I played in Wimbledon when I could have been James Bond, but my wife said no

Wimbledon -hero Roger Taylor was in the race to succeed Sean Connery as James Bond -until his wife struck his most important swimwear -audition.

Sheffield-Born Taylor, 83, made three Wimbledon Semi -final, in 1967, 1970 and 1973, and was the favorite of the country tennis Underdog before Tim Henman came.

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For the first time he revealed how he was asked to attend a casting session for the 1969 film on the secret service of Hare Majesty.

Connery, who died in 2020 at the age of 90, launched the spy film Franchiseries with Dr. No in 1962, but went out of the role five years later.

Good, 6ft, left -handed Taylor’s appearance in the final of the Queen of 1967 received a lot of “interest from Hollywood”.

Noel Berryman, the vice-chairman of Queen’s Club, claimed that the wife of screenwriter Richard Maybourne had watched that final and declared her husband: “There is your new one James Bond. “

Taylor wrote in his new autobiography, the man who saved Wimbledon and remembered: ‘I assumed that this was a kind of ending.

“Noel insisted that he was deadly serious and asked if I would be interested in meeting some of the money men at their offices in Park Lane to talk about the project.

“My wife Frances started to laugh and said the whole thing was ridiculous.

“But I wanted to explore the options, even though I had never put a foot on a stage before.

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“So between winning a few games that first week I stared in mirrors in an attempt the Essence of 007.

“Sunday came by and we went into the city.

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“I was in a state of conflict: excited, nervous and also afraid that my attention would be taken from Wimbledon. We arrived and I was led in a room full of men.

“Two of these Moguls had huge cigars and they all stared at me without saying a word … not one word.

“They kept staring, so I felt incredibly self -conscious! And that was it.

“I never even had the chance to tell them:” I am Bond, James Bond, you don’t know “before the meeting ended and then I went back to Wimbledon.”

As the tournament Previous, Berryman told Taylor that he had done enough to secure a second test in Pinewood Studios – but “I could take my swimsuit with me!”

Taylor, who is now married to his second wife Alison, said: “At which point Frances became very furious. She is a Scottish Baptist and was clearly not in the mood to become a bond -girl.

“I have often asked how much I am sorry that I no longer made the chance and still laugh at some reports from those days that the James Bond of Tennis called me.”

Bond -bosses went for Aussie -Model George Lazenby.

Yorkshireman Taylor, who has an incurable amyloidosis, added: “A few years later I was in California, sitting at a bar. Besides me, a man who looked like a broken man was very worse for wear. It was Lazenby!

“I wondered if I might have had a happy escape.

“That said, every time I watch a Bond film, there is a bit of me that wonders what if? And I have done the line ‘Bond, James Bond’ line perfectly, you know.”

The man who saved Wimbledon – the official biography of Roger Taylor, published by Pitch Publishing, £ 25, is on 30 June.