Icon of his time - Roger Moore

THE British actor Roger Moore, who died yesterday aged 89, is recognised as one of the best, if not the best, actor to take on Ian Fleming’s iconic but impossibly superior character James Bond. 

Nevertheless, it is not at all certain that, if he were to audition for the role today that he would get it.

He might seem, like table manners or legible handwriting, a quaint irrelevance in our gymed-up, techno-action world. Where he intended irony we might see presumption. He made a career by being a plummy, apex male while today we want our die-hards nutty and the very antithesis of urbanity.

Of course, he was acting and even if we might sniff at his Bond career because of its self-deprecating, testosterone- indulging conquests, his death might cause us a moment’s pause to consider how our world has changed since he became Bond in Live and Let Die in 1973. It has shrunk considerably because of intensified electronic surveillance. Privacy is, almost like handwriting, a faint memory. Intrusion is everyday; online security the new frontline. Moore lived in a world of Preening Toms. We live in a world of Peeping Toms.