I suppose you win some, you loose some. I’ve been to some great nights and events over the years, but I couldn’t go to them all. Last week saw a special concert at the Royal Albert Hall celebrating sixty years of James Bond. Smeg knows how it passed under my radar, but I didn’t know anything about it until it actually happened. I would obviously have loved to be there – it would have been amazing. Fortunately there is a recording of it on Amazon Prime, which I just caught up with.

To be fair, now that I’ve watched the recording, I can’t say I’m as heartbroken as I might have been. As far as I can tell, the night was good but not awesome; it probably wasn’t up there with Monty Python Live, let’s say. While Dame Shirley Bassey did a couple of her songs, the night mostly consisted of covers performed by people I’ve never heard of. According to Calvin Dyson here, the Amazon recording misses quite a bit out from the live performance, so this could be just a result of my not having been there, but I think they could have done a lot more. It did not strike me as epic. For one, none of the actors who played Bond made an appearance; there was none of the sort of play which gets me excited. It was just one Bond theme performed after another, in not that brilliant a way.

No doubt had I been there I would have been buzzing. Yet, unlike Python in 2014, I didn’t see any of those incredible, jaw-dropping moments which stick in your memory for years; and unlike Python, nights like this aren’t unique: no doubt in a few years there will be another concert like it, probably incorporating any newer Bond themes there may be. When that happens I intend to go, but until then I have the recording of this concert to keep me going – not to mention the music videos of the original songs.