I too, was anti-Craig until recently. But I am, above all else, a woman, and we always have to root for the underdog. And what else is Daniel Craig than the world’s highest-profile underdog?

Poor Daniel Craig! Look at what some of the people on this anti-Craig website have said about him: “Why chose this putridly ugly man as Bond?” “He looks like a charmless Big Issue vendor.” “The toughest job in Casino Royale will be Miss Moneypenny’s — pretending she fancies this Shrek-alike in a monkey suit.” Guys, he’s just an actor! He doesn’t actually have to seduce a series of Chechnyan hit-women to save the world.

Besides, they’ve got Craig all wrong. He isn’t some intense character actor with a wonky nose, miscast into one of the world’s stupidest movie franchises, and struggling with the day-to-day pressures of corporate imbecility. He’s a revolutionary! A maverick!

Even off-camera, he’s doing what the producers of the Bond franchise should have done aeons ago — updating the smug dandy Scotch arse.

Look at Craig’s Bond so far. His winning of the role is greeted with a worldwide series of sour editorials. Controversial! Like Pete Doherty. Then his appearance at the press conference is dominated by his monosyllabicism. Sulky! Like the streetwise youth of today. Then he apparently complained that the speedboat which dramatically bore him to the press conference had been driven “too fast,” and had made him feel queasy. Delicate!

As if this weren’t enough, when filming started, he had two front teeth knocked out during his first fight scene — something that, in Hollywood, makes him technically disabled. Look how modern hoary old James Bond suddenly seems before we’ve even seen a second of Craig’s finished product. He’s this misunderstood, fey, disabled city boy who has the tabloids constantly up in arms, merely for existing. Imagine what he’ll do when he finally gets his hands on a nice suit and a small nuclear capability...

Caitlin Moran

AGAINST

Poor old Bond. Once upon a time you were a handsome, swarthy Scot who could shake and stir a dry martini merely by looking at it. Now you’re a potato-faced blond who looks as if he pulls pints in the local Spread Eagle.

Have Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson finally lost their marbles? Of course they have. What on earth was wrong with Pierce Brosnan? He could be a little wooden for sure, but everyone and their mother loved him in the role. Not as much as Sean of course, but close enough to make the adventures of OO7 a mostly seamless watch.

At his first press conference as the new face of Britain’s most dashing licensee to kill, Daniel Craig argued: “It’s not a question of redefining [the franchise], but it’s a question of taking it somewhere else.”

Whither exactly, Daniel? Over a cliff? Bond is a highly specialised role. He needs class, muscles, and oodles of style. Most of all he needs sex appeal, and that’s precisely what Craig lacks. He is a fine actor given the right part and a pair of boxing gloves. But he lacks the crucial X factor: that aura that beams from Bond the moment he steps into a room. How will he handle the leggy babes in Casino Royale. On stilts? And judging his snogging skills with Rhys Ifans in Enduring Love, he might lack something in the boudoir department.

The evidence of the opinion polls is damning. Public support for Craig as the next secret agent is thin. Bond-lovers are despondent. Clive Owen and Colin Farrell have trumped Craig in media polls across the globe. He was always an outsider and that’s where he should have stayed.

He may have been fantastic in Our Friends in the North, but I can’t see this charm working across the velvet gambling tables of Casino Royale. What will he do to all those unsubtle innuendos? Craig doesn’t wear comedy lightly, and you need plenty to make these preposterous plots work.

And spare a thought for Miss Moneypenny. I doubt she would give Craig his P45 let alone a single one of her devastatingly saucy smiles.

James Christopher

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