![]() ![]() ![]() Sean Connery would have been woefully out of place – his stint in the similarly wacky Diamonds Are Forever at the onset of the 70s saw his more serious James Bond seem awkward and bored. It climaxed in an underground lair showdown that saw the filmmakers genuinely believe audiences wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a man and a gigantic balloon.īut try, just for a second, to imagine anybody else in the lead role. In Live and Let Die, his bizarrely brilliant debut, Bond went up against a voodoo cult and a drug-dealing corrupt politician, not to mention a dude with a metal claw for a hand. Or driving around a metal crocodile.Ĥ0-odd years on, that’s what makes his 007 iconic and his 007 movies fun to watch – because, let’s face it, there are tons of problems elsewhere. Even if that trick was dressing up as a clown. In his hands, the suave secret agent became a playboy extraordinaire, a joker with just the right trick up his sleeve. That was the weapon that made his 007 so invincible. He was the kind of man who thought it fun to correct a regional newspaper’s report of him eating a Scotch egg ( he had the ham hock terrine) on Twitter, or mock his own dubiously dated filmography. That sense of humour continued all the way through his life: outside of 007, Roger was a hilarious figure, never arrogant in his wit, but always self-deprecating, always self-aware and always unselfish. But Roger brought with him an enthusiasm, energy and sense of humour that seemed to belong to a man decades younger. He had miles on the clock in every department – even though he never drove an Aston Martin as James Bond, Moore had already been behind the wheel of a DB5 in The Persuaders! and The Cannonball Run. Today, the thought of the oldest Bond to date seducing ‘Bond girls’ is a rather creepy one, especially when he turned in his last performance in A View to Kill at the age of 58. And the fact that The Saint began in 1962, and that he would be 45 by the time he finally became Bond in 1973? Well, that was just the way things were. The fact that he was already famous as spy Simon Templar in The Saint was a bonus. In the late 1960s, when Sean Connery intimated that he would be stepping down from the role, Moore was in the frame, partly thanks to his sharp blue eyes, excellent good looks (demonstrated in a modelling career) and cool charisma. Moore had been a contender for the role for years before he finally donned that tux – or, in his case, safari suit. Without Roger Moore, we wouldn’t have 007 today. But Roger Moore wasn’t just the Silly Bond: he was the man with the golden eyebrows, the Bond that 007 needed to be. Who was so old it was disturbing to see him suck the face off young women at the beginning and end – and during most of the middle – of every adventure. Who went out on a mission in a submarine shaped like a crocodile. Roger Moore? Well, he was the one who dressed up as a clown. And GoldenEye, Casino Royale, Licence to Kill and Skyfall are all competing for a close second. In 2017, in the days after Roger Moore passed away, Goldfinger remains the greatest Bond film of all time. He’s not even my Bond: I met Bond in the days of Pierce Brosnan, with a fondness for watching back Sean Connery’s outings on DVD. ![]()
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