007: Pensioned To Kill

Roger Moore was sixty-eight when he first played 007 

And he persisted in the part until he was nigh

On eighty. Critics rate him the worst Bond ever

And filmgoers were appalled by his decrepitude, even in Live & Let Die.

When Toshiko’s parents died in a plane crash in 1983,

Donald took to her to see Octopussy—she was forlorn,

And he wanted to cheer her up. But she said Roger Moore

Was like a very much older and not funny Kenneth Horne.

Stewart Granger was Roger Moore’s boyhood hero. His dream came true

When, in 1945, he was an extra on Caesar & Cleopatra. The leading parts

Were played by Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh. Stewart Granger

Played Apollodorus, a patrician amateur of the arts.

His dream came true again in 1978—they were both in The Wild Geese.

Stewart Granger played Sir Edward Matherson. Richard Harris

Was in it too. He’d have been a much better 007 than Roger Moore

Even though he couldn’t act, was always drunk and lived in Paris.

Roger Moore has been married four times. His first wife, skater

Doorn van Steyn, threw a teapot at him. His second, Dorothy Squires, threw

Things at him for fifteen years. He took it out on his third, Luisa Mattioli.

But in 2003 he married Stewart Granger—and another dream came true.