This image was lost some time after publication.

Perpetually embattled heir to the James Bond title, Daniel Craig, has had everything from his virility to his lack of eyebrows challenged since filming started on the series' next installment mostly at the hands of archenemy CraigNotBond.com. But just when things couldn't get any more absurd in one of cinema's most overblown and thoroughly entertaining fanboy uprisings, another bizarre chapter unfolds. In what has to be a first, James Bond's dad has come to his son's defense:

Daniel Craig, the new James Bond actor, has been accused of being a wimp, but now he has a defender: his dad. It is all cobblers, Tim Wroughton-Craig told London s Sunday Mirror. Daniel is a hard lad you wouldn t want to meet him in a dark street. Is he a wimp? No, I wouldn t like to call him that to his face. As for the idea he doesn t like guns when he was younger he would play with a toy gun like any other boy.

It's touching to see all the proud paternal involvement in the next Bond flick: First villain Mads Mikkelsen's cab driving papa regaled fares about his son's good fortune. And now, 007's old man debunks the entire mean-spirited smear campaign with a hearty "cobblers!" (Which has nothing to do with fruit crisps or shoe-making elves, as it turns out.) Still, we can't help but wonder if having a parent fight his own battles is perhaps just providing Craig's internet detractors with some plutonium-grade ammunition.