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.