BOOKIES’ favourite Idris Elba has said he does not want to be a “token black” Bond.

The actor, 45, is heavily tipped to land the role when Daniel Craig quits.

But he said: “I think it’s more about, ‘We just want to have a black guy play James Bond’ rather than, ‘Idris Elba, the actor, play James Bond.’

“That’s the part I’m like, ‘Ugh, come on.’”

Daniel, 50, is expected to quit after his next film, due in cinemas at the end of 2019.

Idris added: “Are we interested in having a Bond character other than a male?

“It could be a woman — could be a black woman, could be a white woman — do something different with it, you know?”

The Luther actor’s views were in a New York Times interview from last October.

They emerged a week after he sent fans into a frenzy with the tweet: “My Name’s Elba, Idris Elba.”

Later he posted a photo of hip-hop group Public Enemy and tweeted “Don’t believe the HYPE”.

But the odds of Idris’s casting as the new 007 have now been slashed to 2/1.

Tom Hardy is second at 3/1, followed by Happy Valley star James Norton at 4/1 and Poldark’s Aidan Turner at 7/1.

Bond producer Barbara Broccoli is said to have told her director friend Antoine Fuqua “it is time” for a non-white actor to take the role.

He said: “Idris could do it if he was really tight and in shape. He doesn’t look 45. No one would even know.”

Idris, who grew up in Hackney, East London, is the age Roger Moore was when he starred in his first Bond film Live And Let Die in 1973.