Just Call me Double Odour 7

GARY Oldman has left Bond shaken and stirred for not being in the real world

-  RICK FULTON

The Oscar-winning actor, 65, who stars as a flatulent spy in Slow Horses, laughed: "Sean Connery never said, 'Hang on a second, I need to have a whiz!' "Slow Horses is about real people we can relate to.

Based on the Slough House novels by Mick Herron, the series on Apple TV+ has been a huge hit since it began last year with a third series starting on Wednesday.

It has even put Gary's co-star, Scottish actor Jack Lowden, into the running to play the new 007.

But Gary's Jackson Lamb, head of Slough House a dumping ground for MI5 rejects - doesn't have the slick appeal of Bond's boss M, given he's rude and doesn't wash.

For the actor who won his Oscar for Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour and has appeared in Harry Potter, Batman and as Dracula and Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy over the past 40 years, Slow Horses has been a gas literally given Lamb's love of a good riff.

Gary said: "He's pretty filthy, smelly.

There are several references to my body odour in this season.

"The cocktail of the dark humour and the dirt-under-the-fingernails reality of it, coupled with the spy genre that we're familiar with and all love the Bond films and The Bourne Identity is great for an actor. I think we've found the perfect balance of the humour and the drama. It's real and yet by degree, it's slightly heightened. It's got edge."