The name is Chowdhury. Ajay Chowdhury. And he knows more about James Bond than most other people. He certainly knows more about 007 than any other Indian.

He and an entertainment journalist, Matthew Field, have put together a book, Some Kind Of Hero: The Remarkable Story Of The James Bond Films (History Press, £25), which is 704 pages in hardback and nothing short of a work of scholarship.
There is plenty on the Bond girls though Aishwarya Rai was never under consideration.

“This book was written in about a year but actually it took 20 years to write (because of the research),” says Ajay, who is a media lawyer by day.

The title comes from a dismissive comment made about Bond in Die Another Day: “Who does James Bond think he is — some kind of hero?”

Whenever a Bond story pops up in the news, the BBC and other media invariably turn to Ajay. That happened recently when he was asked what he made of the reported $150m offer allegedly made to Daniel Craig to make another couple of films for Bond is by far the most successful movie franchise in the history of cinema.

Ajay has dedicated his book — and with good reason — to his parents: “For my late father Diljeet and my dear mother Jasprit, who gave their three sons: my older brother Avneet, my twin brother Udey and myself the gift of James Bond.”
Ajay, who is 45 years old, was born and brought up in London. His family connection with the UK goes back to “my paternal great grandfather, Kahan Singh Chowdhury, who read law at Trinity College, Dublin, qualifying as a barrister. He hailed from the village of Kahuta near Rawalpindi.”

“My paternal grandfather, Major General Pritam Singh Chowdhury, was commissioned into the 5th Battalion of the 11th Sikh Regiment (The Duke of Connaught’s Own Sikh Regiment) in 1932, having graduated from Sandhurst Military College. My grandfather was a near contemporary of (James Bond creator) Ian Fleming, who had left Sandhurst in 1927.”
Ajay’s late father arrived in the UK in 1960 and worked as a lawyer. 

JAMES BOND IS A PORTAL TO LEARNING SO MANY THINGS

Ajay remembers the rainy day in August 1977 when his parents took him, his twin Udey and an elder brother Avneet to see a movie in which “there is a man who shoots people, kisses lots of beautiful girls, goes to exotic locations, skis off a mountain, has a car that turns into a submarine, battles a giant with steel teeth and a big villain whose supertanker opens up to house three nuclear submarines”.

“This was The Spy Who Loved Me,” Ajay remembers. “And it was Roger Moore’s third Bond film.”

He was six and a half. Two years later, in 1979, he saw Moonraker.

“And that,” declares Ajay, “is how I became a Bond fan.”

He reckons that “James Bond is a portal to learning about so many other things — literature, travel, wine, food, women, geopolitics”. 

For many years, Ajay edited a magazine on James Bond called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

“I am the spokesperson who helps run what’s called the James Bond International Fan Club and that is just an online thing — I have been doing this for over 25 years,” he reveals.

He takes tourists who are interested in Bond novels on “an Ian Fleming Walking Tour of London — his birthplace, his various homes, the Naval intelligence office where he worked, the Fleet Street haunts of his, some of his favourite restaurants such as Scott’s restaurant, Wiltons on Jermyn Street, L’Etoile on Charlotte Street. Bond has a flat in a plane tree-lined square off the King’s Road — Fleming lived (not far away) on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea”.

“For over 50 years, Albert R. Broccoli’s Eon Productions has navigated the ups and downs of the volatile British film industry, enduring both critical wrath and acclaim in equal measure, for its now legendary James Bond series,” recounts Ajay. “However, it has not always been plain sailing. Some Kind of Hero recounts this remarkable story, from its origins in the early ’60s right through to the present day, and draws on hundreds of unpublished interviews with the cast and crew of this iconic series.”

Bond has universal appeal, he points out. “There is a huge market for Bond in India now.”

Even the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi made a reference to Bond in his Wembley Stadium speech in November last year when he announced his government was moving “from James Bond to Brooke Bond to Masala Bond”.

NAIPAUL’S HAND IN THE 007 THEME

Ajay has come up with material that will intrigue Indians. One of his tales is really remarkable: “You don’t realise the James Bond theme was actually based on an Indian sitar musical number.”

It turns out that the composer Monty Norman had written a musical in the 1950s based on V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas. His theme, Good Sign, Bad Sign, was a sitar-driven raga. But the musical never got made and in 1962, when Norman was composing the music for Dr. No, “he unearthed this track. Then he got the other Bond composer John Barry to orchestrate the track and John Barry took the sitar line, sped it up and gave it to a guitarist called Vic Flick and he replaced the sitar with a guitar”.

This story was confirmed when Ajay bumped into Naipaul. “One of Vidia’s (Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul) unseen achievements is he is responsible for the James Bond theme.”

BOND AND THE BOOKER PRIZE

Ajay has other equally fascinating tales. For example, the Booker brothers, who owned an agricultural concern, also had the rights to Fleming novels. They made so much money from the sales of the novels that they decided to set up a literary prize in 1968. That is still called the Booker Prize.

The film company had rupees stashed in India and wanted to use this in making Moonraker in India. But the rupees could not be used during the shoot and there were no Indian locations when Moonraker came out in 1979.

But Octopussy, in 1983, was shot in Udaipur. The role of Octopussy was going to go to the Indian beauty, Persis Khambatta, “but for various reasons that did not happen”. But Kabir Bedi was hired to be a baddie, Gobinda, a Sikh warrior, and Vijay Amritraj was recruited for his tennis skills. Alas, he ended up dead but not before swishing his racquet in a tuk tuk chase scene. 

The book states: “The unit shot in the exotic Lake Palace Hotel, set in Lake Pichola. As guests of the local Maharajah, the cast and crew were treated like royalty.”

It proved hard to keep the excited crowds out of the shots — so hard in fact that Bond has not returned to India.

Depending on what movies are included, there have been 25 since Sean Connery made his debut as 007 in 1962. He has been followed by George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig.

THE CRAIG CONUNDRUM

After Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015), is a jaded Craig handing in his licence to kill?

Ajay, who understands how the Bond films get made, comments on the reports that Craig has been offered $150m to persuade him to stay.

“Firstly, the news story is utter bunkum,” declares Ajay. “There is no truth in it whatsoever. I doubt if there is an offer on the table.”

“Currently the studio that co-owns the James Bond rights, MGM, are looking for a new distributor,” he sets out. “While they are looking for a new distributor they are not necessarily green lighting any films. Until they have green lit a film there can’t be a screenplay or a director. And until there is a screenplay and a director you can’t get actors involved in the film. And Daniel Craig, after the last film (Spectre), became co-producer and it is my belief he probably is contracted and signed to do one more film. But he would want director and script approval. He has not said yes or no because he has not been presented with anything yet. Once he has been presented I am pretty sure he will work with them and we will get another Bond film from him. I reckon a new one will probably be coming out in 2018 at the earliest.”

That has not stopped speculation about a new Bond.

Do you want Daniel Craig back as 007? Tell t2@abp.in