A FEW YEARS AGO, WITH MY BRITISH PASSPORT COMING UP FOR renewal, I thought the easiest and quickest way of picking up a replacement was to book a one-day appointment at the Passport Office in London, where the plan was that I would fill in a form, bring a couple of photos and return after lunch to pick up my new document.
Upon handing my duly completed renewal paperwork to the man behind the counter, he tutted and said my signature was ‘outside the box’ and told me I’d need to go and fill in another complete form. About ten minutes later I returned, and ensured my signature was now well and truly within the appointed box.
‘Are these photos recent ones?’ he asked as I handed them over.
‘Yes, I had them taken a week ago,’ I replied. ‘In Switzerland.’
‘What?’
‘A week ago ...’ I repeated.
‘You said Switzerland?’ he asked, as he dropped them back on the desk. ‘I’m afraid we can’t accept these, as they are not on approved UK photographic paper.’
I was somewhat taken aback, but my interrogator was not someone I felt I could be in any way glib with, so, looking forlorn, I asked what I could do.
‘Down that corridor,’ he pointed. ‘Turn left and follow it to the end and you’ll see a photo machine there. It costs £5 and will print you four. When you have them, come back.’
After what seemed like a three-mile hike, I managed to obtain the photos, though obviously by then I wasn’t in a terribly good mood as I look most perturbed in them. I dropped them back to my friend. He read through the form again, looked at the photos … ‘I’m sorry, but this is a different person.’
‘Pardon?’ I asked.
‘On your current passport you are named as Mr Roger Moore, but now you want it to be in the name of Sir Roger Moore – it’s different.’
‘Yes, I’ve been knighted in the meantime.’
‘Ah,’ he replied. ‘Do you have any proof of that?’
‘Proof?! What would you like?’ I seethed through clenched teeth. ‘A letter from the Queen?’
With that, he finished off the paperwork and matter-of-factly told me to report back to the office around the corner in three hours.
Following lunch and a much-needed glass of wine, I reported to what I can only really describe as a hatch in a wall, where I rang the bell and waited for said hatch to open.
‘Name?’ the little man said.
‘Roger Moore.’
‘Date of birth?’
‘14 October 1927.’
‘Got any ID on you?’
It’s at times like this I’m incredibly tempted to say ‘Do you know who I am?’ (Or as in the case of when I was in New York for an interview promoting my first book, and the door security man [who had my name on his list] said, ‘I can’t let you in without photo ID’, I slapped my book down in front of him and said, ‘There! That’s me and that’s my name,’ and walked through past him.) On this occasion, though, I think I produced either my driving licence or credit card.
He studied my ID very carefully and held it up against my passport. ‘Ah, yes, that’s fine.’
I took my passport and just as I was about to turn and exit, the little man called out, ‘Excuse me!’
I returned to his hatch, and he smiled widely, ‘I’ve always been a big fan, Sir Roger. Any chance of an autograph?’
I tell you this small anecdote to highlight the fact that whatever one’s fame, whatever one has ‘accomplished’, whoever one has met and mingled with, wherever one has travelled, there are always times in life that one is brought back to earth with a bump. It’s true what they say: ‘You can take the boy out of south London, but you can’t take south London out of the boy. This particular south London boy has always been very lucky. I’ve worked with the best and travelled the world, made friends with the great and the good and continue to live life to the full – but it’s incidents like the one above that (eventually) make me smile and remember my roots.
Kristina and I visit some of the Kosovar refugees in FYR Macedonia in 1999.
On our first visit to Kazakhstan, Kristina and I met children with disabilities and were continually inspired.
