Faulks’s Bond is shaken and stirred

When Barbara Broccoli, producer of the Bond franchise, read Devil May Care, Sebastian Faulks’s new addition to the 007 canon, she compared it to a long-lost Ian Fleming manuscript. However, hopes that Faulks’s best-seller, released in June to mark the centenary of Fleming’s birth, would be turned into a Bond film have been dashed by the same Ms Broccoli. After “rebooting” Bond with Daniel Craig’s rugged machismo in Casino Royale, the producers Eon have rejected Devil May Care “because it is set in the 1960s” - and Faulks is unable to offer the book to rival producers because it is jointly owned by Fleming’s estate.

Eon may not have spotted that Faulks’s Cold War tale of dastardly Russian escapades has already acquired a fresh relevance.

— The BBC is responsible for the burgeoning friendship between John Prescott and Jodie Marsh, the former Page 3 girl. “They met for a documentary to discuss where Jodie thinks celebrities fit into today’s class system,” promised a spokesman. Prezza seems happy with his position in the celebrity system (pictured right).

— Westminster’s pink denizens were lured to the first night of Tory Boyz, a tale of sexed-up researchers, at the Soho Theatre. The New Statesman commends the “game” sartorial choice of Lord Alli, the Labour peer: “He came dressed for the occasion as Mark Ronson, in a tight grey cardigan and thin Eighties tie.” Alan Duncan, the Shadow Business Secretary, was a “sartorially elegant joy”, convinced that the “sweet-natured and beautiful assistant Nina had to be based on his own right-hand girl, Salma Shah”.

— After endeavouring to make Coldplay sound interesting, Brian Eno, the polymath producer, is treating himself. He is building a carillon - a giant musical structure housing 77 bells, one of which will weigh more than 75 tonnes and become the biggest bell to be cast in Europe for 100 years. “The project will give musicians, composers and students opportunities to explore the full musical potential of bells,” Eno says. It will ring at Dartington, Devon.

— The credit crunch is said to have contributed to David Cameron’s resignation from White’s, the gentlemen’s club. “I never go there enough to justify the [£740] cost of membership,” says Dave, who took his dad once a year. Were the subs a greater concern than the prospect of Labour exploiting his membership of a male-only, toff-filled establishment?

— Shakespeare and 50 Cent share a bond, says Sir Ian McKellen, who has recorded a “rap sonnet” with members of Limehouse Youth Group. “What they did was great,” he enthused. “Shakespeare is all based on beat, rhythm and rhyme and all those things that rappers deal with.” Watch out for MC Magneto in the next X-Men film.

The Face: Max Drummey

Unknown indie bands do not usually play to packed crowds at the London Astoria, but the presence of Max Drummey, the aspiring American musician who married Peaches Geldof, 19, after a whirlwind romance, looks set to guarantee a Saturday night sell-out.

That the couple’s Las Vegas wedding took place days before the first British tour by Chester French, Drummey’s band, only fuelled cynicism.

Drummey is said to be terrified at the prospect of meeting his new father-in-law, Bob, yet the 23-year-old guitarist Harvard graduate who studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, is no idiot rocker.

While Peaches is enjoying the beach in Majorca, Max is slogging through Sheffield on a tour bus – anything to avoid Bob? You can’t blame Chester French for stating: “We cheerily cultivate any marketing angles we can access to get ahead.”

Postscript

— A Duran Duran concert in Paris was halted after an elderly fan pleaded: “Stop the show! Someone has lost a diamond!” The incident troubled John Taylor, the bassist, who blogs: “I was worrying that we might be losing credibility with ‘the people’.”

— P. Diddy, the rapper, is advertising for a parasol-toting, hip-hop manservant. “Conventional recruitment methods could not find a suitable candidate,” claims Virgin 1, which will screen I Want to Work for Diddy.

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