Well here we are again and thank you for joining me on a ramble down Memory Lane. I feel autumn is coming and soon we will have to gather around a blazing open fire so I can recall days of long ago. However this week I reckon we should go via Dead Man's Gulch and River Canyon to mark the passing of veteran actor Hugh O'Brian, who many of us will recall as the television western hero Wyatt Earp in that long ago series.

I was asked this week if I ever visited many film locations during production but I must admit I cannot remember many. I do recall in 1959, as a kid, watching the filming of a scene with Alistair Sim and Terry Thomas at the end of my crescent for the classic comedy School For Scoundrels. In the mid 1960s I remember Sid James and Peggy Mount stranded in a vintage Bentley in Arundel Drive for a scene from the television series George and the Dragon.

Like most old residents of Borehamwood we have often walked past television crews shooting scenes in our town for such series as Grange Hill, EastEnders, Inspector Morse and the On The Buses films to name just a few.

Occasionally I was invited to location film sets but I was more at home in visiting sets in studios. I do recall a marvellous outdoor set in Hatfield for a movie called Saving Private Ryan with a bombed out French village, a bridge over a 'river' and much more. I recall Tom Hanks and Matt Damon signed a photo of themselves in costume for me but alas I think I have lost it. I guess it is a business park or something now?

Letchmore Heath was famously used for the exterior scenes in the 1960 classic Village Of The Damned with the interiors filmed at the MGM Studio in Borehamwood. In recent times I have visited this location with the film's director and surviving cast members and it was great fun. In one scene they use the local village hall.

Many years ago another production used the same hall and it was called The Shillingbury Blowers and I was invited along to watch the filming. Afterwards I enjoyed a drink with two of its stars, Trevor Howard and veteran character actor Sam Kydd in the nearby Three Horesehoes pub.

I also remember interviewing a couple of stars at what was then the Edgwarebury Hotel in Barnet Lane, Elstree. The first was Kirk Douglas, who shot a scene there for a film I have now forgotten. Then there was John Cleese filming a scene for a movie called Fierce Creatures. I cannot say I warmed to either of them but that was not my task.

When I was in Hollywood I was escorted to an outdoor set of The Waltons television series, I think at Warner Brothers Studio, but my memory is not great. I was introduced to the actor Ralph Waite, who played the dad in that long running and very popular series and they were shooting a reunion special. At the end of our conversation I could not resist asking him to say 'goodnight Paul', and he did!

It is not the same today as those in charge take it all too seriously . Three times I have been asked to sign a document saying they would sue me if I ever revealed what I saw. The first time was on the set of the X Files movie at 20th Century Fox in Hollywood, then at Leavesden Studios when they were filming Star Wars The Phantom Menace and at Elstree Studios when they were shooting Jack And The Beanstalk. Each time I refused but was let in when I exclaimed 'grow up, it is only a damn film'. The same applies to television. They live in a bubble of self importance. Television executives pass water if they can get 10 million viewers, forgetting that means 56 million did not watch. On the other hand I guess it is why I am not invited anymore, but do I care?