Ah, Daniel Craig as James Bond. I miss him already. Amazon MGM Studios, which is auditioning for his successor, might as well just put out a disclaimer: “Yes, we know, we can only go downhill from here. And not in the sense of being pursued by masked assassins on skis.”The thing about Craig is that he snarled and purred at the same time. He looked as if he could casually accept a glass of Champagne in the middle of bursting a blood vessel, but only so he could throw it in a passing assailant’s face. He was an angry Bond for an angry age, yet when you saw him kick back on a boat in Jamaica with a bad knee and no intention of coming out of retirement, that also made perfect sense. He was a wounded, seething, morally ambivalent 007, and he was, crucially, older than me.Every now and again I like to sip on the foolish and ancient frippery that is Next James Bond speculation. I enjoy being appalled. Him, really? Might as well fire up the AI software. That guy who looks like the younger brother of a kid you played rounders with once in 1987? Be serious.I’ve been receiving regular, unsolicited emails detailing the latest bookmaker odds on who will replace Craig since at least 2016, the year before he confirmed he would return for his fifth and final outing, but it’s only recently that I’ve had to confront the terrifying possibility that the role might now skip an entire generation. Could the next Bond actually be ... Gen Z? Someone with no coherent memories of the old century? Is that allowed?Over the past decade alone of Next James Bond talk – this niche hobby predates both Craig’s casting and the invention of email – the names being touted have gone through several phases. In 2016 it was all Tom Hardy, Tom Hiddleston, Idris Elba, Damian Lewis and Henry Cavill. James Norton was mentioned in dispatches. Aidan Turner, winning hearts as Ross Poldark, crept into the “running” for a job that did not exist at the time and, had it done so, would not have been decided by a bookie.Jamie Bell gained traction in 2017 after he appeared in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, which had nothing to do with spying but was produced by Barbara Broccoli, who held creative control of Bond, together with Michael G Wilson, her half-brother, until last year. Later, Richard Madden proved he could keep his wits about him on a train in the BBC series Bodyguard and duly found himself in the eye of 007 conjecture.By 2020 the Attack of the Jacks was under way in earnest, with Jack Lowden eclipsing the former favourite Jacks, O’Connell and Huston, in the dubious world of odds-setting for novelty bets. “Denny Sausage star fancied to play 007” another optimistic press release declared, although that’s obviously no way to talk about Paul Mescal.Cillian Murphy, Robert Pattinson, Jamie Dornan, Sam Heughan, Henry Golding and Kit Harrington were all mentally armed with a string of double entendres and an exploding pen. Then Netflix launched Bridgerton, propelling Regé-Jean Page into the tabloid chatter. The name’s Styles, Harry Styles? No one said any of this had to make sense.We have now reached the business end of Bond’s regeneration into a younger model. Indeed, youth is said to be the most desired attribute of the next 007. Any actor who has fond memories of repeatedly watching their videotape copy of A View to a Kill – a film so old that the guy who wants to destroy Silicon Valley is the villain – probably shouldn’t bother showing up to the audition.The names now floating about include Aaron Taylor-Johnson (pushing it, surely, at 35), Callum Turner (36, need I say more?), Harris Dickinson (29), Jacob Elordi (28, so Gen Z by most definitions) and Louis Partridge (22 going on 23), while other fresh-faced hopefuls with at least half-decent agents, such as Tom Francis (26, and best known for stage roles), are reported to be trying their luck. The advantage of hiring a young actor is that they’ll have the stamina to complete five or six films before they wonder if MI6 is really for them. The disadvantage is that no one will be able to tell Bond he’s a dinosaur.[ Remember when Ian Botham was going to be ‘the next James Bond’?Opens in new window ]At this point I’d prefer if Amazon MGM Studios wrong-footed the speculators by throwing all this veneration of youth out of the window, hiring from the “lost generation” of fortysomething maybe-Bonds and just telling the kids that they went in another direction. This is entirely selfish. I like the seasoned glowering of a spy in midlife. I’m not ready for my feelings towards 007, like those of Judi Dench’s M, to be mostly maternal.But a Gen Z Bond could well be incoming. Prepare to be shaken (by the passage of time) and not at all stirred.