THERE are things we know about Roger Moore. We know he says his eyebrows played a large part in his performances over the years.

We know he was a Saint for seven years in the Sixties and that he played Bond in seven films, until his bank account had swelled to an even greater size than his fluid-filled 58-year-old arthritic knees.

And we know he’s a likeable, natural survivor, having skipped lightly across the lilies on top of the crocodile-filled swamp that is Hollywood as easily as his 1973 James Bond did in Live And Let Die.

Yet, you wonder if Moore’s self-deprecation is an act?

While his eyebrows have certainly served him while, Sir Roger fails to mention the rest of his body was also RADA trained, and in fact he had offers from the RSC before running for the (Hollywood) hills. (Noel Coward advised him; ‘Young man, with your devastating good looks and disastrous lack of talent you should take any job every offered to you.’)

Does he really reckon Moore is less? And what, for example, motivates Britain’s most debonair man? Now 89, at an age when most of his contemporaries are taking their close-ups in that great film studio in the sky, he is touring the country with his own autobiographical show.

Why bother? Why not stay at either home in Switzerland or Monaco and wave to the passing billionaire yachts who float past on filched pensioner money, or spend time with his grandchildren?

And there are his relationships. He’s been a ladies man, for sure, but why so keen to marry many of them. (Four). Why commit to matrimony when divorce can prove so costly?

The chance to gain insight into the mind of the nation’s suave star arrives at a swish London W1 club.

Moore looks relaxed and as stylish as he did when he played Brett Sinclair in The Persuaders in 1971; white shirt, pink tie, navy blazer and dark flannels.

Yes, his hair is a few shades further from grey than it has a right to be but he could still work as a model (as he did during the lean years) if the knitting pattern people came calling once again.

An easy question to start; what’s the secret to looking great, Roger? “Good, life, good wife,” he says, before smiling and adding; “And only ever one at a time.”

Moore’s vocal delivery may be slightly more languid these days, but it only serves to make him sound even more cool. As a matter of interest, how does he rate his current Coolest Man competitor in the form of Mad Men’s John Hamm?

“Good series, John Hamm’s,” he acknowledges. “But so much of the Sixties was about chain smoking and Playtex bras and pointed tits.” Moore grins at the realisation he’s gone slightly off piste but continues.

“I remember those days when women wore all those foundation garments and girdles and God knows what, and struggling to find that spare bit of flesh beneath the French knickers and the stocking tops.”

Goodness. But does he really not take himself too seriously – or is it part of his shtick?

“Nobody else has taken me seriously. Why should I?”

After his Hollywood MGM arrival in the Fifties Moore was dumped unceremoniously after two years and a series of duds.

Surely he must have a deep, inner resolve, to get back on the acting horse? (Which he did with Ivanhoe in 1958.).

“I’m not bitter at all. And you’ve got to have a sense of humour, otherwise the first time you see yourself on the screen you’ll be ready to commit suicide. You think ‘How awful I am’.”

Come on, Roger. Continuity in the business alone suggests an innate self-belief.

Roger George Moore insists he wasn’t born confident. “I was nervously shy,” says the son of a policeman and a housewife, who grew up in Stockwell.

When asked what altered his outlook, he replies: “A man called Joe Graham changed my entire attitude to life.

“I had gone back to Hollywood, this time to Warner Bros to make The Miracle (1959) playing the Duke of Wellington’s nephew at the Battle of Waterloo.

“But surprisingly, I was asked to work with a voice coach, Joe, because my voice was said to be ‘too English’.

“Joe Graham asked me ‘Why, Roger, if you are six foot one, do you only stand five foot ten?’

“He then asked when I spoke to people who had gone to university if I felt worried I may mispronounce a word. I said that was possible and he said; ‘That’s the problem. You have to stand taller. You have to do something with what you’ve been given.

“And the reason they say you are too English is because you don’t open your mouth. Subconsciously, you are afraid you will use the wrong word.”

Roger Moore grew taller with every day spent with Joe Graham.

But if he was professionally insecure, surely he was more confident with the ladies?

Even the suit of armour he wore in Ivanhoe looked bed-crumpled. And by the time he became The Saint in 1962 the halo was ironic.

“No. It may sound silly but I didn’t know I was attractive to them. I think that’s why I invented the confident, suave character Roger Moore.”

Cleary Sir Roger doesn’t want to retire. “Old actors don’t. The phone just stops ringing. And what else would I do but this? I can’t play the hero any more and my knees hurt.”

Moore laughs a great deal during conversation. But that doesn’t hide a vulnerability which even Joe Graham couldn’t cure. He worries a little about the audiences, he says, recounting how acts have failed in the past in Glasgow, with Des O’Connor fainting through fear, and recoiling at the stories of the Panopticon Theatre audiences who once fired rivets at the performers. “Do you think they’ll throw things at me?” he asks, mostly joking. Only love and kisses you say, and he’s smiling again.

He needs to perform. He needs to be with people, to engage. And why not? He’s a fantastic raconteur. But there’s another reason for his appearances. He wants to share his natural delight, his optimism, with the world.

“I always think that tomorrow is going to be better than today,” he says, smiling, the line delivered to soft perfection.

lAn Afternoon With Sir Roger Moore, King’s Theatre, Glasgow, November 25.