So, after 50 years of James Bond films, who is the nastiest villain?

He was called Elliot Carver, in Tomorrow Never Dies. But thinking about it a bit more, Auric Goldfinger was probably the creepiest – soul-deep repulsion incarnate. Moonraker's Hugo Drax was Hitler with bioweapons, but he wasn't all that impressive in person. Ernst Stavro Blofeld was obviously the most prolific and proved dashed hard to kill. Elektra King (The World Is Not Enough) and Alec Trevelyan (GoldenEye) were both fallen, so they get the Shakespearean sympathy clause scored against their nastiness. And Franz Sanchez in Licence To Kill is a good contender, a really good contender. I'd say Goldfinger, Carver, Sanchez.

ExGreenSlime

I offer the reptilian and louche Francisco Scaramanga, The Man With The Golden Gun: "Ours is the loneliest profession, Mr Bond."

andongni

Franz Sanchez in Licence To Kill is probably the closest thing to a real-life villain in a Bond movie, and scarier because of it. Moonraker's Hugo Drax was pretty sinister, with some of the best lines of any Bond villain: "Look after Mr Bond. See that some harm comes to him." But for sheer psycho-ness, it has to be Max Zorin in A View To A Kill: the product of a Nazi genetics experiment, he sends Grace Jones to garrote Patrick McNee and laughs maniacally as he machine-guns his luckless workers in a flooded mine.

eagleone

Given all the recent spidery business, I nominate the tarantula on Bond's chest in Dr No.

Sue Langdon, Bristol

How long do house spiders live? There's one in my bathroom and I need to know when I can stop strip-washing in the downstairs loo.

Telling me "it's more scared of you than you are of it" (N&Q, 1 March) has never, never, NEVER been any help. The point is, I'm always really, really scared! What I'd like to know is why can't non-arachnophobes just blooming well remove a spider on my behalf, without having to roll their eyes or stand there taking the mickey for a good few minutes?

TerriOrange

Our house in Kent is infested with false widow spiders. They look like small brown black widows. They do bite, and it hurts, although they are not very dangerous. The good news is they hunt and kill the much bigger house spiders.

JamesHannam

I'm an expat living in Australia. Almost the first piece of advice I ever received after landing here was if it moves, kill it. I remember once sitting in my living room when I became aware of a shape next to my head on the curtain. It was an adult Huntsman (you never see the toddlers or teenagers) and it was the size of a dinner plate.

Don't get me started on snakes.

SydneyTaff

My mother-in-law keeps conkers in the corner of each room and swears by them. The incidence of spiders in her house has decreased this year, apparently. I expressed some scepticism: the weather has been milder this year, less wet etc; perhaps fewer spiders decided to seek refuge inside, I said. So: do the conkers keep spders away?

joshthedog

Is it an urban myth that petrol from supermarkets is less efficient than that from the major branded suppliers?

Basically this is asking whether at some point in the production process the suppliers would separate the petrol intended for supermarkets from that intended to be sold elsewhere and treat the two differently. While this is possible, I'd say it would be very unlikely and not cost effective, particularly if the only reason were to supply a customer an inferior product.

CordwainerBird

Our car mechanic told us that the big companies sell their old fuel off to the supermarkets and it gets cruddy and blocks the fuel injectors. We have only bought directly ever since.

01billycat

Any answers?

Where do garden birds go in summer? From July to the start of winter I hardly ever see blackbirds, robins, starlings etc in my garden.

Sally Dignan, Frome, Somerset

What are the questions that should never be asked?

Nicholas Gough, Swindon, Wilts

What is the likelihood of being born at different times in the year? Are there a glut of March babies, for example?

John Harrison, Oxford

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