Let’s say, for argument’s sake, it was deliberate. After all, Norton is not without talent – just witness his complex performance as a psychotic thug in hit drama Happy Valley. Yet that still doesn’t hide the fact that he has a thing for characters that lack any discernible depth (War & Peace, Grantchester). Can you really imagine him exuding raw, down-and-dirty masculinity or deftly delivering an arch quip or some playful innuendo?

Tonally, you’d expect his Bond to be closer to Roger Moore’s than Sean Connery’s: a clubbable dandy who throws the odd well-timed punch rather than a violent brawler with pectorals that radiate power and aggression. Unfashionable though it is to say this, I’d prefer the next 007 to have a bit more machismo than Norton: to be able to switch from urbane to ruthless faster than you can say, “shaken not stirred”.

Norton is too predictable, too generically pretty and – like Hiddleston – too soft. Besides, he doesn’t have the star wattage just yet to carry a massive global franchise.

Someone like Tom Hardy, however, does – and would provide a fresh fillip to a series that is fast-becoming stale, with Craig now looking weary. A mercurial character actor with a leading man’s jawline, Hardy not only has thuggish animal magnetism in his arsenal – as seen in Bronson – but also emotional repression (The Drop) and suave, roguish charm (Inception). He’s a modern-day Brando.