Satisfying nits to pick - Telegraph The unflagging appetite for James Bond adventures may say something about us, but it is accompanied by a fascination that goes far beyond double-o-sevenry. This is the hobby of spotting mistakes. What twitchers are to birds, glitchers are to films. They have already claimed 24 in Skyfall. In the fight on top of the train, for example, Mr Bond starts off in black lace-up shoes and ends in elastic-sided boots. The mistake, if such it be, that has attracted the biggest intake of breath, though, is the appearance of a number 38 bus in Whitehall. Some habits of this shy and elusive bus remain unknown to science, but experienced bus-ecologists have never known it to extend its territory south-east of Piccadilly. Yet 24 blunders are nothing in the statistics of free-frame continuity. The Wizard of Oz is said to boast 310. Dorothy's basket is particularly troublesome, spilling its contents and regaining them from shot to shot with no concession to the laws of physics. Time and again, studio lights and shadows of booms intrude on the scene. Does this mar the magic of the story? Not a jot. So when audiences settle down for Downton Abbey and tut-tut at the television aerials, the shotguns being carried wrongly and such absurd anachronisms in speech as "learning curve," they are expressing nothing but affection for an old favourite, just as our primate cousins relax on their leafy sofas and probe each other's fur in a comforting session of nitpicking.