By Daniel Craig was last seen in character as James Bond while parking his Aston Martin Vantage V8 very spicily on some double-yellows in Whitehall, but it turns out the Bond 25 production has hit the A1(M) north to the Scottish Highlands.
A temporary site has been put up in Aviemore in the north-west of the Cairngorms National Park, with nearby Ardverikie House near Newtonmore broadly reported to be in use for filming.
Funnily enough, though, the Highlands of Scotland weren't mentioned in that broadcast from Ian Fleming's GoldenEye estate in Jamaica which spelt out that London, Italy, Jamaica and Norway would be where the action would take place. As fansite MI6 HQ notes, that might mean that the Highlands will double for Norway at points, though there's a (very remote) chance that Bond might be back in his ancestral land for real. Maybe he wants to take care of some bits of the Skyfall estate that he left unexploded.
"As well as providing an immediate benefit during filming, many of these productions and, most notably, successful movies or well-known TV series also provide a showcase for the area that brings further tourism benefits," a spokesperson for the Highland Council's film office told the BBC. Which tells us precisely nothing.
Fortunately Stewart Nicol, chief executive of the Inverness Chamber of Commerce, was a lot less discreet while chatting to the Daily Mail.
"The return of Bond is fantastic news, and will be a multi-million boost to the Highland economy," he blabbed. "It is really a significant benefit to the whole region. It is not just the production period that brings a substantial economic boost, as they will be spending in the area, but it is the global effect afterward. We saw from Skyfall that scenes of Glencoe attracted global interest, so having the landscape of the region promoted again will be a massive boost."
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