‘I thought: how hard can it be?’ Mike Skinner on making a film – and the first Streets album in a decade

Mike Skinner: ‘I don’t think I’ve found anything that can put me into as much of a relaxed state as cooking.’ Photograph: Pedro Alvarez/The Observer

In Dr No, there’s a casino scene featuring Sean Connery as Bond. He’s playing chemin de fer, against the icily beautiful Sylvia Trench (Eunice Gayson). Bond is the bank, cool in a penguin suit, and, when Sylvia asks his name, he replies – of course he does: “Bond. James Bond.” Now, we all expect him to do it, but in 1962, when Dr No was released, it was the first time Connery ever spoke those words on screen.

And Connery said them right here, at Les Ambassadeurs casino, off glitzy Park Lane in London. “Yeah, just through those doors,” says Mike Skinner, AKA the Streets, rapper, musician, writer, producer and now, film director. “Bond, James Bond.”