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If you’re a post-modernist post-feminist type thing, then is it against the law to like real men? Is it really really against the grain to say that men who cook, clean and cry may make good employees (as cooks, cleaners and nannies) but don’t quite the make the grade as life companion choice? Or even, as someone to admire from afar?

Hmmm. I think I’m about to be chucked out of the sisterhood. Because there’s a new Bond movie on its way and I know I’m going to hate it. Because I’m worried — no, I’m sure — they’ve taken the world’s sexiest Male Chauvinist Pig and turned him into a total New Age man wimp. The kind who washes the dishes just after he saves the world. Or sits down to watch a chick flick and weeps because he really identifies with the heroine’s love life hassles. Puh-leaze. Doesn’t anyone know anymore that there are reasons why men are men and why they have to shave everyday, go bald at some point and watch mindless sport the rest of the time? When they’re not fighting “villains” and saving the world that is.

Ian Fleming knew. Which is why, in Goldfinger the book, Pussy Galore was gay till she fell for Bond. Get it? Totally unrealistic, totally chauvinistic, totally Bond and quite charming.

A small minority of us want that James Bond back. The vodka shaking, smooth, suave, slightly misogynistic, terribly snobbish, sexually predatory, awfully flirtatious, debonair (gosh does that word even exist anymore), sophisticated, world-saving and sometimes deliciously caveman-like, yes, that’s what makes 007 more than a mere number.

Sean Connery had it down pat, of course, with that right mix of suavity and menace. Roger Moore was more witty than macho, but he still killed all the villains and saved the world and had a lot of fun doing it. Poor George Lazenby was made to get married, thus relegating his sex appeal to male nanny status. Timothy Dalton looked like he’s wandered on to the sets by mistake. Pierce Brosnan, who could have mixed the machismo of Connery with the wit of Moore, was made to be all politically correct and touch-feely. There was that moment in Goldeneye when you really thought that Xenia Onatopp had got him. But at least he didn’t shave in most of the films, so you knew he was a man.

Then, they made M into a female, with due respect to Dame Judi Dench. They made Moneypenny, who was created as the eternal librarian waited to be transformed into a sexy vixen that lurks in every female, into a sexy vixen. Mistake. Where’s the edge to all that flirting with Bond now?

So, while waiting for Daniel Craig to strut his “look at me I’m a man or puke at me I’m a wimp” stuff, maybe there are some post-modern post-feminist options. Make James Bond a female. Jill Bond, perhaps. Have her stonk about the planet bedding men and killing villains and saving the world. Make all the men into dusting, cleaning bleeding-hearts liberal sorts. Better yet, junk Bond and replace him with Modesty Blaise. She wore black leather, killed ruthlessly, saved the world, had plenty of sex and no one ever understood her relationship with Willie Garvin. Either that, or make Bond the cad he was supposed to be. That’s why we love him, see?