Donald or Donovan

People who know me personally and have played with me or against me in team quizzes might have difficulty believing this next statement, but I do have times that I wish I could have just kept my mouth shut.

My friend Adam, one of our team in the Aberavon Rugby Club, was question master on Thursday. And honestly, I’m not just saying this, he produced a great quiz. I love it when you get asked a few testing questions, where you don’t know the answer (or you don’t know that you know the answer) but there is an entry to them, in that you can use what you do know to work out what you don’t. For example – the stapedius muscle is the smallest skeletal muscle in the human body – where in the human body will you find it? I don’t recall ever hearing of it before, but I went on the fact that the stapes – otherwise the stirrup – is one of ossicles in the ear. So I answered ‘ear’ – happy days! There’s quite a skill to asking questions which give the teams two chances – either through knowing the answer anyway or being able to work it out.

That’s not got anything much to do with why I wish I’d kept my mouth shut, only that it illustrates that we are talking about a quiz that I really enjoyed. Adam produced a handout. In the handout there were twenty five James Bond villains from the films, and the names of the characters they played. At the bottom were the titles of the twenty five films in which they appeared (so four of them were different Blofelds, for example). It must have taken a lot of time and effort to put together. So, as Adam was reading them out, he came to Robert Shaw’s character – Donald ‘Red’ Grant from “From Russia With Love”. “Donovan Grant.” I blurted out, without thinking, because that’s the name I’ve always heard given. Adam, rather than telling me words to the effect of – shut yer gob, the question master is always right – merely politely replied, “Well, that’s what it says on Wikipedia.” I do try to control myself, but it doesn’t always work. For what it’s worth Adam, I am sorry.

However, I am also rather anal about these things so, anyway, I checked up. Sure enough, it lists the Robert Shaw character as Donald ‘Red’ Grant on Wikipedia, and also says exactly the same on imdb. I went to the text of the original novel, though, and Ian Fleming definitely called him Donovan. Now, it would probably put it beyond contention if I watched the film, notebook in hand. But I don’t really have time – or inclination to do that. So maybe you can answer – did they change the name to Donald for the film?