Just as former political leaders are constantly asked about current events, so previous James Bond actors being interviewed about new projects can set their watch to when they’ll be asked who should follow in their footsteps and play the next 007.

While Daniel Craig has made a point of shrugging his shoulders and telling everyone, “I don’t care,” his predecessor Pierce Brosnan has apparently given a little more thought to the matter.

The Irish actor, who played 007 in four films between 1995 and 2002, told the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper that it is “a given” that that the next actor to take the role should be British – and that it was the right decision for the producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson to hand creative control to Amazon in a multi-million-dollar deal announced last month.

Brosnan said:

“It takes great courage for them to let go,” said Brosnan. “I hope that [Amazon] handles the work and the character with dignity and imagination and respect…

“History has been passed on and I’m very proud to have been part of the history and the legacy of Bond and the movies I made with Barbara and Michael.”

Ian Fleming’s books in which Bond first appeared give him a Scottish father and Swiss mother. Irishman Brosnan is one of only two non-English actors – the other is Australian George Lazenby – to have played 007, and the Daily Mail newspaper this weekend reported an internal memo circulated by Amazon, asserting that Bond would remain “male and British or Commonwealth” in his new incarnation. (This would have disqualified Brosnan, as Ireland is neither British nor Commonwealth.)

Following the very Scottish-sounding Sean Connery’s debut as Bond in 1962, Roger Moore, Brosnan and recently Daniel Craig have all bestowed on 007 a cut-glass English accent.