Desmond Llewelyn

What a legend.

And then when we're talking of legends, I feel like it's the perfect time to talk about Desmond Llewelyn as Q.

So like I said before, I have grown up with these James Bond films for years and Desmond Llewelyn was always Q to me.

He will always be Q. I like what others have done since.

I quite enjoyed John Cleese as R or whatever it was they decided to call him.

He was quite good as well.

Is it Ben Whishaw? I can't remember his name.

But Desmond Llewelyn is the icon and he will always be my favourite.

Was it

originally Desmond Llewellyn?

Yeah, Desmond Llewellyn.

Desmond Llewellyn, yeah.

I knew

that.

There was no cue.

It was just done raw.

Here's your trivia.

Desmond Llewellyn, who played Q in case you didn't know that, later noted that this was the first time that he'd made any real money on a Bond film.

Which makes sense because he had a much bigger role

in this one.

ranks really high on my Bond Girls list.

Anyway, we should probably do a show.

It's interesting that you mentioned the Desmond Llewellyn thing because, yeah, this is really the first one he gets out of the Q-Lab, really.

Well, no, Octopussy does a bit as well, but I don't know if I get more on thinking about it now.

It's funny because I looked up Welsh James Bond and he did come up.

Desmond Llewellyn was Welsh.

And he played him.

Yes, he was.

We've got Robert Brown, who's back as M, who had been in Octopussy and Veto Kill previously.

And then, of course, good old Desmond Llewellyn back as Q.

And Walter Gattel as General Gogol, just briefly at the very end.

Because he's retired.

And it would have blown the thing up and it's still the same thing.

Right, exactly.

But it's 100% worth it just to hear Desmond Llewellyn say, get to blaster.

It really is.

There's also a kid with an explosive teddy bear, and it's just some nice restrained humour.

Desmond Llewellyn returns his cue as well, and I love how shocked he looks in his ID.

It's just very subtle detail, but I noticed it.

We also have a brand new Moneypenny who's played by Caroline Bliss.

And we had fun.

And I left and I literally didn't think any more of it.

And I was doing a play at the time at Hampstead Theatre with Desmond Llewellyn and David Threlfall, two fun actors.

So I went back and I was playing,

Well, I mean, Q is one of those characters that we all think we know because we've seen a Bond film or two, and you've got these five minutes where things blow up in the lab, and Q does a dry put down, "Pay attention, Bond," et cetera, et cetera.

Um, so my Q, I didn't want to, to, to make him Desmond Llewelyn, uh, or Ben Whishaw, the modern iteration.

So I put him somewhere in the middle.

He's age fifty.

They're a great record of life in Britain at that time.

One at the BFI had Desmond Llewellyn talking about the new James Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever.

And he showed off some of the gadgets that they had.

uh including the briefcase used in uh from russia with love which was which was wonderful to watch yeah so they well are watching so i had a couple more recordings to go Two of them either had fragments left or tiny little snippets.