A (hilarious) piece by Chris Longridge for Digital Spy.

Did you already know about this? We didn’t know about this.

So forgive us if you’ve heard this before, but the familiar James Bond theme – dum-di-dum-dum-dum, etc – is an arrangement of Monty Norman’s ‘Good Sign, Bad Sign’, which he wrote as part of a musical based on VS Naipaul’s novel A House For Mr Biswas.

AND IT IS MAD.

A full-on pastiche of Indian classical music, it features lyrics like:

I was born with this unlucky sneeze / And what is worse I came into the world the wrong way round / Pundits all agree that I am the reason why my father fell into the village pond and drowned.

Hindus and Chinese, Africans and Portuguese, everybody worry about my sneeze…

Which makes sense in the context of a story set in an Indian community on Trinidad, but obviously had to go when retooled (by John Barry) for a jet-setting spy adventure.

While many associate John ‘Goldfinger’ Barry with the Bond theme, Norman has successfully defended his copyright in court on many occasions.

He definitely wrote it – but not in the form you’re used to…