Back in Bondage

The publicity offensive for the next James bond film Casino Royale is really getting into gear now that filming has started. They're really pushing this 'back to basics Bond' angle (at least the fifth time in the series that they've claimed to be taking the character back to a more 'gritty', Flemingesque approach) to try and sell Daniel Craig in the role. However, one thing does puzzle me - if this new film is supposed to set the series back to the beginning and explain how Bond gets his licence to kill, how come 'M' is still being played by Judi Dench? I hate to sound like a Bond anorak here, but Goldeneye made it quite clear that she was the new broom in the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and that she considered Bond an anachronistic dinosaur. Shouldn't they have a male actor portraying the original M (as played by the late Bernard Lee from Dr No until Moonraker)? (Of course, to be completely pedantic, the film should then be set in the late 1950s).

I have a theory about this (and remember that you heard it here first folks). I predict that the new Casino Royale will feature a pre-title sequence in which Pierce Brosnan's age finally begins to take its toll - thanks to his arthritis, he fails to jump from a speeding golf cart onto a zeppelin in which the villain is escaping, then fails to redeem himself when he forgets his glasses and can't shoot straight enough to take out the lesbian assassin disguised as a horse, who is about to kill the Queen with a poisoned pineapple. Things just get worse for him that night, when he fails to pleasure the obligatory Bond totty due to erectile dysfunction, then wakes up the next morning to find that his excessive drinking has led to him wetting the bed. In a final humiliation, as he reports to M's office, he breaks wind and 'follows through' whilst flirting with Moneypenny. Naturally, the pre-titles end with M firing him and offering the job to SIS office boy Daniel Craig, instead. Maybe the title sequence could show a forlorn Brosnan handing in the keys to his Aston Martin, before catching the bus to sign on at the dole office. Rotoscoped naked women could cavort around him to the strains of John Barry...

Now there's a Bond movie I'd like to see!