He insists on seasonal ingredients, is keen to sample the most exotic of local cuisines, and waxes lyrical about his breakfast. Charlotte McDonald-Gibson wonders if 007 was the prototype foodie

1. The Perfect Storm

James Bond has a new American publisher: Amazon.com.

William Boyd, the celebrated author and James Bond enthusiast, is to step into Ian Fleming’s shoes and send Britain’s most famous fictional spy out on a new mission.

Pinewood Shepperton studios slumped to a £3.9m loss in 2011 after it failed in an attempt to build replicas of Paris, New York and Amsterdam on green belt land.

Pinewood's dream to bring the mean streets of New York and the Paris boulevards to the Buckinghamshire countryside has collapsed after the Government blocked the studio's development plans. Filmmakers were yesterday left bewildered as the decision came just a week after the Prime Minister announced his backing for the industry.

Six years on, it turns out that British secret agents in Moscow really did use a plastic rock in a park to spy on Russia in 2006, despite attempts by the government to dismiss the story at the time. We should not be surprised. Preposterous as it seems, the more improbable the charge, the more likely it is to be true in the sometimes schoolboy world of spying.

David Cameron revealed his interest in movie star gossip on a visit to Britain's most famous film studios today.

Starring: Gianni Di Gregorio, Valeria De Franciscis

A pert and pretty actress who was both talented and versatile, Angela Scoular is possibly best known for appearing in two James Bond films, in both of which she provided memorable moments of dalliance for the agent. As Agent Buttercup she shared a bath scene with Bond (David Niven) in Casino Royale (1966), and as Ruby Bartlett she frolicked among the bed sheets with George Lazenby's Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969).

It may be utterly implausible, but Salt is jolly good fun. Angelina Jolie stars as Evelyn Salt, a secret agent whose work for the US government sees her kidnapped and beaten in North Korea but rarely manages to mess up her hair.

The buzz coming off this show has been as loud as the sound of a devilish gadget fashioned by Q. The name that counts here, though, is Bishop, Mike Bishop, not James Bond. Mike Bishop, father of Des, is a former actor and model who was in line for the James Bond role but was beaten to it by George Lazenby. Though this could be seen as a lucky escape, Bishop tells us that his father can't watch the spy films because they remind him of a career that might have been. That regret paled into insignificance when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year.

Starring Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber

She's become the world's number-one female celebrity – and it will take more than a scandalous new biography to bring the divine Miss Jolie down, writes Liz Hoggard