Daniel Craig throws off his ‘tetchy’ persona to talk openly about Bond as his time as 007 ends
It’s midday at the Corinthia Hotel in London and I’m sitting on a bench in a corridor waiting to talk to Daniel Craig.
The main entrance doors are open for ventilation. Pre-pandemic there would have been a lot of security, this is Bond after all, but in the age of coronavirus the hotel is like a socially distanced Fort Knox.
There’s a doctor on standby and before I’m allowed in the same room as 007, I’ve had to pass a temperature check – and that isn’t all.
To get into the hotel itself I’ve had to show the results of a negative PCR test taken within the last 48 hours, prove I’d done a lateral flow test this morning AND sign paperwork promising I’m not secretly trying to give everyone at the press junket COVID.
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Daniel Craig’s ‘joyous’ return to the cinema
The mask I had with me had to be taken off, only to be replaced by an industrial-looking number that everyone around me was wearing. “It does look a bit like we’ve all got beaks!” one woman commented in the hallway to nods and muffled agreement.
This whole process is very weird and certainly not conducive in terms of making you feel nice and relaxed ahead of interviewing an actor who has a reputation for being notoriously tetchy.
If there are journalists before or after me, I haven’t come into contact with any, so pre-Daniel I settle for a hushed gossip with a woman who may have been a member of security (but really who knows when our faces are covered-up with a giant white beak?).
Sep 2019: Daniel Craig on the set of No Time To Die. Pic: AP
“Have you met Daniel before?” she said. “No” I say.
“Every time he’s come out here he’s made a point of asking us if we’re all ok, he’s REALLY nice!”
“That’s good to know,” I tell her, adding: “because he’s got a bit of a reputation for being, you know, grumpy.”
But not today.
Just one final hurrah of press interviews and that’s it, Daniel Craig is done.
There’s no way he’s repeating those “he’s so moody” headlines he got after the very first news conference he did.
Casino Royale was Craig’s first Bond outing. Pic: Nicola Dove/MGM
So it is a seemingly demob happy Craig I’m introduced to, sat alongside super-producer Barbara Broccoli.
No handshakes, of course, and they’re sat well over two metres away from me in the hotel’s well-ventilated ballroom.
But those blue eyes are twinkling, he’s laughing, relaxed even, and happy to chat now the rollercoaster is about to stop.
“I mean, I was definitely in two minds about taking it at the beginning but… I’ve never regretted it,” he says.
“It’s been tough, but it’s always, always, always, always been interesting. It’s always been creatively satisfying. I’ve had the chance to work with just some of the most incredible people and it’s made a mark on my life and, I mean, that’s a massive understatement.”
Broccoli refuses point blank to think who her next Bond will be.
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“I’m in denial. I don’t want to think about it and I’m not going to think about it. As far as I’m concerned Daniel Craig is James Bond. End of story.”
It hasn’t been easy 15 years for Craig, being the leading man in one of Britain’s biggest cultural exports.
Aside from broken legs and twisted ankles, the run-ins with the press were there from day one, with critics saying it was wrong to have a blond Bond.
He’s had paparazzi in trees outside his house, photographers willing to bury themselves under sand to get pictures of him on the beach in his trunks.
He admits, before he met his wife Rachel Weisz, the attention ruined relationships and made him never want to leave the house.
“I think I’ve changed,” he reflects, looking back on it now.
“I’ll be perfectly honest, I couldn’t deal with it but it is part of the nature of the beast, you have to sort of accept it. I think you have to find a level.
Lashana Lynch has taken on the mantel as 007. Pic: Nicola Dove/MGM
“I’ve tried my best not be hypocritical about it. I keep myself away from everything when I’m not promoting a movie. I’m not on social media. I try and keep a very private life. So that’s my sort of that’s my sort of line in the sand, I suppose.”
Has it got any better as he prepares to leave the role?
“The press don’t seem as interested in me anymore,” he laughs. “I’m probably just a bit boring for them.”
So it’s official Daniel Craig isn’t grumpy… he wants to be boring… but then he is a very good actor. And surely that’s all that matters?
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Davina McCall has said her short-term memory is “a bit remiss” as she recovers from brain tumour surgery.
Speaking from her bed, the visibly emotional TV presenter posted a short video updating her Instagram followers on her condition, saying it had been a “mad” time.
She expressed an “enormous heartfelt thank you” to people who had messaged her after she revealed this month she had a benign brain tumour, a colloid cyst, which she described as “very rare”.
Looking bright, but with a visibly bruised left eye, McCall said: “My short-term memory is a bit remiss.
“But that is something I can work on, so I’m really happy about that. I’m writing everything down, to keep myself feeling safe.”
She added: “It’s been mad, and it’s just really nice to be back home, I’m on the other side.”
In a message posted with the video, she reiterated her thanks for all the support she has received, adding: “Had a great night’s sleep in my own bed. Have a couple of sleeps during the day which keeps my brain clear… Slowly, slowly…”
When she first shared her diagnosis, she said chances of having it were “three in a million” and that she had discovered it several months previously after a company offered her a health scan in return for giving a menopause talk.
The 57-year-old star said support from her fans had “meant the world”.
She said she was being “brilliantly looked after” by her partner, hairdresser Michael Douglas, and her stepmother, Gabby, who she calls mum.
Becoming tearful, the presenter said: “I’d quickly like to say big up the stepmums. I don’t really say thank you to Gabby enough. She’s been an amazing rock my whole life.”
McCall was estranged from her birth mother, Florence McCall, who died in 2008.
McCall with 2002 Big Brother winner Kate Lawler. Pic: Rex Features
With a catch in her voice, McCall went on: “I’ve got a massive dose of vitamin G – I’m just really grateful. I’ve always been really lucky in my life, but I feel unbelievably grateful right now. So, thanks for everything, all of you.
“I’m on the mend, I’m resting and sleeping loads and I feel really good. I’m just very lucky.”
Stars including presenter Alison Hammond, singer Craig David and radio host Zoe Ball quickly shared their delight at the positive update.
McCall rose to fame presenting on MTV in the mid-1990s, and later on Channel 4’s Streetmate, before becoming a household name as the host of Big Brother from 2000 to 2010.
McCall with her MBE, alongside her partner Michael Douglas and her daughter Holly Robertson. Pic: PA
She’s gone on to present programmes across the networks, the most recent being ITV dating show My Mum, Your Dad.
Last year, McCall was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting.
Married twice, McCall has three children, two daughters and a son, with her second husband, presenter Matthew Robertson.
She has lived with Douglas since 2022, and they present a weekly lifestyle podcast together, Making The Cut.
Barbara Taylor Bradford, the bestselling novelist who wrote A Woman Of Substance, has died at the age of 91.
The Leeds-born author, who sold more than 90 million books, died peacefully at her home on Sunday after a short illness and was “surrounded by loved ones to the very end”, a spokeswoman said.
Taylor Bradford, who was often labelled “the grand dame of blockbusters”, hit the big time when A Woman Of Substance was published in 1979, making her an overnight success.
The story sold millions of copies and traced the journey of Emma Harte from life as a servant in rural Yorkshire to heading a business empire.
The rags to riches story was followed by many other successful books with the author’s works being published in more than 40 languages across 90 countries.
Pic: Caroll Taveras/Bradford Enterprises/PA
The author on her 21st birthday. Pic: Bradford Enterprises/PA
Charlie Redmayne, chief executive of publisher HarperCollins, said the author was a “natural storyteller”, adding: “Barbara Taylor Bradford was a truly exceptional writer whose first book, the international bestseller A Woman Of Substance, changed the lives of so many who read it – and still does to this day.”
Taylor Bradford, who was made an OBE in 2007 for services to literature, wrote a total of 40 novels during her career – her most recent was The Wonder Of It All, published last year.
Pic: Caroll Taveras/Bradford Enterprises/PA
Taylor Bradford with her husband Robert in 1993. Pic: PA
Born in May 1933 as the only child of Winston and Freda Taylor, she worked as a typist for the Yorkshire Evening Post before becoming a reporter and then the paper’s first woman’s editor.
At the age of 20, she moved to London and worked in Fleet Street for Woman’s Own and the London Evening News.
She met her husband, American film producer Robert Bradford, in 1961 and they married in London on Christmas Eve in 1963 before moving to New York the following year.
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The couple were married for 55 years until he died from a stroke in 2019.
Following a private funeral in New York, the author will be buried alongside her late husband at the city’s Westchester Hills Cemetery.
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