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Kids are shaken, not stirred, at meeting Sir Roger

Students clamour for Sir Roger's autograph

CODENAME: Bancroft's Prep School. Their mission: to infiltrate the Knightsbridge home of 007 star Sir Roger Moore and hand over a £6,000 cheque for his chosen charity UNICEF.

The 16 children from the school in High Road, Woodford Green, were invited to tea with the former James Bond actor at his suite of rooms in the Sheraton Park Hotel after raising the money at their annual charity event.

Sir Roger, accompanied by wife Lady Kristina, answered questions about his life and career as a film star and revealed that his favourite Bond film was A View to a Kill.

A boy and girl from each of the eight classes at the school were randomly chosen for the visit but one of the boys already knew something of the actor because his father had worked as a special effects technician on some of the movies.

Directing operations was the school's headteacher David Horn. He said that despite there being more excitement from parents than from children to start with, they were all well acquainted with the work of Sir Roger by the time they visited him.

He said: "We did a bit of priming up beforehand. We found his website and got them to have a look at that and there have been quite a few of his movies on recently so we pointed them in that direction."

Earlier in the day Sir Roger, who has been a UNICEF goodwill ambassador for 12 years, met the Queen and helped her unveil a plaque at Heathrow Airport marking the work of the children's charity.

Mr Horn said: "We got the children in a big circle and he spoke about the work he had done for UNICEF and the conversation veered towards his film career."

At the end Sir Roger posed with the children for photographs and spent time signing autographs.

11:56am today