This should have been called My Night with Pussy Galore. Part of Carl Davis's Hallé Christmas Pops series, this Evening with 007 was planned as a musical tribute to James Bond, but the involvement of Honor Blackman - interweaving a history of Bond movies and memories of filming Goldfinger between chunks from the soundtracks - ensured that the concert was more of a one-woman show.

After bonking Bond, Blackman briefly became one of the great screen icons. And nearly 40 years after her famous grapple with Sean Connery, you still can't take your eyes off her. The name Pussy Galore caused such outrage in the US when the film was released in 1964 that the censors banned it. They backed down, however, when Blackman was photographed with the Duke of Edinburgh, conferring decency on the movie.

The raunch of the early Bond films was echoed in their music, much of it the work of John Barry. Hearing extracts in chronological order illustrated a weakening of impact as Barry's influence declined. The sleazy phantasmagorias of Thunderball and Goldfinger gave way to the soft-focus gentility of Marvin Hamlisch's score for The Spy Who Loved Me, though John Altman's music for GoldenEye marked a return to form. The programme described Barry as "one of pop music's most applauded arrangers", but his scores show a distinct classical bent. From Russia with Love sounded Wagnerian on the Hallé's strings, and much of Goldfinger is pure Shostakovich.

No survey would be complete without the title songs. The task of performing material written for artists as diverse as Shirley Bassey, Louis Armstrong, Lulu and Aha fell to formidable cabaret singer Mary Carewe. She had fun with the dirty lyrics of The Man with the Golden Gun, and caressed Goldfinger seditiously rather than belting it. But Diamonds Are Forever left her stranded. She could not capture the whorish venality that Bassey brought to the song - and I doubt that anyone ever could.