From time to time you'll have to do more for your image than show off your car or expel cigarette smoke through your teeth with a quiet hiss. People will get tired of just admiring your rather cruel mouth. In the end you won't be able to get out of saying something with it. For those occasions here are some tips on how to impart a more distinctively 007ish flavour to your talk - with one or two preliminary cautions about chat in general.

All discussions, whatever their topic may be, are out. If your audience includes anybody who really knows about anything, from unarmed combat (see Exercise) to Wagner (see Culture), you'll be out of your depth in no time. So stick to generalizations, thrown-off remarks, dark hints, conversation stoppers, not starters. More effective as well as safer.

Now master and rehearse the following:

1) "The leader of a band of gipsies once told me he'd always give me a job - taming his women and killing for him [FRWL 17]. A great compliment to a gajo."

"Sorry, to a what?"

"Sorry, to a foreigner. Turkish word."

Approach via either "The nicest thing ever said to me" or "If I ever get the sack from the service" or both.

2) "The only invisible ink I ever use is the oldest one in the world. Comes from a rather personal source [OHMSS 16]."

You're in no danger of being asked to amplify this one.

3) "This bit of flesh in the palm of your hand below your thumb. The Cayman Islanders call it the Love Mount. They say a girl's good in bed if her Love Mount is well developed [DN 4]. Like yours."

You won't mind amplifying this one.

4) "You probably couldn't find ten non-squeal killers in France [CR 1]."

Or wherever you happen to be. Difficult to refute.

5) "My education was mostly in Latin and Greek [YOLT 11]. No help in ordering a cup of coffee in Rome or Athens."

Or anywhere else. A good cover for your total ignorance (as we take it to be) of all foreign languages except French and German. These - while we're on the subject - you're supposed to have a first-class command of [YOLT 21], but if, like most of us, you're shaky on them, cover up by refusing to speak a single word of either, not seeming to understand anything more complicated than 'Bonjour' or 'Danke', and explaining that too many of the wrong sort of people know about your linguistic abilities.

6) Your eyes have the rare quality of chatoyance [DAF 5]."

"Sorry, of what?"

"Sorry, when jewels have chatoyance the colour in the lustre changes with movement in the light."

Not to be used in Bond Street or other thoroughfares with opulent window displays.

7) When you're very frightened, you know, your hair really does stand on end. Mine did, anyway, when somebody put a poisonous centipede in my bed [DN 6]."

Lead into this via "It's funny how true these old cliches are." In your environment you shouldn't have to wait long for one to turn up.

8) "A friend of mine who's head of French Counter-intelligence once said to me, 'I enjoy strong sensations [CR 10].'

Our founder talked about the Deuxieme Bureau here and used the French phrase for the bit about sensations, but see remarks on Remark 5.

9) Choose one:

a) "Few Asiatics are courageous gamblers [FRWL 17]."

b) "The highland Turks are all right. The Turks of the plains are no good [T 5]."

c) "They're a tough, forgotten race, the Chigroes [DN 6]."

"Sorry, the who?"

"Sorry, the Chinese Negroes of the West Indies. They've got some of the intelligence of the Chinese and most of the vices of the black man."

d) "Koreans are rather lower than apes in the mammalian hierarchy [G 16]."

Use not more than one or at the most two of the above in any one evening.

10) "For me, the right ingredients of an exciting adventure are physical exertion, mystery, and a ruthless enemy [DN 7]."

Smile when you say this one. Done too straight it might cause an embarrassed snigger.

11) "Before a man's forty, girls cost nothing. After that you have to pay money, or tell a story [DAF 23]. Of the two it's the story that hurts most. Anyway I'm not forty yet."

You can adjust the 'forty' a little, if required, but on no account stretch it beyond sixty-five.

12) "What you need is a course of T.L.C. [G 23]"

"Sorry, of what?"

"Sorry, of Tender Loving Care treatment."

"When's it going to start?"

"Now."

Your mouth comes ruthlessly down on hers.