Becoming Bond for a day with a new immersive London experience 

Secret mission

Dressed to kill, I arrive at the appointed time at the rendezvous point, the Civil Service Club in London’s Great Scotland Yard, along with 13 other journalists.

My fellow would-be secret service agents and I bond over brunch with bubbly before an introduction by Brendan about Imagine, the Bond day and its other products.

We are then briefed on our mission by tour director Andy Jackson, resplendent in a blue check jacket, striped shirt and tie, rounded off by a marvellously eccentric Union Jack waistcoat.

“It is not a passive experience,” he tells us. “We want you to be an agent. We will go through a series of experiences that will test you and see if you can get your double-O licence. I am not your guide, I’m your handler.”

Andy is well qualified, having spent 20 years in the army, 11 years in the police and three years in the civil service, all in intelligence – “the wasteland of mirrors” as he calls it.

The setting is appropriate, too. Formerly Whitehall fire station, the Civil Service Club was among buildings requisitioned by the government during WWII and became a “cleaning house” for interrogation. Interrogators based there still meet up regularly, says Andy.

And if we had any thoughts about the world of espionage being mostly fantasy, he debunks that. “We are in the city of spies,” he declares. “During the Cold War there were about 5,000 spies operating within London. Now the security services reckon that there are in the ballpark of 12,000 spies active in this country, particularly in London.”

On that chilling note, we venture out onto Whitehall’s damp streets, while keeping an eye out for shadowy figures lurking on street corners.

There, Andy explains how Ian Fleming used his own time in naval intelligence woven through with intelligence experience of others to come up with the suave but deadly secret agent, as he points out Bond filming locations and places closely linked with Fleming, Bond and Britain’s secret services. They include anonymous grey buildings likened to icebergs because they are said to have more floors below ground than above.

He leaves us in no doubt that Fleming is Bond, and Bond is Fleming, right down to their shared tastes in women, drinks, fast cars and cologne.

We are then whisked off in black chauffeur-driven vehicles, bound for “Q”. Not to the secretive MI6 lab where 007 is kitted out with ingenious gadgets and weapons, but a shooting range in Camden called AGL Airsoft.

Split into two teams, we are given hands-on instruction and safety training on pistol and rifle shooting, surrounded by an array of even deadlier-looking weapons on the walls. These may be airsoft guns firing soft plastic pellets rather than bullets, but these replicas look, feel and fire just like the real deal.

Calling the shots

Inside the range itself, and kitted out with safety goggles, I’m first to shoot and the instructor presses a Glock 17 semi-automatic gas-powered pistol into my now-palpitating hands.

At the end of the range a bank of 25 discs glow blue. There is no time limit; I just need to score direct hits with my 25 shots to turn each light red. Steadying my nerves, I channel my inner James Bond, take aim and squeeze the trigger, moving along the rows after discharging each shot. I miss just one, and get a round of applause from the other agents in training. It’s the best score of the group – eat your heart out, Scaramanga (aka The Man with the Golden Gun villain)!

Once everyone has had their turn, I’m handed an AEG (automatic electric gun) rifle with telescopic sights that can fire at rapid speeds and am told to hit each disc as it lights up at random, and then knock down 10 pop-up targets. Timing counts for these but there is no limit on shots. I keep aiming too low, though, and my times for completing both are well beaten. Being a deadeye marksman is harder than I thought. But as a testosterone buzz, it’s a blast.

Eau de Bond

Our chauffeurs whisk us back to Mayfair, passing the house where Fleming was born, to visit Floris, a perfumery in the heart of St James’s run by the same family since it opened in 1730.

The only perfumer to hold a Royal Warrant from the Queen, its clientele down the years has included Florence Nightingale, Noel Coward, Winston Churchill, King Edward VIII (later the Duke of Windsor after his abdication), Marilyn Monroe, David Bowie, Princess Diana and, latterly, Benedict Cumberbatch. Plus of course Ian Fleming, whose favourite scent, No. 89, was first created in 1952 and is named after the shop’s address in Jermyn Street. It appeared in several Bond books.

Ninth-generation family member and perfumery director Edward Bodenham gives us a fascinating guided tour of the venerable institution, set in a Grade II listed building with mahogany display cabinets from the Great Exhibition of 1851 and one room set aside as a museum. Scent tester sticks allow us to try No. 89 ourselves. I may smell like Bond but I decide against splashing out £80 for a 100ml bottle.