The images of secret agents and spies in the Bond films and others (with a few exceptions, such as the movies and mini-series' based on John Le Carré novels) are basically fantasy. Both Sean Connery and Jack Lord (as CIA secret agent Leiter) , and a few others who played Bond (particularly, at least to my mind, Timothy Dalton), are the kind of guys that are very noticeable in a crowd. In fact, when they were casting for the first James Bond movie, when Connery walked into the room, one of the producers leaned over to the other and said, "My God! He walks like a panther! There's our Bond!"

Which, of course, makes him unsuitable as a real secret agent or spy. Real agents need to be innocuous-looking and able to fade into the background. This was the view expressed by "Wild Bill" Donovan, who organized the OSS (which later morphed into the CIA) in a book on espionage that I read some years back. Donovan was talking specifically about the Bond movies, which he said he enjoyed, but they were anything but realistic.

But wothehell. . . .

Don Firth