Melbourne welcomes Sir Roger Moore on book tour

Roger Moore promises readers at the start of his autobiography My Word is My Bond that if he doesn't have anything nice to say, he won't say anything at all - reports the Herald Sun.

Happily, he breaks that bond on several occasions, most notably when writing about David Niven's late wife Hjordis, a hopeless alcoholic who deserted her husband in his dying days.

"I just finished reading Robert Wagner's autobiography Pieces of My Heart and he felt exactly the same way about Hjordis, so it reiterates what I said," Sir Roger said yesterday in Melbourne.

With a biography titled My Name Is My Bond, Moore is prepared for questions about the character that helped make him famous, but he doesn't seek out all things James Bond.

He hasn't seen any of Timothy Dalton's outings as Bond, or the new Daniel Craig flick Quantum of Solace.

"I saw Casino Royale, which I thought was excellent. I saw it because I'd been protesting the British press who had been attacking him before he started. I thought it was ridiculous because he's a good actor and I'm glad I was proven right," Sir Roger said.

"And I saw Pierce's (Brosnan) because we had to go to one of the anniversaries of Bond and all the old Bonds were asked to go. He was excellent. I'm sure they're all very good."

Sir Roger said he felt no sense of ownership over the character.

"God no. Nothing to do with me. It was Ian Fleming wrote it and Sean (Connery) the one who made it popular."

Sir Roger said he didn't enjoy violent films, including his own last Bond outing A View to a Kill in the list of movies he considers too gory.

"It's not my style of movie. I don't particularly like gore."

But it wasn't the violence that saw Sir Roger bow out of the Bond franchise.

"No, I was too old. The ladies were looking younger than my granddaughters."

Sir Roger signs copies of My Word is My Bond at Angus and Robertson, corner Bourke and Elizabeth streets, city, today at 1pm.

Meanwhile, Quantum of Solace earned $11.8 million at the box office in its first five days of release, the best opening for a Bond film in Australia.

It was also the biggest opening this year, beating The Dark Knight ($11.7 million).

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