The only child of a policeman from Stockwell, south London, Sir Roger won a grammar school place but then the Second World War broke out and he was evacuated. “I missed out on so much learning,” he says, for once sounding rueful. “I would have loved to have been a brain surgeon.” More than he would have loved to be James Bond? “I would have killed more people,” he grins. But seduced fewer women? “But I would have princesses coming in wearing lots of eye make-up. I would have loved to study medicine but I was lucky to have come into the profession that I loved. I may not have been very good at it, but I loved it.”