The Lame Bros Who Think They're James Bond

James Bond has always been an icon to a particular breed of British man. Us white, middle class British men, the ones to whom history has doled out so much flak, injustice and police brutality over the years. For us, the fantasy of an Englishman who wears great suits and sleeps with beautiful women, while retaining at all times the ability to break Balkan mercenaries' necks with his own, bare hands, has always smouldered on our screens like a warm bath in a nuclear winter of derision. Even when he was kinda racist, or Welsh, Bond has been something to cling to whenever those uppity Yanks have cracked jokes about our mouths looking like buckets of smashed cheese, or reminded us that it was we who gave the world concentration camps and Russell Brand.

Of course, this fantasy is just bullshit nostalgia for a time that never really existed, and the closest thing we have to James Bonds IRL are anonymous civil servants who spend their time collating dull information on Georgian diplomats who the Americans invariably get to kill first. Still, in an age when the stereotype of the British male veers between harmlessly oafish Hugh Grant types, and threateningly oafish Tommy Robinson types, the suave, post-war, pre-feminist ideal of the murderous English gent remains a shining totem for the brothers in the UK whiteboy struggle to rally around, screaming and waggling their dicks at the sun like brave but essentially impotent natives.

Alas, there are some people who take it a step too far, and start to think that they actually might be James Bond. You know the type; the guys who put on a Burton's two-piece and make an air pistol with their hands before heading out to face that drink driving charge at Kingston Crown Court. The guys who think that their Foxtons Mini is a pussy-mobile akin to Bond's Aston.

Of course, with the release of Skyfall, Halloween and the advent of tagged social media photos, these guys have been popping up all over the internet. Here are some of the bros who're giving David Shayler a run for his money when it comes to disgracing the British Secret Service.

There's a strange fallacy, one that rages more than ever in 2012, that if you wear a suit, it somehow transforms you into a sophisticated and worldly person. However, what these chaps are forgetting, is that there was once a time when suits were pretty much the only thing that you could wear (apparently my grandfather used to wear one to the beach). Butchers, bakers, beach bums and Blackshirts, the suit was the Hollister hoodie of its day. What it wasn't was a status symbol that qualifies you as a man of class, like a giant candyfloss wig would have in the time of Louis XIV.

All that wearing a suit really tells you in this day and age is that you are going somewhere that requires that you wear one. There's a whole generation of young men, from Loughton to Lagos, who think that wearing a suit makes them Don Draper with a company Peugeot 206. Just because all their mates wear Fruit Of The Loom jumpers with company insignia on them to work, and they wear Ray Bans, they think it makes them masters of the universe. When in actual fact, you're probably more likely to be somebody's bitch at one of those telesales wanker-factories if you have to wear a suit to work. You're not James Bond mate, you're one of those cunts from the Coke Zero adverts.

Then of course there are those whose motives are a little bit seedier, the men for whom dressing up as James Bond seems to be some kind of twisted, retro murder fetish. Our man here appears to have employed a professional photographer to capture him prancing about in his spare room with a gun-shaped cigarette lighter. This guy isn't a professional, he's not an actor or a lookalike (unless he's a Hayden Christensen lookalike), he just had this made because he wanted a photo of himself pretending to be James Bond. For what end, I do not know.

The difference between the Bond fantasy, as opposed to most other saucy costume ideas, is that it's a staunchly heterosexual and thoroughly banal attempt at the concept of pantomime. It follows the same pattern as other, more alternative and fetishistic role-playing games – that idea of pretending to be somebody else and getting some kind of thrill out of it – but that's where the comparison stops. Because it's a selfish, poseurish take on the idea of dressing up. It's lame guys in lame suits dressing up their unfortunate girlfriends in Ann Summers gear while they get to prance about in a tux with a toy gun, looking more like an eccentric who turned up to a wedding than a slut who turned up to a funeral.

Of course this all ties in with the widespread reevaluation of poker. Despite what Ben Affleck and Victoria Coren might tell you, poker is not a glamorous or cool pursuit. Maybe it was if you happened to be playing Sammy Davis Jr and a head of one of the five families in Monte Carlo in 1957, but if you're trying to convince a sales manager from Halifax that your own shoes are valid currency, then it really isn't cool. Ian Fleming's portrayal of the infectious glamour of gambling has now been reduced to people splurging their incapacity benefit on PokerDaddy.com using the screename "CasinoRoyaleWIthCheese".

Which isn't to denigrate Bond. For people who don't like music, he's probably one of the closest things we have to a folk hero in this country. We don't really have a George Washington or a Clint Eastwood figure over here. We do have a long history of great artists, scientists and slightly mad military leaders, but nobody's going to pull as Charles Darwin or Philip Larkin, are they?

Follow Clive on Twitter: @thugclive

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