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David Bowie used to 'hide under kitchen table' to avoid Roger Moore

The duo befriended each other when the musician moved to Switzerland in the late Seventies

Jacob Stolworthy
Wednesday 15 November 2017 10:06 GMT
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(AFP/Getty Images)

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A brand new biography has detailed the awkward friendship between David Bowie and Roger Moore in the late 70s which allegedly ended with the musician hiding under a table to avoid the James Bond star.

According to Hollywood screenwriter and novelist Hanif Kureishi, the 007 actor - who passed away in May - befriended the musician after he moved to Switzerland where he proceeded to drop in on the “Starman” singer unannounced.

Author Dylan Jones told The Telegraph at the press launch of his new biography David Bowie: A Life that "one of the weirdest people to be in Bowie’s orbit was Roger Moore.

Jones continued: “Kureishi told me this story, that when David Bowie moved to Switzerland at the end of the Seventies to escape tax and drug dealers, he didn’t know anybody there. He was in this huge house on the outskirts of Geneva - he knew nobody.

“One day, about half-past five in the afternoon, there’s a knock on the door, and there he was: ‘Hello, David.’ Roger Moore comes in, and they had a cup of tea. He stays for drinks, and then dinner, and tells lots of stories about the James Bond films. They had a fantastic time - a brilliant night.”

“But then, the next day, at 5.30… Knock, knock, it’s Roger Moore. He invites himself in again, and sits down: ‘Yeah, I’ll have a gin and tonic, David.’ He tells the same stories - but they’re slightly less entertaining the second time around.

It was apparently here where the burgeoning friendship came to an end.

“After two weeks [of Moore turning up] at 5.25pm - literally every day - David Bowie could be found underneath the kitchen table pretending not to be in.”

Whether this was why Bowie - who passed away at the age of 69 in January 2016 - turned down a role in 1985 007 film A View to a Kill opposite Moore is unknown...

Jones' new biography saw the author interview over 150 people with some sharing such personal stories that they refused to be quoted on the record.

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