You'll be amazed what happens if you flip the SPECTRE clapperboard 180 degrees

A little bit of SPECTRElation

There's a cheeky titbit of SPECTRE news that didn't hit the front pages this morning, but it's very interesting (if you're me): Jesper Christensen, who played Mr White in Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace, told Danish website Euroman yesterday that he'll be appearing in the 24th Bond film.

Now it always kind of bothered me that Quantum had been carefully built up over Daniel Craig's first two Bond films as a SPECTRE-esque villainous organisation (Quasi-Autonomous Non-Tolerant Underground Megalomaniacs, perhaps), only to be left out of Skyfall altogether, and the announcement of SPECTRE as a title suggested Quantum would become all but a memory. BUT! Christensen's casting, if true, surely means that Quantum will become SPECTRE, or will at least be bought out by them in some kind of elaborate hostile takeover, hopefully involving massive numbers of fluffy white cats.

I've banged on about this before elsewhere, but the parallels between Sean Connery's and Daniel Craig's tenures as Bond are growing: of Connery's first five Bonds, all but the middle entry (Goldfinger) featured SPECTRE. Craig, meanwhile, has done two films with Quantum pulling the strings, one without, and is reportedly signed on for two more, which look pretty Quantumy-slash-SPECTREy from where I'm standing. All we need now is for some Aussie lunk to do Bond 26 so terribly that Craig comes back for one final, flabby bow, and the circle is complete. At that point I think we can stop making Bond films because I live in perpetual terror at the thought of more being made after I die.

New James Bond film SPECTRE makes Daniel Craig happy, chubby

I fully expected a nice quiet day today. Aware that the new James Bond film's title was due to be announced at 11am, I had planned to rise at a leisurely hour, consume a pot of Earl Grey and whip my houseboy for an hour before settling down in front of a YouTube to watch the reveal.

Instead, I was up at 6.30 and two hours later found myself sitting opposite Nicky Campbell at BBC HQ, wittering about what to expect from Bond 24 into the earholes of two and a half million Radio 5 Live listeners. It was the first of nine similar interviews, by the end of which I still hadn't learned to pronounce Dave Bautista's name properly. I had been interviewed by former Big Breakfast newsreader Phil Gayle though, and that was quite exciting.

PROPER LEGENDS MATE

You can listen to my 5 Live cabbage here if you really must (skip forward to 2:48:16 unless you want to hear nearly three hours of old news first); cringe with me as I bang on about Risico being mooted as a title (as it is every time there's a new Bond film), then get cut off before I had chance to put forward my other guess: SPECTRE. Why didn't I say that first? Because I am a tool. I think I might have mentioned SPECTRE to Phil Gayle but he didn't even know why Judi Dench wasn't going to be in the new film so that was a wasted opportunity.

I legged it home from New Broadcasting House with the wind at my back and a substantial amount of waste material in my personal basement, having not had chance to do any of that business since 7am, and made it just in time to evacuate myself before the 11.00 announcement. Please let me know when any of this becomes too much information.

Sadly Alex Zane was at Pinewood announcing the announcement, so we all had to watch the worst James Bond pre-title sequence ever before the meaty stuff happened. But when it happened, it happened RIGHT IN OUR RUDDY FACEHOLES:

OOF. That title treatment puts the 'boss' into 'embossed', right? What remains unclear is if it's SPECTRE or Spectre, and I suspect(re) this is going to haunt and annoy me for the rest of my days. Does it still stand for Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion, as it did in the books and the '60s Bond films? Or is it maybe the villain's name, like, Phil Spectre or Hector Spectre? Maybe it stands for Society of Pretty Evil Cads, Tinkers, Rotters and.. uh... Evildoers. I don't know. I do know that I very much appreciate how that bullet hole forms the old SPECTRE logo from days of yore, and conveniently bumps up the value of a pair of cufflinks I was recently gifted with exactly that design on them (thanks Chris).

What is absolutely certain is that Christoph Waltz definitely isn't playing nefarious terrorist and massive slaphead Ernst Stavro Blofeld, in much the same way that Naomie Harris definitely wasn't playing Miss Moneypenny in Skyfall. Waltz's character is known only as Oberhauser, who is mentioned as Bond's friend and skiing instructor in Fleming's Octopussy, so go and read that if you want to bore people with irrelevant trivia like some people do, ugh I can't bear those bores. Meanwhile, Sherlock's Andrew Scott plays Whitehall gonk Denbigh (definitely not a mole or double agent), Monica Bellucci plays dead-by-Act-III-totty Lucia Sciarra, Léa Seydoux is Bondcock-warmer Madeleine Swann and Dave Bautista plays Mr Hinx, a man who tries to look menacing by stroking his own fist while wearing a lovely cuddly cardy.

At least we're finally getting a henchman who's a physical match for Daniel Craig; Bond resembled a rhino sitting on a toad when he beat up Mathieu Amalric in Quantum Of Solace.

I don't know about you but I am, obviously, excited as all chuff about this. I firmly predict a return to some serious (i.e. not very serious) old school Bondage, that Bloferhauser or whatever his name is will shack up in a hollowed out moon orbiting Jupiter and that there will be some absolutely fucking awful one-liners.

I'm off to stick my appalling mug on the telly now and ramble some more Bondballs, but I'm not saying where because you'll tune in, grab a still of me looking like I've got a double chin and stick it on the internet and that would just be mean.

Fuzzy photo of Bond 24 placeholder title treatment marks beginning of sixteen months of Bond 24 blog posts

Every river has a source, and one day film blog historians will be able to look back on this post as the source of a torrent of ramblings on The Incredible Suit about the as-yet-untitled 24th film in the James Bond franchise. It's not out until October 23rd 2015, but you can bet your sweet right buttock that I'll be filling the intervening year-and-a-third with all the pointless bunk I can think of in order to alleviate some of the boundless excitement of another Bond film.

Let's begin.

This photo was taken by the eager beavers at ComingSoon.net, who are currently at "Licensing Expo 2014" in Las Vegas, which describes itself as "a meeting place for the global licensing industry, whether you are looking to spot trends, build strategic partnerships or secure promotional tie-ins," which frankly sounds absolutely appalling. Still, things are definitely happening there: a Terminator Genesis logo has been revealed, some kind of half-assed Jurassic World standee went up and Hasbro revealed their line of toys based on the movie Transformers: Age Of Extinction, based on the line of toys by Hasbro.

But fuck all that shit, because tucked away in the top of a screen of apparently official logos is this bad boy:

Yes chef, Bond 24 is happening and is flaunting its licence to sell right now in the City Of Sin. In all honesty there's not a right lot else to say about it (although check out the mental approach to baselines and descenders, typography fans), but as a blogger one should never let the absence of information get in the way of traffic.

With this inaugural post done and dusted, I'm off to Vegas to buy the licences for my range of Bond 24 tie-ins: MI6 mugs which bear the legend "you don't have to be a sociopathic psychological wreck to work here but it helps"; a line of suits guaranteed to be one size too small and a "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster altered to read "Keep Calm and Carry Bond", which makes no sense but is still funnier than 99% of other posters based on the phrase.

Meaningless blog posts about Bond 24 will return