IT’S not every day you get to interview a Bond girl.

So I was quite excited about talking to Honor Blackman this week.

She’s a bit of a legend.

And she’s still the pin-up girl of choice for many older gentlemen. It’s pretty easy to see why.

She has that sort of beauty that’s timeless.

When I showed my colleagues a picture of her I planned to use with the interview the reaction from all of them was “Wow, she looks good. I wouldn’t mind looking like that when I’m 88”.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t mind looking like that now.

But Blackman is also much loved and respected by women, which isn’t so easy to achieve for a beautiful actress.

Her character in Goldfinger was a strong one, despite the rather boorish double entendre of the name – Pussy Galore.

And Blackman managed to strike an unlikely blow for feminism by being the first of only two Bond girls to be older than the man himself and, at nearly 40, the oldest woman ever to take on such a role.

She got the part on the back of playing Cathy Gale in The Avengers, a groundbreaking character in terms of the portrayal of women on television.

Although the head-to-toe leather outfit did it for the boys, Gale was a kick-ass judo expert who was no slouch in the brains department (an interesting aside is that the only other Bond woman older than her leading man was Diana Rigg, who also starred in The Avengers).

Maybe there was an Avengers fan somewhere among the powers-that-be in Bondland.

I’m not that keen on Bond films – I don’t hate them, but they all seem much the same to me – and I’m not old enough to have seen The Avengers when it was originally broadcast.

But I love Blackman for a song she recorded in 1990 with her Avengers co-star Patrick MacNee called Kinky Boots. It was a quirky classic and I still have the single, although, alas, no longer a record-player to play it on.

A woman of many and varied talents.

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here