In a way, it’s not me who wants to be Sir Roger Moore – it’s my friend Tom.  Tom is a slightly peculiar man who as a child was caught wearing his dad's slacks, roll-neck and blazer, mixing martinis from Kia-Ora and Drambuie and wearing his mum's bra backwards as a shoulder holster. He was, inevitably, watching Octopussy at the time.  If that extraordinary fact somehow doesn't convince you that you too should want to be Sir Roger Moore, as Tom later convinced me with a VHS of For Your Eyes Only and a curry, I have others.  First is the fact that Moore does not, ever, take himself too seriously. How could he? A Stockwell boy who became a sword-and-sandals spear-carrier, knitwear model and teatime TV star, he was already past 40 when he got to be James Bond. That achieved, he got to be Bond in the 1970s and 80s, the series' most ludicrously enjoyable era.  From the beginning, wilfully misunderstanding blaxploitation cliches, to the end, unfeasibly in bed with Grace Jones, no moment passes when Moore's delight in his sheer, ridiculous good fortune doesn’t shine through. In contrast, Connery, Craig and Dalton explore the seriousness of Bond, the casual brutality and sexual sadism of Fleming. And that's fine. But taking Bond seriously? Ultimately? Why?  Moore's Bond knows Bond is ridiculous, and every wince-making pun and excruciating slap of a female bottom underlines his practically existential message. With a nod to Woody Allen, it is the tao of Sir Roger Moore: life is full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. It’s ridiculous – so enjoy it while you can. Sir Roger, it turns out, is wise.  (Also, A View to a Kill is actually a good film. Enjoy yourself, Moore says, even when you’re pushing 60 and look funny in a tracksuit.)  There are other filmic reasons why I would like to be Sir Roger, and his non-Bond canon of the 70s and early 80s, into which Tom generously initiated me, is first among them. There's Gold, from 1974, based on a Wilbur Smith novel and bowel-clenchingly politically incorrect but somehow … quite good. Moore's mining engineer falls, actually touchingly, for Susannah York, causing him to ignore John Gielgud’s orchestration of a mining disaster in which he will nonetheless achieve a rather damp catharsis. He is human.  Obviously the less said about the attempt to reunite Moore and York, the 1975 Bruges-set lady-journalist-meets-charming-arms-dealer “comedy” That Lucky Touch, the better. But Moore would be no role model if he did not have cautionary tales to tell. Ambition can be thwarted. One can even end up years later in Boat Trip, fellating a sausage. He is not perfect.  Yet there are so many delights. North Sea Hijack, Die Hard on an oil rig off Hull, speaks strongly of how Britain saw itself in the economically straitened 70s and how it would react when someone invaded the Falklands. As Rufus Excalibur Ffolkes, squeezed into an orange wetsuit, spouting weirdly aggressive Toryisms while harpooning Tony Perkins, Moore has a socio-historic warning for us all. He is a prophet.  There is also The Man Who Haunted Himself, a fascinating film from 1970 in which Moore plays a man and his doppelgänger and of which he has said, wistfully, that it was the only film in which he was ever allowed to use his Rada training. He can act.  What should any role model do but show, in two so different movies, that if you try you will eventually, if briefly, succeed?  Finally, there is actually more to Moore than a very British determination to raise an eyebrow at cruel fate. There is his herculean charity work, against the cruelty of foie gras and as a Unicef ambassador for disadvantaged children. There is his perpetual willingness to deploy his celebrity for the benefit of others, regardless of where it lands him – whether it be in some desperate slum, “singing” on stage with Denis Healy or making, with Michael Caine, possibly the worst film of all time. He is generous.  There is also the fact – or at least the anecdotal fact, which, as Sir Roger teaches us on his perpetual tour of regional theatres, is much better than the real kind – that a friend of a friend of mine plays piano during afternoon tea at the Dorchester. One day, this friend of a friend was tinkling away when a blazered arm, somewhat like that of God fingering Adam on Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling (He is …?), appeared and slipped a £50 note into the pocket of his jacket. A rich, beautifully aged voice then asked if the pianist wouldn't mind playing Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye, as it was a particular favourite of his wife.  The arm and voice belonged to Sir Roger Moore – best Bond, charity crusader, good knight. The pianist played it again.  • Rowan Righelato: why I'd like to be Robert De Niro• Peter Bradshaw: why I'd like to be George Sanders• Xan Brooks: why I'd like to be Joseph Cotten
Continuing our series in which writers reveal which movie stars and characters they emulate, Martin Pengelly attempts to persuade the world why Moore's determination to look on the bright – or ridiculous – side makes him an existential hero for our times