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Kong one morning, tugged on her knee-length skirt and looked up to say, ‘Maud, tonight I am going to creep into your room, climb under the duvet and make mad passionate love to you.’
    Unfazed, Maud replied, ‘If I find out you have, I’ll be very cross.’
    Poor Hervé.
    Karl Stromberg was very nearly a member of SPECTRE, as I mentioned earlier. However, his bizarre undersea ideology was enough to make him a stand-alone villain, especially with his quirky webbed fingers. Curt Jurgens played Stromberg, and we became great friends. He introduced me to Gstaad, and when I realized I’d have to find a home outside of the crippling UK tax regime, he offered my family and me his chalet in the Swiss resort to see if we’d like the town. We did, and moved there.
THE TALLER THEY COME …
    Every good villain has a good henchman, of course. The most memorable of all has to be Jaws, as played by my good friend Richard Kiel.
    Richard, who stands seven foot two and a half inches tall, was cast after script supervisor June ‘Randy’ Randall saw him in an episode of the US TV series
Barbary Coast
. She knew the team was looking for a very tall actor – and they didn’t come much taller than Richard.
    When we filmed the scenes among the ruined Karnak temples in Egypt, Lewis Gilbert told Richard that for one shot he needed to be up in the scaffolding, high above Jimmy Bond. Richard went pale, and said he suffered with vertigo. ‘Hey, I don’t even like being this tall!’ he exclaimed.
    Faced with what seemed an insurmountable problem, my stunt double, Martin Grace, said he’d impersonate Richard, and used pieces of orange peel wrapped in tin foil for Jaws’ ‘metal’ teeth. As it turned out, Martin mimicked Richard’s every move so well that when Richard’s mother saw it she asked him how on earth – with his fear of heights – he managed to film that sequence. She wouldn’t believe it wasn’t him.
    Richard Kiel as Jaws was voted the best Bond villain in a recent poll.
    Of course, Jaws got his name from the ominous, glinting steel teeth he wore. Poor devil, they were so uncomfortable to wear – Richard could only keep them in for about half a minute at a time. The comical expressions he had to convey were quite the opposite of what he was feeling, with an overwhelming urge to gag!
    His teeth could munch through solid cables – if he’d had his Weetabix.
    Jaws’ popularity stemmed from the humour Richard injected into the character, and we all agreed he made a superb villain. In the script, he died at the end of
The Spy Who Loved Me
; however, Cubby felt it could be worth saving him, and the scene was re-written. Jaws didn’t drown, but popped up in the ocean and started swimming. That raised a round of applause at the premiere – especially from the youngsters.
    He did of course return, in
Moonraker
, as did Hervé Villechaize … for a set visit. Our unit publicist thought he’d spotted a photo opportunity and asked if they’d pose together, as ‘little and large’ villains. Richard quite rightly said, ‘I don’t do freak photos.’
TO SPACE AND BEYOND!
    Moonraker
was filmed in Paris as an Anglo-French co-production under the 1965–79 film treaty. France had much more favourable taxation laws for the creative industries, and that was a great lure to Cubby in setting up the film there, but part of their qualifying criteria was that the lead villain had to be French. Hugo Drax was going to be played by James Mason, who coincidentally I worked with later that year in
North Sea Hijack
; I admired him greatly and thought it terrific casting. However, because of the qualifying criteria, bilingual Frenchman Michael Lonsdale was accordingly offered the part, and made a wonderfully underplayed yet menacing Drax. He became the first Bond villain to take a giant step for mankind, and perished in space.
    Arriving on the
Moonraker
publicity trail – me and my two mates, Michael Lonsdale and Richard Kiel.
    Of course,