IN HIS OWN SUAVE WORDS...

WOMEN have played a big part in my life on and off-screen and I think I’ve finally worked them out. I always make sure I have the last word. That word is ‘yes’.

‘IT JUST gave me a stiff neck’ — explaining why taking Viagra left him neither shaken nor stirred.

INTELLIGENCE is my most endearing quality, according to [his wife] Kristina. That’s her Swedish sense of humour.

BEING eternally known as Bond has no downside. People call me Mr Bond when we’re out and I don’t mind a bit. Why would I?

‘I HAD creaking knees and my leading ladies could have been my granddaughters’ — on his last appearance as James Bond in A View To A Kill, aged 57.

‘I LIE all the time. I say different people, otherwise you’ll upset somebody’ — on his favourite Bond girl.

I’M ONE lucky b ****** . In my early acting years, I was told that to succeed you needed personality, talent and luck in equal measure. 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!’

I STILL have some of Bond’s suits in my wardrobe, but they don’t fit me now. In the 007 days I was so thin that if I turned sideways you could mark me absent.

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.

MEDICINE has always fascinated me and I’m a hypochondriac. It’s not that I wake up every morning and think: ‘I’m dying.’ At my age, I know I am.