the saint’s at the pearly gates
Notwithstanding George Lazenby and David Niven, everyone has their personal favourite. For many, only the original will do: Sean Connery’s chisel jaw, soft, sexy Scottish lilt and DB5. Daniel Craig, the obvious choice for the younger generation: tough as nails yet with piercing blue eyes, inevitably shirtless and a killer-quip effortlessly delivered. King of the quiff, Pierce Brosnan, was a more sensitive, perhaps even vulnerable, Bond, and he remains a hit with ladies of a certain age. Somewhat surprisingly his four films (Golden Eye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough & Die Another Day) were fantastically successful at the box office and helped establish the franchise for future generations. The troubled Timothy Dalton: dark, suffering and serious, he brought back Ian Flemming’s intended gritty realism but was seen as a secret agent on his last-legs. It didn’t help Timothy’s cause that he was up against the likes of Indiana Jones, Batman and Bruce Willis.
For me however, there’s only one James Bond: Roger Moore. To my mind ‘Live and Let Die’ and ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ represent the pinnacle of performances and I just can’t convey the excitement felt in queuing up round the corner of my local ABC picture house in the seventies. A light-hearted, debonair playboy of a Bond, Moore was very different from Connery and he was certainly a man of the times – playing the role largely for laughs, always a trick or gadget to hand and a witty one-liner for the girls to fall for. Great fun and forever charming.
And so it proved to be in real life. Here’s the recalled account of when TV writer Marc Haynes, then seven years old, met the actor at Nice airport in 1983 and I’ll think you’ll enjoy it:
Spotting the James Bond star, Hayes asked his grandfather if they could get his autograph? They duly returned with a friendly note, and a signature that definitely didn’t say James Bond, but Roger Moore. Upon realising this the boy told his grandad that he’d signed it incorrectly and the older gentleman headed back to Moore, note in hand. From a distance, Haynes saw the actor’s face crinkle up with realisation and was called over.
“When I was by his knee, he leant over, looked from side to side, raised an eyebrow, and in a hushed voice explained, ‘I have to sign my name as Roger Moore because otherwise… Blofeld might find out I was here.’ He asked me not to tell anyone that I’d met James Bond, and thanked me for keeping his secret. I went back to my seat, my nerves jangling with delight. My grandad asked me if he’d signed it ‘James Bond’? No, I said, I’d got it wrong. I was working with James Bond now.”
Priceless. It almost makes me forgive him his tax-exile status!
PS Another great anecdote points out that visitors to Beijing’s Forbidden City will sadly find there is no English commentary available to accompany their tour. This is however an ‘American’ one and it’s narrated by none other than Roger Moore!
