It is now 56 years since , as a child, I first walked through the gates of Elstree Studios but it was not until the early 1970s that I started interviewing stars and writing about it. I was very lucky because that meant I got to meet stars and character actors whom I had grown up watching on television and the big screen.

I must be honest in that I never watch the Oscar ceremony today or have any desire to meet the stars of today simply because I rarely go to the cinema and often have no idea who they are.

Perhaps that is my mistake but luckily my column is about yesteryear and that seems to appeal to my kind readers. I remember in about 1988 Michael Jackson was driven in to Elstree Studios in a blacked out limo to visit Steven Spielberg filming a sequence on Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade on the now demolished stage six. I happened to be at the studio with the late great managing director Andrew Mitchell and he asked me to join him and go and meet Michael. I declined as he did not interest me, but I guess today I could dine out with such a meeting.

By contrast I did meet the ultimate screen cad George Sanders a few months before his death at Elstree Studios on a film called Endless Night. The star was Hayley Mills, who is still a friend and never seems to age. In 1972 George took himself to a hotel in Spain and committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. His health was failing and he suffered from depression. A sad end, which by chance almost started in Borehamwood. He told me: "In the early 1930s I was signed to a contract at British and Dominions but it burnt down and I was offered a role in Hollywood so that is how my career began."

The British and Dominions Studio was sited where the Imperial Place office complex now stands in Elstree Way. It was a short-lived but pioneering film studio and saw the launch of such stars as Leslie Howard and Anna Neagle plus the last screen appearance of the silent screen Hollywood star Douglas Fairbanks. It sadly burnt down one night in 1936 and instead the investors of rebuilding invested in a new facility called Pinewood Studios which is still going strong today.

I understand that Pinewood Studios has been bought by a property company. The Studio celebrates its 80th anniversary this year but alas the company has sold off the historic Teddington Studios for housing and I wonder how long it will be before the new owners decide to concentrate production facilities at Pinewood and sell off Shepperton Studios, which they also now own.

The historic home of the Hammer horror films is also to be turned over to housing, as is the Fountain Studios where the television show The X Factor is filmed.

Very few of the famous studios of yesteryear survive today. Gainsborough, Lime Grove, Denham, MGM, Merton Park, Islington, Gate, Nettlefold and others are long gone. If you enjoy watching old black and white film and television series you will see such names crop up.

Personally it annoys me that the BBC does not acknowledge in the credits that such hit shows as Strictly Come Dancing are shot in Borehamwood at Elstree Studios.

Why do they not credit that shows such as Holby City and Eastenders are filmed at the BBC Elstree Centre, which I still argue should be called the BBC Borehamwood Centre to reflect its actual location? It happens that the then BBC supremo who was appointed to convert and launch that facility is a friend of mine. He claims that they took over from ATV which had described the studio as the ATV Elstree Centre.

Anyway, enough from me for this week and I look forward to our weekly ramble down Memory Lane next week and take care until we meet again.