Let’s hear it for Daniel Craig. The man who would be James Bond has, just days after Casino Royale was premiered early this week, demonstrated to the world that there is more to life than the colour of one’s follicles. The first Blond Bond — much reviled for his golden hair (British writer Ian Fleming, after all, had described his suave lady-and-baddie killer as dark) — has proved that the name is still Bond, however blond.

Just a year ago, you wouldn’t have blamed anybody for saying, Daniel who? That was when Craig was an actor remembered mostly for his portrayal of Angelina Jolie’s nemesis in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. No, he was no Bond, who has been a cult figure ever since the first Bond film, Dr No, was released in 1962.

Ian Fleming died in 1964 — but he wouldn’t have connected Craig with Bond either. Bond, after all, was the stuff that spy legends were made of. When, a good half-century ago, Fleming sat with a pen and paper in his hands in his Jamaica holiday home to create history, the United States and the Soviet Union were in the grip of the icicles of a cold war. So Fleming, till then something of a failed writer, conjured up a spy who did all that he could do to win the war: frolicked in bed, drank Martinis and jumped into his sleek, but gadget-wielding Aston Martin.

A series of actors did all this with some élan over the years. And, if you exclude a character called Jimmy Bond — that’s how the first producers adapted Fleming’s character — it’s an impressive list. First came Sean Connery, and then the others followed: George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan.

Die-hard Bond fans will tell you that life has not been the same after Connery, who, many believe, was the perfect Bond on screen. Still, Bond-loving circles were always haunted by a question that came up at regular intervals: “After Brosnan, who?”

That is why, when Craig’s name first came up as the new Bond, there were loud cries of protest and some fervent hand-wringing. An anti-Craig site spread its web pages, and critics, for a while, derisively referred to him as James Blond. Some complained that his image as Bond would be affected by his earlier negative Hollywood roles, which included that of a hit man’s son in the Tom Hanks starrer The Road to Perdition.

Craig — Esquire magazine’s “Best dressed male” in 2006 — came with a baggage that Bondophiles thoroughly disapproved of. The media went to town about the girly life-jacket he wore when he went for his first 007 photo call on a Royal Marine speedboat. Some believed that the first Bond to be born after the start of the film series and after the death of Fleming looked more like an East European arms dealer than a suave British spy. Some helpfully advised him to take botox injections to ease away the lines on his face if he wanted to continue playing Bond.

But that was then. Early reviews say that Craig, despite the golden fluff on his head, the lines on his forehead and the fact that he is shorter than his predecessors, has taken off with a bang — literally and figuratively. Producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, who signed him in October 2005 for three films as the spy, can now exhale.

The breathlessness was not surprising, really, for Casino Royale evoked more media interest than any other film in recent times, barring, perhaps, the Harry Potter series. Based on the first book by Fleming where Bond gets his 007 designation at MI6 — giving him the licence to kill — Casino Royale had been filmed before, but as a spoof starring David Niven. It wasn’t quite the silly season — the war continued to rage in Iraq — but the world media devoted considerable air time and column inches to Craig.

From the colour of his hair — which, as an anatomy part, came up more often than even the shape of Angelina Jolie’s lips — Craig’s un-Bond-like looks were dissected at length. And most critics averred that Casino Royale was a royale mistake.

Clearly, the filmmakers didn’t think so. The physical departure of Craig — who was born in Chester, England in 1968 and trained at the National Youth Theatre, London — from the Bond stereotype would work at the box office, they held.

The Bond magic has worked on moviegoers, irrespective of the fact — as suggested by news reports earlier this week — that Craig himself was least impressed by the plot of Casino Royale. He only read the book on his way to meet the producers and apparently threw it into a bin the moment he finished, proceeding to shoot for the film with only half a mind. It seems like it really doesn’t matter who plays Bond, as long as he plays him the way people want him to.

And that could be the reason production of the next Bond film — for the moment, they’re just calling it Bond 22, slated for tentative release in 2008 — had already begun, without the makers waiting to see if Craig succeeds in working wonders at the box office. But they should be happy. First reports indicate that the box office has been shaken — and stirred.