Kill James Bond! - S4E35.5: Ice Cold in Alex

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

This is a preview of a bonus episode- Check out the rest, as well as five years of bonus episodes, on our Patreon! We're robbing Peter to pay Paul today on the Kill James Bond podcast as we poach a perfect War Season film and shove it directly into Truck Season. Ice Cold in Alex tells the fictional but possible story of a british Ambulance and her crew being cut off from its' convoy during a retreat in the North Africa campaign of WW2, and their journey across the unforgiving desert to Alexandria. ----- Check out friend of the show Mattie's new book Simplicity here, or wherever fine graphic novels are sold! ----- FREE PALESTINE - With the ceasefire in full effect, the media has returned to ignoring the daily atrocities in Gaza. My friend Ahmed still needs to feed his family and afford medicine. Anything you can kick in would be hugely appreciated. https://chuffed.org/project/150817-please-help-ahmed-and-his-family-get-food-drink-and-medicine And these are some more general links you can support collective efforts with! -The Palestinian Communist Youth Union is doing a food and water effort, and is part of the official communist party of Palestine https://www.gofundme.com/f/to-preserve-whats-left-of-humanity-global-solidarity -Water is Life, a water distribution project in North Gaza affiliated with an Indigenous American organization and the Freedom Flotilla https://www.waterislifegaza.org/ -Vegetable Distribution Fund, which secured and delivers fresh veg, affiliated with Freedom Flotilla also https://www.instagram.com/linking/fundraiser?fundraiser_id=1102739514947848 ----- WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ ----- Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com , as well as on our Bluesky and X.com the everything app account

Welcome to another bonus episode of Kill James Bond. I am November Kelly. I am joined, as always, by my friend Abigail Thorne and Devon. Hey, listener. I say, oh boy, what's up? It's a 1960s British movie about the 1940s. And we're poaching war season in order to continue truck season. And this was my pick, and I picked a movie, a little movie, called Ice Cold in My Dead Name.

and the first one of you to say it is transphobic. So I'll let it in some like sirens, something of this nature. If it's me, I have no option but some kind of disgrace. You know, I've forfeited my own challenge. But... I'm sure we can come up with some kind of appropriate punishment for you. Interesting. So, this is a movie that I really wanted to do for war season.

Because I think it's a sort of classic of the genre of British 1960s warfers. But I realized it's also a truck film. And given that we're watching Fast and Furious, for the main content, for the bonus content, we're focusing on the truckman. And this is the truckman at war, the truckman's war, if you will. This movie was fucking great. Thank you for showing it to me. I really enjoyed it. Oh, any time.

This movie fucking rocks, yeah. I think my favorite part of doing this, because I'm vain. My favorite part of doing this podcast is getting to make my friends watch a film that I like and having them say, oh, this is a good film. It's like, yes, yes. I get sort of good, like, fucking gremlin points, you know? It's like I'm doing a good thing. It's like if the wages of fear, but the nitroglycerin was the Nazis. Yeah, it is crazy how it's kind of the same mood.

It's like if instead of a nitroglycerin, there was a beautiful lady. Two beautiful ladies. Three beautiful ladies, and one of them is a truck. One of them is a truck. One of them is a woman, which is a real innovation on the wages of fear. Because I had seen this long, long before wages of fear, and sort of remembered it very fondly and sort of suggested it, thinking, hoping it would sort of stay, you know, worthwhile. And then on watching it, I went, what I've done is I've made them watch wages of fear again.

But I hope it's sort of worth it because it is authentically just a very good film in its own right. The funniest thing to do after this would be sorcerer. So you've got wages of fear triple bill. Well, Abby's making us do Armageddon again next time as well. Yeah, yeah. Armageddon brackets of journeys. Wages of fear will continue until morale improves, which it doesn't seem to. Usually.

No, it's an interesting thing as well in these genres of movies, but you have to explain the war and contextualize it to an audience, a decent proportion of whom were in it. And so what you get is a sort of like map of the Mediterranean with a voiceover saying, The Shores of North Africa, peaceful now, which fumbled that one. No. Whoopsie. We fucked up the inheritance of the Second World War in that way. And the sort of line in on that.

this one is two million men, two million stories, this is one, it happens to be true. And I love this kind of faux humility, like, rank organization bullshit, like, because it is fiction. It's 100% fiction, but like, it's just, I don't know, really, really appeals to me. Should we contextualize the North Africa tank campaign for the listeners? Yes, yes, absolutely. So listeners, you may be aware of a thing called World War II happened a long time ago. North Africa, we spent a lot of time, going back and forth over the same like several hundred square miles of desert against the Nazis. There was like over years, like literally just back and forth over the same territory. We won it, we lost it, we won it, we lost it.

And it did result in an eventual British victory at the cost of hundreds of thousands of deaths. This was the campaign against Romul, who was the kind of Nazi tank commander. And we did eventually win, but it was like a fucking nightmare. A real, real slog. Not something that's well remembered, because it's something in which American forces took sort of like much less of a part. They only sort of arrived later in the war

and notably got like that like Dix kicked in at the Battle of Kastroen Pass. The sort of like first experience of the war. So in North Africa and this sort of European Theatre of Operations. So it's left to British filmmakers, the British film industry

which existed back then to make films about it. Yeah. And in fact, one of the people working in the British film industry, speaking of dead names, appears to be a distant relative of mine because the name that I was born under has a very unique surname and everybody with that surname

is related to me so I was like ah, hello casting director in the 1960s distant relative somehow I guess it's really fun we also get the music which is Star Wars it is crazy how much this is my favourite bit

this is Star Wars movie how much the original Star Wars trilogy is just like these World War II movies in space I've heard that before but hearing it now it's just like you get the kind of Rebel Alliance theme as we see their British sports is almost unmistakable. Yeah, it's so good. When we do the

Dam Busters for war season, then we will get like a hundred percent, like that's X-wing stuff. But like this, we would, John Williams, you thieving bitch, the theme from this movie is just the Imperial March. It just is. Yes, it is.

It's like bar for bar, word for word. But so we begin in the city of Tobruk in Libya, um, which, is sort of perennially being besieged by the Nazis. It's like occupied by the British, but the Nazis are going to surround it. There's like a woman with huge tits in a toga saying, like, we are fucking under attack, my lord.

That's right. Yeah, yeah. Because Tim Rook is being attacked by the Nazis again. Speaking of women, because we're trying to load a bunch of, a bunch of nurses onto a ship out. When a bomb hits and two of our nurses sort of like duck and cover. and obviously both astoundingly beautiful because this is the 1960s

film industry one of the Sylvia Sims who I have 1960s, 1940s woman dysphoria how do I wrote the same note which one does she play Murdoch or Norton?

Norfolk A Murdoch God damn it I did not get names we will pull this in a second Yeah that's why I always sit here with the IMDB open The one who survives or not

Sister Diana Murdoch Is Sylvia said Yeah these these women are like Astoningly fucking beautiful Also Murdoch I think the one who survives Looks almost exactly like my sister-in-law Which is like very weird And it made me instantly be like

Oh man Damn is your sister-in-law single? No she's married to my brother Oh yeah that would make sense actually no That's a weird thing to say That's my relative But yeah It made me very instantly like hope she survived

I was like oh no Laura Watch out for the Nazis But so Yeah, we then cut to John Mills Captain Anson John Mills This is full of people I love to see

This is full of 1960s guys I love to see This guy is so wrinkled He looks like a ball bag And I mean that complimentary style Like he's so My man has been out in the side He's so drunk He's the drunkest anyone's ever been to

Absolutely He's been drinking as someone who has been in a desert war for like a couple of years all the time. He is not thriving, he is not moisturised, and he is not in his lane. No, he's dusty, he's drunk, he's drinking a lot.

Yeah. Failing, desiccated, outside of his lane. We see that he has this like footlock of full of bottles of alcohol, right? Which is marked with his name and like personal. So like he has a real like alcoholics stash going on. as well as he's not playing like alcoholic in the way that, you know, an alcoholic detective

in a movie might be like, you just seem like looking sad and drinking a drink. He's playing it like he's fucking slushed. He's like... He is drunk. This is a thing here, Commander. That's coming over. It's like, sad, but also like a little bit funny. Not a drunk

who's having a good time himself either. No, no, no. God, no, no. But there's one other officer with him, Captain Crosby, who is like, younger, cleaner cut, and they're kind of discussing that they're going to have to evacuate to Brooke and they know one of them is

going to get stuck behind to get besieged and presumably captured by the Nazis for the rest of the war, right? And Crosby kind of cynically is like, well, I was in the last siege, so they'll probably put me in this one. They won't put me in the siege too. Yeah, and Anson promises that he's like,

no, no, no, I'll do it, I will get you out of it, right? It's my turn to be captured by the Nazis. Exactly, exactly. I'll be besieged. By the way, these captains are in charge of ambulances, a fleet of ambulances, war ambulances. Yeah. Yeah. Which my real-life, my real granny was an ambulance driver in the war in the UK, not in North Africa. But again, I was instantly attached to these people. I'm like, oh shit, you drive ambulances? That's what my granny did. Hell yeah.

So he goes to get briefed by the brigadier, who is in the bath when he's briefing him. They're being bombed the whole time, sort of like bits of ceiling are coming down and the sky's just in the bathtub. And Anson is, this guy in the bathtub is like totally chill. He's like, I had bloody fucking bombs. They blow up my car this morning. And Anson's like, fucking sweating and looking at a bottle of booze. Like, shit, man, I don't like being bombed. Yeah.

He's sort of like, obviously holding on by his fingernails to the point that the brigadier getting out of the bath offers him a drink, right? Because he's getting the shakes, like genuinely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this brigadier who is like briefing him half-naked, like, Ordo Wingate. is like, okay, you're going to take these ambulances and these two spare nurses, you couldn't make the boat because the bomb landed on the thing. You're going to take one ambulance with these nurses and you're going to drive like hell

for Alexandria in Egypt, like the British sort of like main sort of like supply center in the North African campaign. We're going to get the hell out of Dodge. And Alexandria is like the, again my cardinal, like easternmost point of this war, right? That's where the Brits are hold up. They can't possibly get close to that, right? And to be, Anson does ask

that he be allowed to stay and that Paul Crosby get to go in his stead. And the Brigadier is just like, no. And if at Crosby predicts the exact rationale, because the Brigadier's like, whoa, he's in the last one. Probably be good at it by now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll be fine.

He probably knows how to deal with it. Yeah. And I do like that just as a bit of sort of, I guess, showing and telling that like everybody here knows how the army is going to like rat fuck you, right? Yeah, we know what the score is basically. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Anson requests that the captain tell Crosby personally. They'd like not let him break the news.

Yeah. Which is interesting, yeah. Again, he's like off putting that part, that responsibility. He's just like sending it to someone else. So he goes back to his billet to have another. the drink, obviously. Placid. And then we meet Sergeant Major Tom.

He's a Sergeant Major, right? Yeah. Yeah, machinist Sergeant Major Tom Pugh. Here's a guy I love to see Harry Andry. He is fantastic. Yeah, I genuinely, I love this character so much. He's my favorite character in the film. He knows that his captain, his commanding officer, is absolutely boozed to the gills.

and he suggests that he rests in a way that like you know preserves his dignity like we both know what's going on here but he's like you know why don't you lie down for a few hours so like I'll take care of everything the note I made here is like there's no macho bullshit here

like this guy is so tender and so kind and it made me unfavorably compare Pete Hexeth and all of his macho warfighter bullshit to this like actual guys who were in a war and I actually knew what that was like and we're like, there's no room for this kind of like dick swinging shit. It's like

this is a horrible situation and we're going to help each other. It's beautiful. It's really beautiful. And he does say to him as he's sort of like taking, very gently taking the alcohol away from him, you've had just about enough, sir, of everything. Yeah, he goes like, it's really good. Like he just lets his like

eyes fall on the bottle and he's like, of that and the guy goes, no, no, of everything. You've just had too much. It's very intimate. It's very pitying, but It's very loving. And it's also like, I think the thing that anyone who's been in any kind of like hierarchical organization knows, particularly the army, right, is that like a decent part of being a good NGO, a good senior NGO as this guy is, is managing your offices, right? Like the people who are ostensibly your boss, you need to sort of support them through this

stuff as well. And sometimes more than you ought to. But in this case, it is, it is like putting him to bed in a way that is just like, it's really touching. I love it, yeah. The next morning, everyone's getting ready to set off, and we see that Paul is really bitter about this. They say, right, well, we'll see you after the siege pool,

and he goes, I doubt it. And then just as Anson's about to drive off, he just goes, you right, bastard. With such fucking venom. Did you catch that he waits until the engine's running, so he isn't going to be overheard calling him that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Last possible second.

We don't see Paul again. They don't get a moment of reconciliation. That's he's done in the movie Yeah, he is going to either get killed or get captured and then he's going to be in a prison camp for the rest of the wall. Like that's just the kind of facts of it. But so they pick up

the two nurses who, as we have mentioned, astonishingly beautiful. And also, but like Anson's main preoccupation is loading his foot locker full of booze in because he needs it, you know? He is thoroughly addicted to it. And these two nurses,

Sister Norton and Sister Mirdok, Sister Norton is the junior one and we learn that they missed their boat because when the bomb dropped, Norton panicked and ran away. And she's very panicky. She's so fucking traumatized. She doesn't like what people try and bomb her.

And Murdoch is quite protective of her. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They've got to drop the skincare routine as well because these women look like this in the desert? Are you fucking kidding me? I can't look like that in the middle of a city It's more moisturiser than like fucking soft make. Like, come on.

I say, champ, sorry to interrupt this message, but that's as much as you can get a hold of. If you want to hear the rest of this episode of Kill James Bond, you better head on over to patreon.com slash kill James Bond, all one word, and sign up today for a little £5 a month, which in... At £5 a month to me, that's quite a lot of money,

but to you that's not so much anymore because of inflation.