‘I’m James. And you are?’

The news is that Bond will also be skipping that other bon mot: “shaken, not stirred”. While this will upset many a Bond film buff, it is worthwhile to see how a popular character stands up without his most branded lines.

Listening to James Bond introducing himself not with “The name is Bond, James Bond” but with something on the lines of “Hi, I’m James. And you are?” can be a terrible dampener. It’s almost as bad as Sherlock Holmes suddenly arching his brows and saying, “That’s so bloody obvious, Watson!” But that’s the fact of character life when we meet dear old James in the latest 007 flick, Quantum of Solace (sounds like a cross between a Superman movie and that Large Hadron Collider experiment in Geneva), that hits cinemas next month.

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The news is that Bond will also be skipping that other bon mot: “shaken, not stirred”. While this will upset many a Bond film buff, it is worthwhile to see how a popular character stands up without his most branded lines. Say, Bugs Bunny without his ‘What’s up, Doc?’ or Mogambo without his ‘Mogambo khush hua”. But our reckoning is that if a character is strong and well-loved enough, these taglines not being there won’t matter that much. After all, will we feel ruffled if, after the nuclear deal passes the US Senate this week, Manmohan Singh fails to flash his iconic ‘V’ sign? Nope. Would we have been upset if Sourav Ganguly had not moped if he hadn’t been selected to the Test squad. Nope.

So Daniel Craig in the new Bond should be welcomed. Who knows, maybe he will have signature tunes of his own. Like: “Your place or hers?”