"Daniel Craig wants a gay love scene in the next Bond movie," said a December 3 headline on Fark.com. "And he's willing to do full frontal nudity for it." In the wake of Casino Royale's worldwide box-office success, the headline, based on a paragraph-length blurb—with an ambiguous Craig quote—repeated on websites and in publications around the world, drew 619 comments and more than 41,000 clicks to the source article. But, according to Craig's publicist, the quote is "absolute rubbish." Robin Baum, of PMK/HBH Public Relations, added in an email to Gelf, "The below comments were never made by Daniel Craig."

The anonymnous Fark headline writer made some deductive leaps from a dubious source. According to the mysterious Craig quote that Baum denied, the actor thinks a gay scene would be accepted by audiences today. His sentiments in favor of a gay scene and full-frontal male nudity are expressed only in paraphrase, and Fark's headline linked the two even though they weren't linked in the source.

Fark linked to that venerable source of entertainment news, Ireland On-Line. According to IOL:

Daniel Craig is urging movie bosses to revolutionise the James Bond franchise by including a gay scene involving the superspy in the follow-up to Casino Royale.

The heart-throb actor has also reportedly told studio chiefs he is prepared to film a full frontal nude scene to please both his male and female admirers.

He says: "Why not? I think in this day and age, fans would have accepted it.

"I mean, look at Doctor Who—that has had gay scenes in it and no one blinks an eye."

Nearly the exact same words—including the squirrelly "reportedly," passing the buck without saying to whom—appeared on many other sites, including Evening Echo and DailyIndia.com. The UK site contactmusic.com was the first to print this quote, among those that Gelf could find. Contactmusic hasn't responded to an email from Gelf; that site, too, used the word "reportedly" without saying who reported it. Dozens of blogs have commented on the quote, with most taking it at face value.

Baum insisted Craig never said those words: "This first I heard of this was from you. I have no idea who originated
it. All I know is that these comments did not come from Daniel Craig." (A Sony spokesman referred Gelf to Baum and otherwise declined to comment.)

Publicists are expert deniers, and proving a negative is essentially impossible. (Baum didn't respond to two follow-up queries asking whether she checked with Craig, and what he thinks about the idea of full-frontal nudity, or a gay scene, in a future Bond film.) But on balance, Gelf is inclined to believe an on-the-record comment over an unattributed quote that was then plagiarized and transmuted.