Charlie Higson's top 10 Bond villains

To mark the 100th anniversary of Ian Fleming's birth later this month, Charlie Higson, the author of the bestselling Young Bond series, has chosen his favourite Bond villains.

The latest Young Bond, Hurricane Gold, is out in paperback on May 29. The next Young Bond, By Royal Command, is published in September 2008
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1. Blofeld
Blofeld in the Fleming books has a weird chameleon-like quality, one moment (in Thunderball) he's huge and fat and has no interest in sex, the next moment (in On Her Majesty's Secret Service) he's quite ordinary, has lost his earlobes and has a syphilitic nose, finally (in You Only Live Twice) he's very tall and thin and dressed in medieval samurai armour. He's the only recurring villain in the books, and does more psychological harm to Bond than anyone else, right down to killing his wife. In the films he is of course the most used baddie. Donald Pleasance in YOLT defined exactly what a Bond villain should be - the bald head, the scar, the coldness, the sarcasm, the funny foreign accent, the Mao suit, the white cat, the lair, the men in colour coded jumpsuits. Perfect.
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2. Goldfinger
The best name and the best one-liner - in the movies, at least: "Do you expect me to talk?" "No, mister Bond, I expect you to die!" - he's the most vivid of the villains in the books, and what a lucky coincidence that his name matches his obsession. If he'd been born Ernst Stavro Stamptongue maybe he'd have been obsessed with stamps and we would have been deprived of a great plot to rob Fort Knox.
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3. Mr Wynt & 4. Mr Kidd
Should these two be down as one entry? I don't know. They are a double act, inseparable and very sinister. They embody a prime requisite for a Bond villain - campness. (Fleming wanted his friend Noel Coward to play Dr No - he politely declined - shame.) In the book of Diamonds Are Forever Wynt and Kidd make up for the lack of a memorable main baddie (the central villains, the Spang Brothers, are very weak.) These two killers relish their job and relish each other. For the film the casting was particularly good, Putter Smith (Kidd) and Bruce Glover (Wynt) getting the weird thing to a tee.
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5. Rosa Klebb
Her description in From Russia With Love, scampering through the soviet secret police headquarters to watch enemy spies being tortured is delirious, and when she tarts herself up to try and seduce Tatiana Romanova the effect is quite startling. Also of course she had the best gadget weapon - knives in her shoes.
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6. Odd Job
Ok - technically more of a sidekick than a villain, but anyone with a lethal bowler hat has to make the list.
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7. Red Grant
Possibly the first psycho killer in British fiction. The book of From Russia With Love opens with a description of Grant being massaged that lodges in the mind and shows what a vividly descriptive writer Fleming was. This guy is dangerous. The brutal fight on the train in the film version still stands up today.
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8. Xenia Onatopp
From Goldeneye. One of the few truly memorable villains who don't appear in the original books (Jaws being another. He would have made the list if he hadn't turned goodie in Moonraker and become a comedy figure) A pretty good name and a pretty good method of killing - crushing men to death between her shapely thighs.

9. Doctor No
The first Bond movie villain, played very nicely by Joseph Wiseman. In the book he's scarier and stranger (he has claws instead of hands and is about ten feet tall.) When Fleming invented him he was really seeing how much he could get away with. Quite a lot, as it turned out.

10. Irma Bunt
Blofeld's lover and side-kick. The model for all those horrible scary women who stick by their deranged lovers and worship them no matter what - psychologically very astute of Fleming. Irma Bunt has something of Myra Hindley and Rose West about her.

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Women Who Love Porn: An Asylum Investigation

When you think of the women who attend adult movie conventions, you probably picture porn stars. But there are plenty of non-professional ladies who appreciate a "four-legged flesh session" captured on camera.

In an effort to continue the work of Alfred Kinsey, Asylum traveled to the Adult Entertainment Expo to track down this rare breed and ask the tough, important questions all men want the answers to:

What got you interested in porn? What kind of porn do you watch? Do you have any suggestions on how a guy could get his girlfriend into watching porn?

The guy could be anyone, not necessarily an Asylum editor.

Here are some excerpts from our interviews, plus pictures of the fans with their favorite porn stars.
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Plan for Britain's biggest sculpture

Horse and art ... Mark Wallinger's shortlisted proposal for the Ebbsfleet Landmark


A monumental, lifelike white horse is the early favourite to become the largest piece of public sculpture Britain has ever produced. At cost of £2m, it will be more than twice as expensive as Antony Gormley's celebrated Angel of the North. And, at 50 metres, it will be well over double the angel's height.

Five proposals for the sculpture have been unveiled. The artists are Mark Wallinger, who came up with the giant horse; Rachel Whiteread, who proposes a cast house atop a mountain of recycled rubble; Richard Deacon; Christopher Le Brun, who proposes a wing and disc; and Daniel Buren. The sculpture will sit next to the A2 in Kent near Ebbsfleet, which over the next 25 years is planned to become the site of more than 10,000 new homes. The landmark will be visible to travellers as they pull out of Ebbsfleet International train station bound for the continent, and to motorists as they drive to and from Dover.

Wallinger, who won the Turner prize last year, has long been interested in racehorses. He said that he was thinking of "Wapping Street [the A2], along which horses had travelled into Britain for centuries; about the white horses carved into chalk hills; about Hengist and Horsa in the sixth century, who landed as Saxon invaders near Ebbsfleet. The source of our word "horse" is Horsa. And then, in a convoluted way, I came to discover that the white horse was in fact the symbol of Kent."

His horse, should it be selected, would probably be constructed in steel "like the hull of a ship" and then painted. He said his proposal would be a "hopeful and deeply rooted symbol". He has been scouring the stud books to find the perfect thoroughbred grey that he could use as his model.

Whiteread intends to reprise her famous, contentious cast of a house for the Ebbsfleet project, while Le Brun proposes to cast a vast wing and disc from concrete for the site. "It would be a very simple form," he said, "that would produce a lot of complicated effects" as light and shadow ran over the work.

Richard Deacon proposes a "nest" of steel polyhedrons, almost like a collapsed pylon (a mass of pylons surrounds the site). He has also compared his structure to a cairn.

The only non-British artist on the shortlist, Buren, who is French, proposes a stacked tower of cubes intersected by a laser beam. The proposals go on display at Bluewater shopping centre, Kent, from May 27. The winner will be announced in the autumn, and completion is expected in 2010.

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