He sat in the old cinema in Bolton, clutching the arms of the once-silky, faded red seat as John Barry’s James Bond theme started, accompanied by the huge screen showing the dark grey rifled barrel of the would be assassin trying to shoot our hero… and being killed by a turning 007, whose gun, though smaller, was quicker.

The ‘ladies’ gun’ Beretta said it all as far as I was concerned. Agile, stylish and highly concealable… It could almost have been the symbol of new and 1960s Britain in a post-colonial world, finding its place in a Europe that had changed beyond recognition in the past fifty years.

For me, age ten, the awareness of most of that came later. At the time, it was just attraction.

Heady stuff. I’ll swear my skin is taking on a thin sheen of excitement just remembering it…

Dum….dum… dum, dum… ding, digger ding…