From The Saint, to 007, and a goodwill ambassador

Sir Roger Moore was the son of a poor London policeman from the back streets of Lambeth who grew up to become James Bond and The Saint. And in later life, shocked by the poverty he saw in India, Moore became a goodwill ambassador for Unicef. He went to primary school in Stockwell and, to every- one's surprise including that of his headmaster, he won a scholarship to Battersea Grammar School. At the time, there was little sign of the debonair charm which was to mark his career. He was quiet, somewhat straitlaced and rather plump with a strong south London accent.

He decided to leave school at the age of 16 to take up a job as an assistant in a London studio specialising in cartoons. He then tried his hand as a film extra on Caesar and Cleopatra at Denham Studios in 1944, where the co- director Brian Desmond Hurst noticed him not just for his tall good looks but for what he described as animal magnetism.

London in 1944 was starved of young actors by the war and he started to achieve success in both the West End and suburban repertory companies. But National Service interrupted his career in 1945 just after the end of the war when he was conscripted into the Royal Army Service Corps as an officer.

There was little work for the young actor and he began a part-time modelling career to supplement his income with Audrey Hepburn in an advertisement for Valderma ' to get rid of the blemishes off your back'. He decided to try his luck in America. And, ironically, it was there that he finally lost his cockney accent after Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios sent him to a dialogue director.

In 1962 Moore returned to television after he was picked by ATV boss Lew Grade for the part of Leslie Charteris's hero Simon Templar, The Saint. It was ure. I contest that. For me it's been 99 per cent luck. It's no good being talented and not being in the right place at the right time.

The saddest thing about ageing is that most of my friends are now 'in the other room'. I miss David Niven the most. I still can't watch his films without shedding a tear.

Some of the things I've done in my life I'm ashamed of. We don't talk about those, though. If I could give my younger self some advice it would be: 'Grow up!'

My mum instilled in me the proverb: 'I cried because I had no shoes, until I saw a man who had no feet.' Those words are always with me and I'm a believer in showing kindness to others and not expecting repayment. films followed over the ensuing 12 years - The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy and A View to a Kill.

At the end of A View to a Kill in 1985 he decided to hand back his licence to kill. ' I realised that jumping around with bullets and bombs in my middle-fifties was really daft,' he said.

In 1999, Moore was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire ( CBE), and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) on June 14, 2003. The citation on the knighthood was for Moore's charity work, which has dominated his public life for more than a decade. Moore said that the citation 'meant far more to me than if I had got it for acting... I was proud because I received it on behalf of Unicef as a whole and for all it has achieved over the years'.