James Bond’s Drinking Would Have Made Him the Worst Spy Ever, Say British Researchers

It turns out you can’t down martinis 24/7 and live to tell the tale — not even if you’re James Bond.

A group of spoilsports British researchers proved that point recently when they took a look at 007’s hard-partying lifestyle as depicted in Ian Fleming’s books, and analyzed just how much damage all that booze might have done to Bond were he a real-life international spy. The tongue-in-cheek study, published in the British Medical Journal’s holiday issue, reports that Bond would suffer from such splitting hangover-induced headaches that he wouldn’t be able to chase down villains, and his speech would constantly be slurred; he’d also be quite overweight, thanks to drunken eating binges.

“Their findings showed that Bond was a major alcoholic, in a category of drinkers at highest risk of developing malignancies, depression, hypertension and cirrhosis,” writes the Los Angeles Times about the study. “Despite his reputation as a womanizer, he likely would have suffered from sexual dysfunction. And the reason he preferred his vodka martinis ‘shaken, not stirred,’ contrary to proper mixology? He himself would have been unable to stir due to alcohol-induced tremors.”

Vanity Fair adds that 007 “consumed over four times the recommended amount of alcohol that is recommended for an adult male on a weekly basis,” a lifestyle that led researches to “predict that he would have died from alcohol-related causes, like liver damage, by age 56.”

So if you ever watched Sean Connery or Daniel Craig on the big screen and envied their exploits as 007, at least take heart: the spy will keel over soon enough.

[via British Medical Journal, h/t Vanity Fair]