Ross King: I’ve grilled every 007 and lived to tell the tale. Pass the Martini

Bond is back, at last! After so many false starts it looked at one point that James Bond himself would be taken out by Covid.

But finally the new movie, No Time To Die, will explode on to our screens. It’s Daniel Craig’s farewell to the role, which made me reminisce and realise that I’ve met all the Bonds over the years.

As the 16-year-old studio factotum at Radio Clyde back in the ’80s my ears pricked up when I heard in the newsroom that Sean Connery was playing golf at Turnberry.

Cries of “you’ll never get him to talk” echoed around the place, of course.

“It’sh a mission I accshept,” I replied, confidently.

At that age you have no fear and so I marched up to the great man himself.

“I believe you have shares in my radio station and that’s a great reason to talk to me!” I said with the confidence of a young 007.

“Shure,” he said…and he did! Not only that but I got him to sign a photograph. Later, at a Bafta tea party at the British Consul General’s residence here in LA I got two Bonds for the price of one.

I took a cup of Earl Grey with Timothy Dalton and George Lazenby. George made the most inappropriate comment to my date. He responded with: “Hey Ross, I’m nearly 80…this may be James Bond’s last mission!”

Roger Moore will always be one of my favourites. At the end of our chat I asked him for a jingle for my radio show. “My name is King, Ross king,” he recorded. “No relation to Nosmo King. No, my name is Bond, James Bond and he is King, Ross King”. I think I played it on every show!

Pierce Brosnan had the misfortune to sit beside me for a five-hour flight from Toronto to Los Angeles.

We talked, ate, drank (a lot) and laughed for the whole journey with Pierce sharing many secrets that I will never, ever tell.

As he got off the flight he reminded me: “I still have a licence to kill and I’ll find you if these stories ever get out!”

I have encountered Daniel Craig many times on his Bond journey and he’s always been great, from London to Jamaica and LA to Mexico.

It was there that I got involved in a Bond-like mission as I became the only journalist there to get an interview. I was smuggled into his hotel, was told he was very tired and under the weather. Actually he’d broken his leg but they kept this hush-hush of course.

I was asked to keep the interview very straight.

So I opened with the line: “I’ve interviewed you many times in the 10 years since you became Bond. What has the journey been like for both men?”

“Great question,” he replied. “Could you ask me an easier one?”

I responded with: “What’s your favourite pizza? How about favourite colour?

“What colour are my eyes again. Oh yes blue, that’s it!” he quipped.

I’ve always said from the start, despite all the doubters, that Daniel would be a brilliant Bond…and he has been!