Next time the dinner party conversation stalls, throw in this question: which JB is best, Bond or Bourne? The air will quickly fill with opinion as men – especially men – align themselves with the figure in the tuxedo who suavely introduces himself as “Bond, James Bond”; or with Bourne, the unimposing guy in the fisherman’s jumper who doesn’t have any chat-up lines and can’t even remember his own name.

It’s five years since the release of The Bourne Identity, a film that helped redefine espionage thrillers. Centring on an amnesiac assassin named Jason Bourne, played by Matt Damon, it summed up the angst of a generation searching for an identity.

Bourne is on the run from a CIA “black ops” mob, and is pursued across Europe, treating cinema audiences to some impressive stunts and action sequences along the way. Meanwhile, he’s trying to answer the same question as the rest of us: “Who am I?” With the riddle still unresolved, he’s back later this month in The Bourne Ultimatum in the third part of a franchise that is challenging Bond’s dominance.

On the face of it, Bourne and Bond are polar opposites. Bond is MI6’s top agent; Bourne is being hunted down by his former employer, the CIA. Bond always gets the girl; Bourne loses his girl to an assassin’s bullet. Bond has no compunction about killing; Bourne has nightmares over what he’s done.

The contrast says a lot about their creators. Ian Fleming, an old Etonian, invented a hero to reflect the values of the day: successful, debonair, someone who kills as ruthlessly as he discards women. Robert Ludlum, a struggling actor turned writer, wanted an antihero, an outcast who was hunted, unsure of himself and paranoid.

The two authors lived a generation and a continent apart, but both were obsessives, prolific writers, heavy smokers (Fleming favoured custom-made cigarettes; Ludlum, Kool menthols). Fleming wrote 14 Bond books but saw just two made into films before a fatal heart attack, aged 56, in 1964.

Octopussy and The Living Daylights were short stories published posthumously. Later his estate licensed the Bond character to a succession of writers (including Kingsley Amis, Charlie Higson, one of the creators of The Fast Show, and most recently to Sebastian Faulks, the novelist, set to publish Devil May Care next year).

Ludlum turned to writing in 1970 when his acting career stagnated. He quickly became a master of his trade, selling more than 200m books – a figure reportedly exceeded only by J K Rowling. He died in 2001, with a rattling smoker’s cough, a year before the first Bourne film was released. Eric Van Lustbader, a writer with a name like one of Ludlum’s characters, is among those credited with the 12 “Ludlum” books that have appeared since.

Interestingly Bourne and Bond went global only after undergoing complete makeovers in the wake of their creators’ deaths. The Bond films were in any case only ever loosely based on Fleming’s narratives and when the stories ran out (The Living Daylights was the last one, in 1987), the film-makers cranked out another half dozen or so soundalike titles such as Licence to Kill.

Likewise, the film adaptation of the Bourne trilogy bears limited relation to Ludlum’s books, in which Bourne’s arch-foe is Carlos the Jackal (who hasn’t featured in the Bourne films). Tony Gilroy, the American screen-writer, took the basic idea of a character dragged from the Mediterranean with bullets in his back and a total loss of memory and wove around him new characters and plots.

Reinvented and reinvigorated, Bond and Bourne are cornering the market in espionage films. Casino Royale, the latest in the 007 series, grossed almost £294m, the highest earning Bond film ever (and the 36th highest grossing film of all time). The first two Bourne films took a not too shabby £245m at the box office and doubtless played a role in Bond’s latest success. In Casino Royale, the scriptwriters dumped the slapstick and wisecracks and adopted elements of film noir that have become Bourne’s trademark. Hence it was a much darker, bloodier Bond film than its predecessors.

Up until then, Albert “Cubby” Bro-colli and Barbara, his daughter, created lavish special effects, often using CGI for gimmicks such as the “invisible” Aston Martin in Die Another Day. Bond specialised in taking out his opponents in grisly but imaginative ways as, for example, in Live and Let Die when Roger Moore forced Yaphet Kotto’s Kananga to swallow a compressed air bullet, causing him to swell up like a giant beach ball and explode, remarking casually: “He always had an inflated opinion of himself.”

The Bourne camp, meanwhile, moved as far as it could in the opposite direction, avoiding CGI and adopting a shaky hand-held camera style to create a sense of realism. “Every time someone suggested doing something that was standard in the action world, we said we had to do the exact opposite,” says Frank Marshall, one of the Bourne producers.

Bourne is seldom armed with anything more deadly than a ballpoint pen. He shows how to clone a mobile phone in seconds and how to blow up a house by disconnecting a gas pipe then shoving a magazine into a toaster for a delayed timer.

Then there are the cars. Bond’s cars are all gleaming metal and clever gadgets. By contrast, Bourne drives a clapped out Leyland Mini with one wing hanging off in the first film. In the second he is pursued through Moscow in a battered Volga taxi. If Bourne arrived in one of his mangled wrecks at 007’s casino in Monte Carlo the security would suspect he was a car bomber.

For realism, all the Bourne chases take place in the kind of congested city streets with which audiences are familiar. According to Damon, the inspiration was The French Connection, which contained one of the best pursuits ever committed to celluloid.

The most important difference, though, is the inner man. In the 1960s, when Bond’s persona was formed, heroes didn’t cry or agonise over mistakes. Now it’s okay to have a soft side. Bourne struggles with demons from his past. In the Supremacy, for instance, he seeks out his victim’s daughter so he can apologise. That’s a tricky one for Bond to match. It’s difficult to see 007 transforming himself into a sensitive man by saying sorry for kicking Oddjob in his sensi-tiveman-parts before electrocuting him with a cut cable in Goldfinger.

Both Fleming and Ludlum reportedly had links to the respective intelligence services of their two countries. Fleming worked in naval intelligence where, among other deeds, he is credited with Operation Goldeneye (later the title of a Bond film), a plan to help defend Gibraltar during the second world war in the event that fascist Spain joined the Axis powers and invaded the British colony.

Ludlum’s novels contained details that implied an inside knowledge of the workings of the CIA, though he always denied any involvement. In terms of realism, though, Bourne has the edge. In The Bourne Identity, when a CIA director disapproves of the methods being used to try and assassinate Damon’s rogue operative, his subordinate turns on him and snarls, “So why don’t you book a conference room and talk him to death.” In The Bourne Ultimatum, a former field operative tells his desk-bound rival, “Don’t second guess an operation from an armchair.”

Like the drab War Office corridors in the film of Len Deighton’s Ipcress File it smacks of the truth, far more so than the shiny interior of Bond’s MI6 headquarters where 007 shares a tease with Moneypenny before M sends him off to blow up Blofeld’s underwater HQ in a mini-sub.

All of which leaves the most important question: who would win in a fight? Bourne is an expert in krav maga, the martial art used by Mossad. In close-quarter fighting he’s deadly. Sadly, that would be no match for Bond, who could press a button and dispatch Bourne with a harpoon through his fisherman’s jumper.

“It’s a tough question,” admits Damon. “I wouldn’t bet against Bourne. Bond does have all those gadgets, though.” So you can see there’s plenty to fuel the debate. Personally I’m a Bourne man – at least until I’m given the chance to drive an Aston Martin.

A tale of two spies

JAMES BOND

Employer MI6

Women. Innumerable, including Honey Rider (Ursula Andress) Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) and Jinx Johnson (Halle Berry)

Weapons Beretta, later replaced by the German-made Walther PPK

Style Brioni Roma suits, Turnbull and Asser shirts, shoes by John Lobb

Cars Aston Martins, Lotus Esprit, BMW Z8

JASON BOURNE

Employer (ex): CIA

Women Marie Kreutz (Franka Potente), Bourne’s girlfriend, is shot by an assassin, leaving him companionless

Weapons Krav Maga martial art, plus anything handy: Biro, electrical flex, rolled up magazine

Style Jeans, T shirt, ex-army jacket

Cars Clapped out Leyland Mini, Volga taxi, Chevy Impala

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