Sir Roger Moore 1927 - 2017

STARBURST pays tribute to the legendary actor and genre icon...

- Paul Mount

When the indomitable Sir Roger Moore passed away last month after a short battle with cancer, many of the subsequent obituaries, both in print and on social media, perhaps not unreasonably, lamented his passing with the observation that ‘nobody did it better’. This reference to the title song to The Spy Who Loved Me, his 1977 adventure as the seemingly indestructible James Bond 007, isn’t just an example of predictable journalistic wordplay, it’s also a fair and accurate summation of the extraordinary and joyful life of a generous, kind-hearted actor possessed of a sly wit and a sense of self-deprecation increasingly rare amongst those in his chosen profession. He was a bon vivant, a gourmand, a ferocious charity campaigner, a man who lived and loved and who, in a series of starring roles on television and film that made him a household name, became nothing less than a legend of the entertainment industry.

Roger Gordon Moore was born in London in October 14th, 1927, the only child of George Alfred Moore and Lillian Pope. His early years were warm and unremarkable, apart from the little business of World War II, which saw him shipped out of a Blitzbattered London to the relative safety of the little town of Holsworthy in Devon. Roger’s father was a policeman by profession but he dabbled in the dramatic arts and became a semi-professional stage musician labouring under the name Haphazard the Hazy Wizard. It seems likely that his father’s skirmishes with the world of show business were the latent catalyst for Roger’s interest in becoming a performer in the post-War years.