He was Bond's nemesis and a towering villain, in all senses of the word, but there's one thing that's defeated Jaws aka Richard Kiel - the Brummie accent, as he told Tom Scotney.

He's come up against James Bond twice and lived to tell the tale, driven a car off a cliff, fought sharks underwater, been thrown from a train, and jumped out of a plane without a parachute, emerging unscathed every time.

But there's one thing giant Richard Kiel, better known as Bond's erstwhile nemesis Jaws, can't deal with - the Brummie accent. In the city over the weekend to meet fans at the NEC's Memorabilia show, the 7ft 2in actor said he expected to spend a lot of the weekend nodding and smiling politely.

"I come to England a lot, I've been to Birmingham many times before, I really like it here, and I love the accents," said Kiel - and no, he doesn't have metal teeth - smiling. But I can't understand what you guys are saying half the time."

You might expect a Bond villain, especially one comfortably topping 7ft, to be an intimidating presence in the flesh. But as it turns out, he's a quiet, engaging and funny character, more Q nowadays than the metal-mouthed killer of his youth.

Although he's 68 now, and in a wheelchair due to a car accident, he still looms over me in a way that would be pretty alarming if he wasn't so damned nice. And he's still grateful about the day a phone call turned him from a common actor into one of the most recognisable villains in film history.

"Some actors don't like being identified with a certain role, but for me, I couldn't possibly be ungrateful for what Jaws gave me. But I've had a lot of roles since, in films and in commercials around the world, and that came about, I'm sure, as a result of what I did with Bond.

"We've been able to travel the world courtesy of James Bond."

He was in the city with wife Diane. The couple have been married since 1974, and have four children. But there's also an old flame - of a sort - present.

In 1979's Moonraker, Jaws - not a likely romantic lead - finally found love in the shape of Dolly, played by French actress Blanche Ravalec, who originally thought she'd be a glamour Bond girl rather than the bespectacled, pigtailed character when the casters first told her she'd got the job.

And although it's 28 years since the two first met on the set of Moonraker, they developed such a strong bond (geddit?) that even now you

can still see Jaws toasting his mute ladyfriend with a muttered "here's to us" - the only line Kiel ever had to deliver in the Bond series, in the relationship the two share.

Although both have their own families and lives, Kiel in America and Blanche in Paris, put the two together and they're instantly part of the Bond family again.

And it's not just them. As Blanche explained, there's a family atmosphere binding together all the actors and production crew, past and present who've worked on the Bond films, thanks to the patriarchal control exerted over every aspects of the films by the possessive Broccoli family.

"When we were doing the show, and even when I've met people from the other films, there's always been that Bond family spirit there," said the actress.

Kiel has even kept in touch with his archenemy in The Spy Who Loved Me, the suave secret agent turned Unicef agent Sir Roger Moore. "I saw Roger Moore last month at a dinner to celebrate his work for Unicef. I was sitting right next to him, I suppose you'd say I was his right hand man," says Kiel.