming, people leaping over ticket barriers and Bond having a fight on the roof of a subway train.

Whale: Nah. We’ve got to cut back. And Dubai can double as the pricey location as well as the hot one. We should do somewhere in the UK. You know, to fit with the ecologically responsible ’staycation’ theme.

Purview: How about Bond spends a weekend youth hosteling in the Lake District? He could encounter a hiking troupe of Swedish beauties, and bed them all during a wet afternoon under canvas.

Whale: I’m thinking more along the lines of Blackpool. Bond slides down a cable from Blackpool Tower whilst chasing an assassin.

Purview: Blackpool?

Whale: Blackpool. It can work. They’re making it more upmarket these days.

Purview: Perhaps. What if the assassin garrotes his victim from behind, just as they’re looping the loop on the rollercoaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach?

Whale: That’s a great idea. I love it.

Purview: We just the need the fourth location now. We should think about somewhere really different, somewhere nowhere like Bond’s been before.

Whale: The moon.

Purview: Too far.

Whale: Slough.

Purview: Not far enough.

Whale: Outer Mongolia.

Purview: Too barren, just like Slough.

Whale: Australia.

Purview: Too Australian. Then again, perhaps the nuke can be hidden under Uluru.

Whale: Sorry?

Purview: Uluru - Ayers Rock. They hide the nukes under Ayers Rock so the satellites cannot detect the radioactive signature, or something like that.

Whale: Brilliant. So far we’ve got a plot where Bond’s having a staycation in Blackpool, his old Navy buddy is murdered on the rollercoaster whilst Bond is in the queue for candyfloss, the murderer escapes but resurfaces in St. Petersburg, employed by some super-rich oligarch. His old buddy was entwined in the oligarch’s business interests in Dubai. Bond investigates, realizing it’s a cover operation involved in smuggling nukes out of Tehran. The nukes get hidden under Ayers Rock, where they will be auctioned to the representatives of a variety of rebel nations. And Bond has casual sex with a woman he picks up in Blackpool, shags a Russian beauty in the Winter Palace and then bonks her again in Australia, but only after he does the identical twin PAs to the chief auctioneer.

Purview: That’s the basic plot resolved. We need some more gadgets to add to the heli-pack.

Whale: What about an invisible car?

Purview: Ridiculous. Imagine how many accidents you would have driving an invisible car on the road. People would keep hitting you in the tail.

Whale: And I remember we had one already - in Die Another Day. Maybe we should give the bad guy a gadget. Like an electro suit. And Bond can kill him by pressing a big red self-destruct button placed right in the middle of the suit’s chest plate.

Purview: That was in Die Another Day too.

Whale: The bad guy should have a gun which fires only one bullet, because he’s that good.

Purview: And what if he’s being attacked by two people? He waits until they’re lined up, one behind the other? Anyhow, The Man With the Golden Gun had only one bullet in his gun.

Whale: Okay. How about the bad guy has a fetish for Bond and keeps a mannequin of him in his lair? Then Bond can take the dummy’s place and catch the baddie by surprise.

Purview: That was in The Man With The Golden Gun too. Roger Moore was so wooden it was hard to tell which one was the mannequin. We should think about having some kind of space weapon. They’re very sexy, in a sci-fi style.

Whale: No. Definitely not. You Only Live Twice. Diamonds are Forever. Moonraker. Goldeneye and Die Another Day. Space weapons have been done to death.

Purview: Let’s leave the gadgets for now. Gadgets are passé anyway. We should talk about some set pieces.

Whale: Bond should invite himself to the nuke auction. He quickly drops the pretence as the baddies know who he is anyway. They’ll put him up for a couple of nights in the lavish guest facilities and the Bond’s oligarch antagonist allows him to sleep with his woman, before eventually deciding to kill him. Bond survives and blows the whole place up, leaving the Nukes safely buried underneath Ayers Rock.

Purview: Of course. That all goes without saying. We need Bond’s antagonist to have a sidekick with a special weapon or skill.

Whale: Killer hats.

Purview: Oddjob in Goldfinger.

Whale: Killer teeth.

Purview: Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me.

Whale: Killer thighs.

Purview: Xenia Onatopp in Goldeneye.

Whale: Killer fishing rod.

Purview: Mayday in View to a Kill.

Whale: Killer moustache.

Purview: That would be new. How would it work?

Whale: A gay guy soaks his moustache in poison. It gives off fumes that would kill Bond if he kisses him.

Purview: I’m pretty sure that’s not been filmed before.

Whale: We need some good action scenes.

Purview: Bond is chasing the sidekick in Blackpool, but he escapes and makes a dramatic getaway.

Whale: By miniature jet plane.

Purview: Done before, in Octopussy.

Whale: By stealth boat.

Purview: That was in Tomorrow Never Dies.

Whale: By bobsled.

Purview: Check out On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Whale: By lunar rover.

Purview: See Diamonds are Forever.

Whale: Sliding downhill on a cello case.

Purview: That’s how Bond escapes in The Living Daylights.

Whale: Hot air balloon.

Purview: What kind of ridiculous getaway vehicle would a hot air balloon make? It slowly floats on the wind, there is no way to control its direction, is in plain view to everyone and can easily be followed by the cops who just need to wait until it comes back down to ground. It’s a silly idea. Plus it has been done already, in The World is Not Enough.

Whale: Phew. What’s left?

Purview: Bus. The sidekick jumps on the number 42 bus. Bond would give chase but his car is stuck in terrible congestion. That fits with the environmentally-conscious theme. M can then give her spiel about MI6 going carbon neutral when Bond returns to the office and debriefs.

Whale: After which, Q gives Bond a special folding bicycle to use on future missions.

Purview: Good idea, and its the extra gadget we were looking for.

Whale: Exactly.

Purview: I think we’re nearly there. We just need to write a few double entendres. Bond is as ‘hard’ as Ayers Rock. Bond is as ‘hard’ as Blackpool rock. That kind of thing.

Whale: Yeah, and we need a title. How about ‘Golden Day for the Kill’?

Purview: ‘Tomorrow’s the Day I Licence to Die’.

Whale: ‘Diamonds Never Die’.

Purview: ‘Dr. Thunderfinger’.

Whale: ‘A View to a Killing Licence, in Gold’.

Purview: ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Gold’.

Whale: ‘Her Majesty’s Secret Solace’.

Purview: ‘The Spy with a Love Licence from Russia’.

Whale: ‘Moonfingering the Octopussy’.

Purview: ‘Eye Spy Golden Die’.

Whale: ‘Die Today, Kill Tomorrow’.

Purview: ‘The Spy Who Kills in Gold Blood’.

Whale: ‘Live to Kill Another Day’.

Purview: ‘Licence to Live, Dying to Kill’.

Whale: ‘Never Say Die’.

Purview: That’s it. ‘Never Say Die’. That’s our title.

Whale: You know, sometimes I think we should try to be more original. But after twenty-two Bond films, what would be the point? ‘Never Say Die’ - we’ll make another killing at the box office…