2 Comments
Everyone wants to be James Bond. Admit it, it's true. The women, the excitement, the danger, the fast cars, the gadgets... Every time you watch Sean shtrut hish shtuff you think, "That is awesome. I want to be that."

But there are a couple of obstacles that stand in your way. A rigourous entry test to let you in to the secret service, for starters, being in tip top physical condition for main, and the ability to speak a huge number of languages for dessert. It's not looking good, fellas.

So what can we do? Well thanks to the internet and some diabolically fiendish geeks making the right kind of kit, you can still kind of be a spy - as in, you can still have their gear, even if you don't have a license to kill.

With this in mind, we trawled through the best and the worst of the world of gadgets to help you live out your James Bond fantasies, all with just the help of your credit card. Just call us Q, okay?


Name: The electro-shock suitcase
Price: £212 from ajoka.com
Why you want it: To stop Jaws from smashing your luggage open.
What it does: As it has remote radio-controlled alarm device, it can be told to switch 'on' or 'off' at the press of a button. If it's on, then inquisitive goons will get the fright of their lives as an ear-splitting alarm goes off on touch, and a 30kw electric pulse rockets through their bodies. If it's off, well, it's just a natty bag – which you probably shouldn't take anywhere near water. Just a little friendly spy tip for you there.

Name: The telephone voice changer
Price: £14.99 from gadgets.co.uk
Why you want it: To break into Dr No's fortress more easily, and ideally avoiding the massive fire-breathing tank. Oh, and to prank Moneypenny back home.
What it does: With 6 voices to choose from (all of which are ever-so-slightly robotic, admittedly) you can quickly and easily modulate your accent so you sound like someone totally different – simply by holding this peardrop piece of kit to your mouth as you chat away. Then again, if you sound like Shean, everyone will know from the off, to be honesht.

Name: The bionic ear
Price: £25.65 from chinavasion.com
Why you want it: To listen out for bad guys moving about in suspiciously rustling bushes up to, um, 100 metres away.
What it does: This clever little doohickey lets the user hear faint sounds from 30 metres away and loud ones from 100 metres – what's more, you can record what you hear onto an inbuilt digital recorder and peer through a binocular attachment pegged on the side. So that's a sound-boosting digital recorder-cum-telescope. As James Bond would never say, 'Neato!'

Name: The USB lighter camera
Price: £29.99 from thinkgeek.com
Why you want it: To seduce your next cigarette-puffing Bond girl (who's evil and bound to betray you, but who cares, she's hot) outside Casino Royale.
What it does: First of all, this is a USB stick by any other name – and as any spy worth their salt will tell you, you can never have too many USB sticks. Microfilms are out, okay? But more than that, this can take high quality video footage, record sound, and, ideally, light your cigar at the same time, making covert flirty info gathering an absolute sinch.

Name: The spy keylogger
Price: £39.99 from thinkgeek.com
Why you want it: To make getting that keycode into the secret underground nuclear bunker that little bit easier by popping this into the arch-henchman's laptop. Job done!
What it does: Now this one really is sneaky – not for the muscle bound Scottish brawlers amongst you or the blonde-betrunked whip ass deliverers – this is a tiny device that monitors what someone is typing into their computer, so it could be passwords to secret intelligence servers, codes for missile bases, or just garbled instant messenger chat between some goon and his girlfriend. Any road, this records every key pressed so you can see exactly what they've been doing. How dastardly clever, what?

Name: Pepper spray ring
Price: £19.99 from bodysecurity.com
Why you want it: To give your broadside across Oddjob's face a little extra jalapeño punch.
What it does: By tapping the trigger on its side, you can unleash four times the eye-stinging strength of a jalapeño pepper, blasting out a 12-inch spray of the iris-melting stuff for up to 3 seconds, and making your knuckle sandwich that little bit spicier upon delivery.

Name: Nightvision goggles
Price: £99.99 from iwantoneofthose.com
Why you want it: Because you're not always backflipping off cranes in Africa or running around ancient Italian cities in the heat of the summer – sometimes you've got to do your spying in the dark...
What it does: Besides making you look like you've stepped out of a Tom Clancy novel, this lets you see 15 metres plus ahead of you in total darkness, allowing for night-ops missions and the ability to make midnight snacks without flicking the lights on.

Name: Hidden flashdrive watch
Price: £33.25 from thinkgeek.com
Why you want it: Because one of the most important parts of spying is the ability to hide stuff in other, less conspicuous junk. Like a USB flashdrive inside your watch, for example.
What it does: It looks good, for starters, and also tells the time. Awesome news. It also has an alarm function for when potential double-0 agents need to get up early to catch a flight. But more interesting than even that is the whopping 8 gigabyte flashdrive snuck inside it – so if you get busted, you've still got the top secret documents you need, right on your wrist.

Name: The mobile phone stun gun
Price: $49.95 from defensedevices.com
Why you want it: So while the supervillian is carefully explaining every last detail of his masterplan, you can prepare your phone to ring, and as he picks it up, he fries the bejesus out of himself.
What it does: Don't be fooled by its truly crappy-looking exterior, this baby is essentially a massive electricity bomb disguised as a 90s-esque mobile phone, and its 1 million volt output means it's not to be messed with. When all your guns have gone, your pocket knives have disappeared, your pepper spray rings have run out of sauce... there's always your supercharged phone to slam into someone's face and save the day.

Name: The £1 hollow spy coin
Price: $33.00 from spy-coins.com
Why you want it: Because, and we can't emphasise this enough – there's a datachip inside the queen's head. How cool is that? Eh? Eh?
What it does: We must point out that though this might not be legal tender, it may well work in a coke machine, so be careful not to put the special coin in the slot, or you'll be several real pounds (and some spying data) out of pocket. By twisting one half of the coin, it 'opens', revealing a tiny memory card, or, if you're being really weird, a tiny, tiny biscuit.