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Welcome To The Second Roger Moore Interview. This one is taken from The Times Section 3 (Monday 15. Nov.), I have to admit it is a rather good one too.

Feeder: My Gentle Love Affair.

Roger Moore is best known as James Bond and The Saint. He never discusses his private life. But following an accident in Paris last month in which his long-time girlfriend was seriously injured, he talks for the first time about their life together.

It is the blood on his hands that Roger Moore recalls most vividly. He could not recall hurting himself; then he realised it was not his blood, but that of his girlfriend. He was cradling her on a neon-lit Paris roadside. Only now, a month later, is he able to bring himself to talk about the accident which almost robbed him, ten days before his 72nd birthday, of the woman he loves.

He is notoriously reticent about his personal life, and there is no hint of any imminent heartfelt outpouring when, a few mornings before catching a flight to London, he strides into the office of a skyscraper towering above Hollywood's walk of Fame accompanied by his son Christian, 26. Lowering himself into the only armchair, he crosses his arms and eyes me with concern. "Before anything else," he asks. "How is Dudley?" (Dudley Moore is a mutual friend, whom Roger has along regarded as "My son - my smallest son".)

Moore has always been loyal to his friends, no matter where in the world he may be. Which is one reason we are meeting in the office of Jerry Pam, another exp. and Moore's press agent. Pan also represents Michael Caine, and the three have been close friends for more than 20 years.

For years, Moore has been faxing jokes almost daily to his friends. Much of Pam's repertoire used to originate from Moore's home in Monte Carlo, "but now he gets them delivered in his email everyday," says Moore. He still prefers to communicate via his portable fax machine, but vows he will catch up with modern technology by the next century.

Tall, trim and upright, he is elegant and handsome in a navy blazer, blue shirt and grey trousers, the traditional look saucily contradicted by a silver and pink candy-striped tie. His still youthful face has a permanent tan and he shows no sign of weariness, despite having flown into LA 3 days earlier after collecting a doctorate from Toronto's Ryerson University ("I wanted to be a Doctor of Gynaecology but they insisted on Doctor of Law") and spending the last 2 nights belatedly celebrating his birthday.

The night before he had frolicked with close friends Veronique and Gregory Peck, Jackie Collins and the lyricist Leslie Bricusse at a party. The night before that, his Swedish-born girlfriend Kristina Tholstrup, 57, with whom he live in Monte Carlo, threw a huge birthday party at his favourite restaurant, Le Dome. "It was a beautiful party," says Moore. It was the one she had been prevented from giving him on the actual day. "She was still recovering from her accident then, so we just had a very quiet lunch together."

He falls silent for a moment, transported back to that dreadful night. Roger was being honoured at France's annual television awards, during which time "our waiting chauffeur later admitted to the police that he'd consumed vodka, gin and whisky". Afterwards the driver took them to Regine's for dinner but the restaurant was so noisy that within minutes they returned to their limo to go back to the hotel.

Moore recalls Kristina standing by the closed passenger door: "Then the door suddenly swung out and the driver slammed the car into reverse at full throttle. The car flew backwards and the door smashed Kristina to the ground. The wheels went over her handbag but she was thrown back on the road. Thank God she had her hair up and backcombed, otherwise it would have been much worse. All I could hear was screaming - my screaming, her screaming, I don't know whose - and the sound of this limo going backwards, hitting cars that were all parked on the side of the road. Bang, bang! And then the limo finally finished up on top of a car. I didn't see that until afterwards. I was running to Kristina, who was lying on her back on the ground. Unconscious.

"I put my hands under her and I realised that she was cold so I took my jacket off and saw my hands were covered in blood. I thought `How did I get hit?` but it was from her. I put my dinner jacket under her head. I was desperate for someone to come along and help."

He speaks with frustration and controlled anger now. "It took half an hour for an ambulance to arrive. We were three minutes from the Champs Elysees. It took the paramedics another 20 minutes of messing around with her on the ground, getting oxygen and putting her on the ambulance; then another 20 minutes before another paramedic doctor arrived - they wouldn't move the ambulance without him - then another half an hour finding a hospital.

"It happened at midnight and it was 2:30 before we got to a hospital!"

His passion is unexpected. His cobalt-blue eyes, normally full of laughter when not shrouded by polite indifference, are misted with tears. He has relived those hours often over the past few weeks, but the memories are still too fresh to be imparted without immense pain. He shakes his head as if to erase the picture imprinted in his memory. He sighs: "I don't know how I did not kill the driver!"

Kristina was in hospital for five days, during which time her head wound "was cobbled together with one long stitch". Moore chartered an aircraft to fly her to their Monaco home, where he nursed her for a further week. "She's all right now," he adds, "though her head still hurts a bit."

When I ask if the accident brought them closer together, he murmurs: "No, we couldn't be any closer than we are."

Kristina accompanies him as he travels the world as a special ambassador for UNICEF "More than anything she is gentle. And she's intelligent. And funny." He pauses. "And she's such a support in my work for UNICEF She should be the ambassador."

It was Kristina who suggested last Christmas that they send cards to the children in a camp they had visited in Kosovo, "Just in case they have forgotten us". One child wrote back saying it was the best present they had ever received.

His friend Audrey Hepburn introduced him to UNICEF years ago. When she died, and at her request, he took over as special ambassador; he had already become entrenched in the cause of helping children in embattled and poverty-stricken countries.

Moore is visibly moved as he recounts images that remain with him from recent travels .The home run by nuns in the Philippine's for street children, "who looks us by the hand and were so proud to show us their dormitory and tell us what they wanted to be when they grew up". The 11-year old girl he met there who had just begun to speak after four years of silence - "She had watched a drug dealer hack her mother to death while she hid under the table". Now she and Moore write to each other. The old man who wept as he told of his 15-year old daughter being raped as he was held captive.

Such encounters affect him greatly. "Sometimes I do the unforgivable and get emotional about it. I used to think Audrey was often too emotional until I started doing the same kind of work. I become so angry when I hear these stories and get so choked up.

"But you mustn't show your emotions. When I was a child, my parents had a friend, the son of my Godparents, who had a form of lupus. He'd lost all the skin around his face, couldn't shut his eyes, he was going blind. It was horrendous to look at. But I was a small child and brought up around him, so I'm not shocked by sights that repel other people".

What does shock and enrage him is that governments are profiting from the sale of arms and mines. "It's mans inhumanity and greed that they can make a profit out of things that kill. Animals don't do that. Only human beings".

His work for UNICEF, for which the Queen appointed him CBE this year, has changed him. "It's made me a lot wiser. And probably a lot more boring. I remember when Audrey asked me to help her on a concert; she said 'Come early and talk at the press conference'. I said 'I don't know enough about UNICEF'. She said 'That's alright, they only want to talk about movies'. And they did. But Audrey wouldn't let them. Whoever dreamt up the idea of getting Danny Kaye to be the first international goodwill ambassador was a genius because that was the first time that celebrities were used for a worthwhile cause".