Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

In a truly inspired move, the producers of the next James Bond Film, Casino Royle have named the Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen as the villain, Le Chiffre. It's said that Ian Fleming based the character on the unsavoury British occultist Aleister Crowley, by the way. The 007 creator gave his evil genius a weakness for torment and a liking for terror because that's the way bad guys were in 1953 and that's the way they continue to be in 2006.

But a Dane as an evil cartoon character? Surely the benchmark for wicked sophistication is the Brit, not the Viking? You know: Gary Oldman, Jeremy Irons, Jonathan Pryce, Anthony Hopkins and, best of all, Alan Rickman. But maybe that's just for the US market. Given the ongoing turmoil in the Middle Eastern sector, a malevolent Dane will pack the house down Dubai, not to mention Saudi.

How Mads will play in Old Europe is a trickier proposition, though. Because Europeans are cut off from mainland Britain, they fail to understand just how evil they can appear to be. Being "culturally sensitive" and because they speak English with foreign accents, many Europeans also "have issues" with those who portray them as depraved. An example of this sensitivity: In the German version of that all-time classic "Die Hard", the more extremely Teutonic terrorists are identified only as "European", and the name of Alan Rickman's character had to be changed from Hans Gruber to Jack Gruber.