Sir Roger Moore always knew – and wouldn't have minded – that, on his passing, the world's press would lead with obsequies for the third movie James Bond. Speaking to this writer in 2004, the smooth actor, whose death has been announced at the age of 89, laughed at the suggestion that he might ever resent the stress put on his time as 007.

“Oh God no. I would be ridiculously ungrateful not to acknowledge the fact that, as a result of Bond, I don’t have to run around looking for work,” he said.

Moore would also have liked it to be known that he was, from the late 1950s until the early 1970s, the UK's biggest TV star. He was suave in Ivanhoe, Maverick and The Saint. In 1971, two years before he became James Bond, he was paid the then-staggering sum of £1 million to appear opposite Tony Curtis as a crime-fighting millionaire in The Persuaders! (that exclamation point was very of its era). None of the official James Bonds were so famous when they took over the role.

Moore also deserves celebration for his tireless charity work. His good friend Audrey Hepburn pointed him towards Unicef and, in 2003, he was knighted in honour of his time as ambassador for that organisation.

‘Talk posh’

Students of cultural life will note something else about his passing. Roger Moore is among the last of those working-class actors who felt they needed to “talk posh” to succeed in British cinema. The smooth, clipped vowels and the well-tailored blazers suggested a habitué of Mayfair clubs who had grown up with a silver spoon always close to hand. This was very far from the case. The “Roger Moore” we met on screen and in person – for he almost always played a version of himself – was as much a creation as Cary Grant’s classless enigma.

Unlike Grant, he was not raised in misery. But it was an ordinary upbringing. Moore was the son of a policeman from the unfashionable south London suburb of Stockwell.

“I don’t know whether I had an accent,” he told me. “Because my mother was very particular about the way I spoke. I remember getting a clip round the ear for saying ‘ain’t’.”

He was, however, happy to admit that he had consciously assembled the Moore Brand as a young man. “The character I invented called Roger Moore was just this guy who can walk into a restaurant, sit down and talk to people and not hide in a corner.”

Spear-carrying roles

Moore first had ambitions to become an artist and, with that in mind, took a certificate from the Royal Society of Arts. He worked for a while drawing animated cartoons, but got sacked after botching one too many jobs. Legend has it that a pal observed his buff frame at the swimming pool and suggested that he might like to investigate work as a movie extra. A few minor spear-carrying roles followed. Moore later benefited from the patronage of the flamboyant Irish director Brian Desmond Hurst. The film-maker paid Moore's fees at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and later offered him a job in his musical comedy Trottie True.

National service in West Germany interrupted his rise, but, by the early 1950s, he was getting work as – something his detractors would enjoy – a model for knitwear patterns. Some television roles followed. Contracts with MGM and Warners delivered indifferent work in indifferent films.

Eventually, now past 30, he made a name for himself in the still novel world of British television. He played Walter Scott's hero in a small-screen version of Ivanhoe that ran from 1958 to 1959. Moore never looked back. He played James Garner's cousin in the American series Maverick. He was bumped up another level when he took on the role of Simon Templar in the hugely popular show The Saint. That character, conceived by Leslie Charteris in the 1920s, was a forerunner of Ian Fleming's James Bond and, always ready with a quip, Roger Moore played him very much as he would later play 007. Here was a man who had mastered the rare art of wearing a white dinner jacket with style.

There is an interesting parallel here with Pierce Brosnan. Just as the Irish actor had to initially turn down Bond because of commitments to Bondalike Remington Steele, Moore was kept away from the superspy by entanglements with the not dissimilar The Saint. When, in 1973, he finally played the part in Live and Let Die, audiences knew very much what to expect.

Over seven films, Moore had great fun playing up the self-parodic elements of Bond. Who needs Austin Powers when you have Octopussy? He was clearly having great fun and, until the last few, when middle-age really caught up, he managed to communicate that fun to the audience.

Escapism

The sinister psychosis of the Sean Connery Bond was nowhere to be seen. These were delightful, lightweight entertainments for a Britain that – groaning through recession and industrial turmoil – needed all the escapism it could find. The Spy Who Loved Me, the apex of his Bond career, scored three Oscar nominations and took a then-massive $185 million at the box office.

Moore was impressively honest about his limitations. "They were going to start running out of villains who looked like they could be knocked down by me," he said of the later Bond films. "And leading ladies were becoming young enough to be my grandchildren. That all became a bit disgusting – a bit Lolita." He was 57 when he made his last appearance as Bond in A View to A Kill.

Moore was married three times – and suffered some messy divorces – before settling down for good with Danish socialite Kristina Tholstrup. A supporter of the Conservative party in the UK, he shared his later years between homes in Monte Carlo, Switzerland and the south of France, but always denied that he was a tax exile.

He once said that his whole career was based in fooling people. That trick worked deep into old age.

“Well, I suppose I must,” he told me. “Because this guy Roger Moore is still following me round.”

He is survived by Kristina and by three children.