Former British No.1 Roger Taylor nearly became the new James Bond during Wimbledon. But the three-time semi-finalist is so shaken and stirred by the “cult” of the All England Club he reckons they are the real-life villains. Taylor was one of the Handsome Eight who formed the professional Tennis Championships back in 1968.

Yet the Yorkshireman’s dashing matinee idol looks had caught the attention of Hollywood the year before when he played the Queen’s Club final. And now 83, he looks back and thinks: “What if?” and about his close call to star in the 1969 film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. “I was watching a match in the Wimbledon stand with (first wife) Frances when Noel Berryman, the vice-chairman of Queen’s Club, came up to us and sat down,” Taylor recalled.

“‘You’re not going to believe this,’ he said. ‘But you know everyone’s looking for a new James Bond to succeed Sean Connery? Well, I’ve brought some guests today, the scriptwriter Richard Maybourne, and his wife, who are very close to the Bond franchise. During Saturday’s final she turned to Richard while watching you and said: ‘There’s your new James Bond’. My wife says: ‘Don’t be ridiculous. He’s Scottish.’”

Taylor shared her scepticism – “I immediately assumed it was a wind up” – but a meeting was arranged on the middle Sunday of The Championships. And he rehearsed the line: “The name’s Bond, James Bond” in the mirror in his “unmistakable South Yorkshire accent”.

He recalled: “I went to a meeting in St James and I walked into a room full of men. And these two big guys, Cubby Broccoli and Harry Salzman had cigars. I was pretty fit, in those days. And these other guys were looking at me, they’re all creeping around me. They never asked me to say anything so the James Bond line never came out.”

Taylor was then asked to go for an audition at Pinewood Studios and bring a swimsuit. “At which point Frances became very irate, saying the whole thing was absolute madness. Through an apparent lack of interest on my behalf, nothing more came of it. Every time I watch a Bond movie there’s a little bit of me that wonders what if? Everyone fantasises about James Bond. It was every man’s dream.”

The new Bond was instead Aussie one-hit wonder George Lazenby, who later married Wimbledon champion Pam Shriver. Taylor recalled he later met Lazenby slumped at a bar in California looking like “a broken man” and thought: “Maybe I’d had a lucky escape after all.”

Taylor tells the tale in his new autobiography The Man Who Saved Wimbledon. It is the story of a working-class boy from Sheffield who became a top star after learning to play in the park with his mother Lilian. And the pain the son of a trade unionist has felt since breaking the 1973 Wimbledon strike to support his home Grand Slam.

Taylor “almost buckled” and did pull out before reversing his decision. He beat teenage debutant Bjorn Borg but lost to eventual champion Jan Kodes in his rain-delayed semi-final.

“I became one of the pivotal figures at the heart of a ferocious battle,” he recalled. “At Queens Club Stan Smith said to me: ‘Roger, if you don’t boycott, you’ll never play tennis again’. So I said: ‘Why not?. He said: ‘Because we’ll be running the game’.

“I was caught in the middle and inevitably became a villain to some. It’s left a hole in my heart that hasn’t properly healed more than 50 years later and has given me fresh nightmares while putting all this down on paper as the memories come flooding back. The subsequent lack of respect shown to me by the club hurts to this day. It’s like a cult.”

Taylor, whose health has been hit by prostate cancer and amylostosis, is still aggrieved his late son Greig was never allowed to become a member of The All England Club.

The left-hander has other scores to settle including 6 ft 2 in Bob Hewitt – who he once punched – David Lloyd and Dan Maskell. “What’s the point of writing and saying anything dishonest,” he said. “We grew up in the old fashioned way.”

The Man Who Saved Wimbledon – Roger Taylor’s Official Biography, published by Pitch Publishing, £25, is out June 30.