I've taken the James Bond rumours with overflowing ladles of salt. Maybe we've just been talking and thinking and writing about it for too long, but none of it feels real. Callum Turner from the "sex purge" movie (One Night Only) will succeed Daniel Craig as Bond? OK! I'll believe it when I see it. The final auditions, if reports are correct, have just taken place.

But something has finally captured my attention - and my imagination, too. Josh O'Connor has been in or around the conversation for a long time in the same dormant sort of way as every prominent British actor in their 30s who has ever worn a suit. Then, in late October, he appeared in a Deadline report about the final four, alongside Turner, Jack Lowden and a mystery box contestant who will, at the very least, erase any shoddy reporting if the final choice is a total surprise.

Still, I shrugged. Having spent a bit of time with O'Connor for a GQ cover story last year (we went wild swimming) I thought that he did not want the heat that would come with a role like this. We spoke about fame as a kind of spectre that haunts some of his friends and peers. He seemed relieved that he had not quite reached a place where people were following him down the street with their iPhone cameras lit up. We spoke about the hysteria around his friend Paul Mescal when Normal People came out - "I'd have found that really hard, is the truth," O'Connor said. So I never thought he was truly running. But then, earlier this week, the BBC asked him about the rumours, and he did everything but shut them down. The quotes, for reference: "It's an incredibly bizarre pinch-me moment... even being uttered in that same sentence and being considered for something like that," he said. "But I am afraid, there is nothing to say beyond that." Ladies and gentlemen... he's running!

Now I believe that he actually wants it, I'm excited. With absolutely no shade to the talented Lowden and Turner, O'Connor's inclusion at this late stage suggests that Bond - now helmed by the producers who pulled multi-billion-dollar Spider-Man and Harry Potter franchises out of their arses - could be heading in an actually new direction. The appointment of director Denis Villeneuve, the guy behind Dune, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049, suggested as much. But O'Connor would break the Bond mould entirely. He's hot enough to make The Crown's Prince Charles thirst-worthy, but interesting-looking enough to play him in the first place. He's a subtle, empathetic performer, who can play shy, retiring guys and, as Luca Guadagnino's Challengers exhibited, hulking, domineering rascals, too. He's masculine, but more in touch with his femininity than any Bond before him. He can definitely do 007! But if he does, it'll probably be somewhere between those two poles. Doesn't that make him the best choice?

If it does happen, I'll weep for the lost indies - your La Chimeras and The Masterminds - as O'Connor's focus heads elsewhere. But I'll be happy for him - and for Bond fans, too, who would be getting one of the best actors in the world as their new saviour. Not a bad result, that.

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