Ernst Stavro Blofeld novel, "The Spy Who Loved Me", though its events take place while Bond is battling SPECTRE in North America. In "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1963), Bond learns that Blofeld has altered his appearance radically —he is now tall and thin; has reduced his weight to ; sports long silver hair, a syphilitic infection on his nose, and no earlobes; he wears dark green tinted contact lenses to hide his distinctive eyes. Perhaps less calculating than previously, he is notably saddled with the exploitable weakness of snobbery about his assumed nobility, indicating that he is losing his sanity. He is
Telly Savalas sweet tooth, Savalas also smoked heavily onscreen—cigarettes, cigarillos and cigars—throughout the first season's episodes. The lollipops, which Savalas later admitted had given him three cavities, were also part of an (unsuccessful) effort by Kojak (and Savalas himself) to curb his smoking. The critic Clive James explained the lead actor's appeal as Kojak: "Telly Savalas can make bad slang sound like good slang and good slang sound like lyric poetry. It isn't what he is, so much as the way he talks, that gets you tuning in." David Shipman later wrote: "Kojak was sympathetic to outcasts and ruthless with social predators.