All the James Bond actors playing cards together.
Bill Fairclough pictured over five decades playing cards.
Let me
introduce myself. I am Charles Fairclough, the son of Bill Fairclough who was a
secret agent working for British Intelligence and
other state agencies for about five decades. I was the Operations Director of FaireSansDire which was a global
niche intelligence agency that my father established in 1978 with the backing
of Colonel Alan Pemberton CVO MBE and Barrie Parkes BEM: both worked
extensively in British Intelligence for many decades.
On 7 August
2023 I published an article about my
father
in which were listed circa 60 life threatening or near death incidents he endured.
Roughly half of those events were assassination attempts, all of which he
somehow survived, often thanks to Barrie Parkes and others associated with British
Intelligence. Since then tens of thousands of people have read that article and
we at TheBurlingtonFiles have been inundated with requests for us to compare him
with fictional spies, especially James Bond, as characterized by Ian Fleming.
Accordingly, I
have published this article but limited James Bond’s characteristics and
adventures to those set out in Ian Fleming’s novels. Carrying out a comparison
of a real spy (Bill Fairclough) and Fleming’s fictional James Bond was not
without difficulty. Why? For starters, my father was real as were his activities
whereas Bond never existed and all of Bond’s larger than life thrills and
spills were merely figments of Fleming’s imagination. Nevertheless, given Ian
Fleming was a skilful writer he managed to create a multidimensional identity
for Bond as if he were a real person and that is what I have compared with my
father. I have used what Ian Fleming, not John le Carré, concocted to be his
version of a “perfect spy”, namely James Bond.
Fleming loosely
based James Bond on some people he knew in real life. Indeed, Fleming described
Bond as "a compound of all the secret agents and
commando types I met during the war". However, Fleming, being an
egotist, instilled another important ingredient into the mix of James Bond’s
character. Bond became not just the amalgam already described but a combo of
that and of Ian Fleming himself and his own tastes, preferences and traits many
of which Fleming consciously or otherwise added to the pot pourri we now
recognise as James Bond. I’ll refer later to that pot pourri making up Ian
Fleming’s “perfect spy” as “Fleming’s Bond concoction”.
The 12 novels
and two short story collections featuring James Bond which Ian Fleming wrote that
I have analysed (using inter alia Artificial Intelligence) were:
Casino Royale
– April 13, 1953; Live and Let Die – April 5, 1954; Moonraker – April 7, 1955; Diamonds
Are Forever – March 26, 1956; From Russia, with Love – April 8, 1957; Dr No –
March 31, 1958; Goldfinger – March 23, 1959; For Your Eyes Only (Short Stories)
– April 11, 1960 including "From a View to a Kill", "For Your
Eyes Only", "Quantum of Solace" and "Risico". As said,
I have based James Bond’s background and lifestyle on the contents of these
books only and ignored all the 25 official James Bond films produced by Eon
Productions. Other non-Eon Bond-related films (like Never Say Never Again in
1983, starring Sean Connery, and the 1967 version of Casino Royale) are not
part of this official series and have also been ignored.
COMPARISON OF JAMES BOND’S AND BILL FAIRCLOUGH’S BACKGROUNDS AND LIFESTYLES |
||
Issues |
The Fictional
James Bond |
The
Real Bill Fairclough |
Ancestry |
British – Scottish |
British – English |
|
|
|
Religion
at birth |
Christian, Scottish Presbyterian |
Christian, Church of England |
|
|
|
Countries
lived in |
The UK, France and Jamaica |
The UK, USA and Bahamas |
|
|
|
Schooling |
Eton/Fettes |
Red House/St Peter’s York |
|
|
|
Universities |
Geneva |
Oxford/UEA/Northumbria |
|
|
|
Scholarships |
None |
Two |
|
|
|
Languages
spoken |
French/German |
French |
|
|
|
Age
on losing virginity |
16 |
13 |
|
|
|
Siblings |
None |
Brother and sister |
|
|
|
Married |
Once but widowed that day |
Married twice, divorced once |
|
|
|
Children |
None |
Two known |
|
|
|
Height
when circa 40 years’ old |
6' 0'' or 183 cm |
5' 11'' or 180 cm |
|
|
|
Weight
when circa 40 years’ old |
168 lbs or 76 kg |
168 lbs or 76 kg |
|
|
|
Illnesses
suffered |
Poisonings + a few others |
Poisonings + many others |
|
|
|
Favourite
sports |
Skiing, golf and swimming |
Football and tennis |
|
|
|
Favourite
films |
Not known |
Get Carter (1971) |
|
|
|
Favourite
books |
The Bible |
The Godfather (1972) |
|
|
|
Favourite
music |
Jazz, Bach |
Sixties/seventies hits |
|
|
|
Favourite
alcoholic drinks |
Martini or whiskey |
Newcastle Brown or lager top |
|
|
|
Favourite
non-alcoholic drinks |
Strong coffee |
Ribena |
|
|
|
Favourite
meals |
Scrambled eggs, roast beef |
Filet mignon, pork/lamb chops |
|
|
|
Favourite
restaurant |
Scott’s (Sea Food), London |
Mandarin Grill, Hong Kong |
|
|
|
Favourite
casino |
Casino Royale Royat, France |
Les Ambassadeurs, London |
|
|
|
Favourite
casino game |
Chemin de fer |
European single zero roulette |
|
|
|
Alcohol
consumption aged 40 |
Excessive |
Excessive |
|
|
|
Cigarette
consumption aged 40 |
60 a day on average |
40 a day on average |
|
|
|
Cigar
consumption aged 40 |
None |
On occasion |
|
|
|
Recreational
drug intake aged 40 |
Amphetamine Benzedrine |
Marijuana |
|
|
|
Preferred
cars |
Aston Martins and Bentleys |
Jaguars |
|
|
|
MI6
codename |
007 |
JJ |
|
|
|
MI6
standing |
MI6 officer and field agent |
MI6 secret agent |
|
|
|
Age
when operational |
Circa 18 to 42 |
Circa 19 to 70 |
|
|
|
Unarmed
combat training |
MI6 |
Glaswegian/other bouncers et al |
|
|
|
Skiing
skills |
Excellent on land only |
Reasonable on water only |
|
|
|
Armed
combat training |
MI6 |
Ex SAS/MI6 experts |
|
|
|
Shooting
skills |
First class marksman |
First class marksman |
|
|
|
Professional
qualifications |
None |
FCA MSI MCT |
|
|
|
Highest
rank in UK armed forces |
Naval Commander |
None |
|
|
|
Spy
agencies worked for/with |
MI6 and the CIA |
MI5, MI6, CIA + Others |
|
|
|
Countries
operated in |
Circa 12 |
At least 120 |
|
|
|
Countries
visited on operations |
Circa 20 |
More than 50 |
|
|
|
Intelligence
agencies owned |
None |
FaireSansDire |
|
|
|
Number
of directorships |
None |
More than 50 |
|
|
|
Number
of subordinates |
Acted as a lone field agent |
Sometimes tens of thousands |
|
|
|
Number
of near death incidents |
Circa 40-50 in 24 years |
Circa 60 in 50+ years |
|
|
|
Number
of kills |
36 direct hits |
Classified |
|
|
|
Honours
awarded by HMG |
Order St Michael/St George |
None |
|
|
|
What struck me
during the course of this analysis was that ignoring the looks of all the Bond
actors when compared to my father, “Fleming’s Bond concoction” was
superficially not that dissimilar to my father. That is hardly surprising given
my father was a real secret agent and James Bond was “Fleming’s Bond
concoction”, ie what Ian Fleming thought a secret agent should be like. Even
so, while these two profiles might help you spot a spy the key ingredients of
what make a good spy are missing. Those ingredients include a psychological cocktail
of his/her temperament, psychological disposition, integrity and the extent of
his/her suspicious nature.
A montage of photos of James Bond actors.
A montage of photos of Bill Fairclough.
If you set aside
Bond’s naval background and my father’s commercial background, they had a lot
in common except that your average MI6 recruit (ie “Fleming’s Bond concoction”)
was less scholarly than and lacked the intellect of my father. According to
Barrie Parkes, it was that intellectual difference twixt your average MI6
recruit and my father combined with the aforementioned psychological cocktail that
had led Colonel Alan Pemberton to recruit and invest so much in my father. In
Pemberton’s eyes my father had far more to offer than “Fleming’s Bond
concoction”, which was after all only an amalgam of traditional “secret agents
and commando types” with a shedload of Fleming’s character stirred not shaken into
the mix! Mind you, that was Pemberton’s speciality: recruiting agents
intellectually smarter than he was and officers who seriously outranked him
militarily. Little wonder he was a legend in British Intelligence.
As Colonel
Pemberton said, the best spies don’t know they are spies. That seemed to have
been Ian Fleming’s problem. He knew he was not a real spy and that Bond was
fiction. Put another way, behind closed doors Ian Fleming may have privately longed
to have been a real secret agent just like the Bill Fairclough he never knew or
met. Was that the motivation behind creating Bond? Fleming may have had an
exciting life in the Second World War but it lacked the stuff secret agents
lived with 24/7 and which only real adrenalin junkies could sustain and thrive
on. Begrudgingly Fleming probably realised that no matter how good a writer he
was, his fictional agent James Bond would never be a real secret agent “running
in the field”.
Ignoring all the
psychological nuances, the main difference between James Bond and Bill
Fairclough will always be that Bill Fairclough lived in the real world and didn’t
save the world every time a book or film was published about him. Nonetheless,
my father’s exploits would have pleased Vesper Lynd. In real life, it
has been estimated that the funds my father recovered for HM Treasury et al from
fraudsters, mobsters and enemies of the state over five decades were ample to
fund the whole of British Intelligence for a few years in the seventies.
As for James Bond
in real life, the only adage I have heard relating to my father was that in 1991
in Hong Kong when he was staying as usual in The Mandarin Oriental Hotel, a
package addressed to James Bond was delivered to him. It had been couriered
from Tokyo by a British soft commission broker/dealer working in Japan who had
dined with him at the Mandarin Grill the night before. The package was
delivered by the hotel’s business support team who had close ties with
FaireSansDire and predictably suspected the package might be for FaireSansDire’s
boss, namely my father. The hotel’s business unit allegedly had close ties with
FaireSansDire and no doubt may have had even closer clandestine ties with
others in Hong Kong at the time.
Anyway, the
package contained a list of businessmen allegedly connected to various Yakuza
and Triad gangs involved in money laundering in the Far East. The same villains
had apparently tried but failed to murder my father after the dinner the night
before. Paradoxically, that dinner must have been hilarious because Barrie
Parkes had somehow infiltrated the hotel’s Tannoy and speaker phone systems.
Once ensconced therein he had begun to audibly demean those in the Mandarin
Grill who were maintaining purportedly covert surveillance over my father. He
taunted one of them for wearing a grimy Special Forces tie when in fact he’d
never served in The Regiment and mocked another because her soiled wig was a futile
disguise bearing in mind she wore it so often. They left before finishing their
main courses.
The reason my
father’s guest was fearfully impressed was that he discovered that Barrie Parkes
was in Brussels in Belgium that night! Having witnessed the commotion in the
restaurant, the broker agreed to immediately report what he knew to the
appropriate authorities as long as he could say in any court of law that he had
not sent the data to Bill Fairclough or FaireSansDire as an intermediary for
HMG. That was why the package was addressed to James Bond c/o The Mandarin
Oriental Hotel, Hong Kong from Dr Yes … yes you may have guessed it! Needless
to say, my father’s activities in Hong Kong would almost certainly have been
monitored by the good, the bad and the downright ugly.
I hope you have
found this article fascinating. If you have any comments please email me via https://theburlingtonfiles.org/index.html#/contact-us.
This article was
first published on 13 September 2024.
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