In Ian Fleming's novels, SPECTRE is a commercial enterprise led by Blofeld.

The organisation's third appearance is in On Her Majesty's Secret Service where Blofeld, hired by an unnamed country or party ( though the Soviet Union is implied ) is executing a plan to ruin British agriculture.

Its long-term strategy, however, is illustrated by the analogy of the three Siamese fighting fish Blofeld keeps in an aquarium in the film version of From Russia with Love.

Blofeld notes that one fish is refraining from fighting two others until their fight is concluded.

Furthermore, to heighten the impact of the executions, Blofeld often chooses to focus attention on an innocent member, making it appear his death is imminent, only to suddenly strike down the actual target when that person is off guard.

SPECTRE is headed by the supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld who usually appears accompanied by a white Persian cat in the movies, but not in the books.

It is stated in the novel that if something were to happen to Blofeld, Largo would assume command.

At the time of Thunderball, the leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, has been assigned " Number 2 ", while Emilio Largo is assigned " Number 1 ".

In the films the number indicates rank: Blofeld is always referred to as " Number 1 " and Emilio Largo, in Thunderball, is " Number 2 ".

In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the second chapter of what is known as the " Blofeld Trilogy ", Blofeld has revived SPECTRE, and Blofeld's final appearance, sans SPECTRE, is in the final novel of the trilogy, You Only Live Twice.

The film adaptation of From Russia with Love also features the first on-screen appearance of Blofeld, although he is only identified by name in the closing credits of the film.

In the first book to include SPECTRE, " Thunderball ", it is stated that the numbers of each member changes periodically ( it " advances round a rota by two digits at midnight on the first of every month ") to avoid detection and Blofeld is in fact number 2.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld is a fictional character and a supervillain from the James Bond series of novels and films, who was created by Ian Fleming and Kevin McClory.

Blofeld is head of the global criminal organisation SPECTRE and is commonly referred to as Number 1, an official numerical position given to members of SPECTRE.

Blofeld appears or is heard in three novels: Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and You Only Live Twice ; and six James Bond films from Eon Productions: From Russia with Love ( 1963 ), Thunderball ( 1965 ), You Only Live Twice ( 1967 ), On Her Majesty's Secret Service ( 1969 ), Diamonds Are Forever ( 1971 ) and For Your Eyes Only ( 1981 ) ( the pre-title sequence of which marks his final appearance and apparent death ).

Evil from the spy spoof " Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery " has a cat named Mr. Bigglesworth styled after the Persian cat affected by the James Bond villain Blofeld.

Following Diamonds Are Forever, SPECTRE and Blofeld were retired from the Eon Films series, except for a cameo by Blofeld ( not identified by name, but accompanied by the character's trademark cat ) in For Your Eyes Only.

Although SPECTRE and Blofeld are used in a number of films before and after Thunderball, the issue over the copyright of Thunderball did prevent SPECTRE and Blofeld from becoming the main villains in 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me.

* Pierre Borraud ( No. 9, Thunderball ) – killed by Blofeld for stealing from Spectre.

Non-comic book supervillains of note include Ernst Stavro Blofeld from the James Bond series, Darth Vader and the Emperor from the Star Wars series, The Master from DoctorWho, Voldemort from Harry Potter, Professor Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes series, and Frieza from the Dragonball series.

Academic Christoph Linder sees Thunderball as part of the second wave of Bond villains: the first wave consisted of SMERSH, the second of Blofeld and SPECTRE, undertaken because of the thawing of relations between East and West, although the cold war heated up again shortly afterwards, with the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis all occurring in an eighteen month period from April 1961 – November 1962.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld's name partially comes from Tom Blofeld, a Norfolk farmer and a fellow member of Fleming's club Boodle's, who was a contemporary of Fleming's at Eton.

An example of this perception of piranhas in media appears in the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice, where a piece of meat is shown being fed to pet piranhas owned by the film's main antagonist, Blofeld, then only a bone is raised from the water.

Blofeld has undergone plastic surgery partly to remove his earlobes, but also to disguise himself from the police and security services who are tracking him down.

Although Blofeld is present in Thunderball, he directs operations from a distance and as such he and Bond never meet and On Her Majesty's Secret Service constitutes his and Bond's first meeting.

This does not detract from the love that many loyal listeners to Test Match Special the world over have for him, demonstrated in the Test against Pakistan at Headingley in 1996 when a flat overlooking the ground was draped with a banner proclaiming " Henry Blofeld is God ".

* Henry Blofeld: The First ' Young Cricketer of the Year ', from the Cricket Society, by Douglas Miller

This was a principal filming location for the James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service, released in 1969, in which Bond ( George Lazenby ) made his escape from the headquarters of Ernst Stavro Blofeld ( Telly Savalas ) and fled four of Blofeld's henchmen in a car driven by his girlfriend Tracy ( Diana Rigg ).

Writer Charles Stross considers Mabuse as a candidate for the first supervillain, and sees him as the direct predecessor of Ernst Stavro Blofeld from the James Bond series.

The final mention of Blofeld is in the beginning of the next book, The Man with the Golden Gun, published in 1965.

GoldenEye and Galore leave the Lair aboard Galore's chopper, and Scaramanga and Number One ( Ernst Stavro Blofeld ) later discuss what to do with GoldenEye, and decide to simply see what he does next before proceeding.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the second book in what is known as the " Blofeld trilogy ", which begins with Thunderball and concluded with You Only Live Twice.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the second book in what is called " the Blofeld trilogy ", sitting between Thunderball, where SPECTRE is introduced and You Only Live Twice, where Blofeld is finally killed by Bond.

Blofeld has written a partly autobiographical book entitled My Dear Old Thing: Talking Cricket.

No also appeared in the video game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, despite his death in the book and film, alongside fellow Bond enemies Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Auric Goldfinger, Francisco Scaramanga, and Xenia Onatopp.

It is believed that the producer Harry Saltzman of the James Bond films mixed the Ian Fleming real-life book character and Middleton's Emperor Ming attributes to create the screen persona for Bond's archenemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Blofeld says his memorial pagoda is " The Tower of Spacious Karma " and that it was Emperor Hsüan Tsung who gave him the title " The Zen Master Who Destroys All Limitations ".

Henchmen working for SPECTRE, one of its members, or directly for Ernst Stavro Blofeld:

While Blofeld considered the possibility that the sexual relationship was consensual, it was more important that SPECTRE was reputed to keep its word.

For more than a year, James Bond, British Secret Service operative 007, has been involved in " Operation Bedlam ": trailing the private criminal organisation SPECTRE and its leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Bond teams up with CIA agent Cedar Leiter, daughter of his old friend, Felix Leiter, to investigate one Markus Bismaquer, who is suspected of reviving the criminal organisation SPECTRE, which was believed to have been disbanded years earlier following the death of its leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, at the hands of Bond ( in You Only Live Twice ).