Welcome to the fourth Roger Moore Interview. This one is taken from The Daily Telegraph (Wed. 27. Dec.), I have to admit it is a rather good one too.

Feeder: I'm obviously not a very good husband.

Roger Moore motors quickly through the hotel foyer, weaving so smoothly between the flower display and the plump sofas that he looks as though he might be on castors. He whirrs over to shake my hand and, I have to say, it's a bit of a shock to look down at his feet and see a pair of Ferragamo loafers instead of a set of luggage wheels.

Still the rest of his appearance does not disappoint. As befits an international man of mystery, the former James Bond is dashingly elegant in a crisp navy blazer, grey flannels with turn-ups, pale shirt and pastel silk tie - the swinging Seventies may be a distant memory in most of us, but they clearly live on in the suave depths of Moore's wardrobe.

Once ensconced in a boardroom, he throws off his cashmere coat, pours himself some water and rumbles pleasantries in his rich, oaky, jet-set voice. In London to launch the World Sports Awards 2000, a prestigious event that he will host at the Royal Albert Hall next month. Moore is deliberately diffident about his role in the proceedings, "Yah, it's all quite simple really" he drawls, "I'm going to get on stage and make an idiot of myself."

He does not appear to be in a particularly good mood - "I don't talk about my personals," he warns - but atleast he tries his best to be agreeable; chattering on about a visit to his son's restaurant and a recent shopping trip to Harrods. In the department store, Moore became upset when he some children crying about a to.

"Oh, God. I wanted to go over and say to their mother 'Madam, would you mind if I bought that for them?' But that would be wrong. You cannot interfere with parents," he sighs.

Although he did not act upon this impulse, it was perhaps a symptom of the fact that Moore has always felt mildly guilty about the success that has made him, a policeman's son from a poor part of London, one of Britain's most enduring actors. "I am a spoilt man who owns a lot of things. I spoilt my own children," he says. The roots of his good fortune were forged in a long line of cheesily debonair characters - including Simon Templar, Ivanhoe and his seven James Bond films - making Roger Moore and his hydraulically operated eyebrows a part of our national consciousness.

"I got lucky. I've always been lucky," he says. "I wasn't handsome I had a baby face. But I was Pretty - so pretty that actresses didn't want to work with me. I got jobs because I had even features and I didn't plan anything. It just happened to me. I've led an extraordinarily lucky, charmed life."

He is 72 years old now, with the straight-backed posture of a much younger man, although his brown hair is a suspiciously uniform shade of chestnut and his smile is oddly dazzling. Years ago when he was asked what he could bring to the role of James Bond that Sean Connery had not, he replied "White Teeth."

Following an operation for prostate cancer in 1993, he has become fussy about his health, giving up cigars, red meat, chocolate and the occasional ice-cream binge. After an early diagnosis from a doctor friend - "See how lucky I am?" - Moore has made a full recovery, despite the dire predictions of a few. On a Nile cruise holiday last year, he met a urologist who told him, "Just you wait for a few more years."

"What a bitter bastard," says Moore, "I told him to drop dead."

His brush with cancer - "I felt very lonely in those days before going on the operating table," - also marked a period of great upheaval in his personal life. "It made me re-evaluate my place on the planet," he says.

Following his treatment, he shocked his family by leaving his wife Luisa, and setting up home with Kristina Tholstrup, a widow and former neighbour in the South of France. Tholstrup, 61, is also a cancer survivor, and this shared experience was one of the factors that led them to become close during his recuperation.