Although the concept of having an actor from outside England play the quintessentially English James Bond has been pretty much de rigueur since the beginning of the film series (there have been Scottish, Australian and Irish Bonds, although not really a Welsh one, as Alan Partridge once claimed; Timothy Dalton might have been born in Colwyn Bay but his family wasn’t native to Wales and they moved back to England before their son’s fourth birthday), there hasn’t been an American 007. Not yet, anyway.

However, back in 1983, when Roger Moore was – not for the first or last time – considering leaving the role, Eon Productions carried out some screen tests for a possible replacement… with the very American husband of Barbra Streisand, James Brolin.