Sir Roger Moore has revealed James Bond villain Nick Nack was a "sex maniac" in real-life.

Sir Roger Moore

Sir Roger Moore

The late Herve Villechaize, the 3ft 11ins actor who played the henchman in 1974 film 'The Man with the Golden Gun', had a passion for women more voracious then 007 himself according to Roger.

Speaking at London's South Bank Centre, Roger - who played Bond in seven films between 1973 and 1985 - recalled: "He was a very small man and he used to touch me and I used to say, 'Don't touch me you are diseased.' I wasn't being cruel about his size, it was just that he was a sex maniac. He has a lust for ladies, unnatural!"

Roger explained that while they were filming in the Far East, Herve admitted he had slept with at least 35 women during that location shoot.

Sir Roger said: "When we were in Hong Kong he would find girls in girly clubs and go with a flashlight, 'You, you, not you.'

"He told me 35. I told him that did not count as he paid for them, but he said, 'Sometimes when I pay they refuse.' "

In comparison, for the entire run of 007 movies from first film 'Dr. No' to the most recent 'Spectre' that spans 54 years, Bond slept with just 58 women - a tally in which Herve almost matched in just one filming session.

Herve played the sidekick of main villain Scaramanga - played by the late great Sir Christopher Lee - but before his big Bond break, he was so poor that he lived out of his car in Los Angeles.

A well-known womaniser, French actor Herve once admitted: "I used to exploit my height and then let them mother me until I realised I was robbing myself of my masculinity."

Herve - whose surgeon father unsuccessfully tried to treat his proportionate dwarfism - went on to become an alcoholic and suffered from depression.

He eventually shot himself at his Hollywood home in 1993 at the age of 50 and left a suicide note saying he was despondent due to long-term health problems such as chronic pain due to having normal-sized internal organs inside his small body.