Well we have survived another week, playmates, and so once again may I have the pleasure to once again take you down Memory Lane to Nostalgia Ridge so we can look over the horizon of yesteryear. Okay you have guessed it is my happy hour but that sounds nice. I often wonder what is the age profile of my readers. I suspect they generally are 60 plus or what we now call the middle aged.

However to prove I am still hip to the beat it is good that two predictions I made a couple of weeks ago have come true. The two Elstree-made shows have proved what I said. The long running Big Brother series has thankfully bitten the dust, albeit after a great run. I recall when the audience for the evictions stretched for a long way outside the studio but I hear they now struggle. Everything has its day and can you believe it once attracted an audience of 10 million? Poor old ITV and Simon Cowell with X Factor are going to be thrashed by the Elstree-made Strictly Come Dancing as I said, but they cling on, which is a pity. I once interviewed David Niven and as I was young then asked for a life tip. He replied: "Paul, always know when it is your time to leave the stage." Alas, television executives often fail to heed that wise advice.

This week I look back at three Hollywood greats who between them made about ten films in Borehamwood during the 1950s. Because I am so young I never met any of them but did have the pleasure in later years to chat with people who worked with them.

Does anyone now remember Robert Taylor, who was a hearthrob in the cinema of the 1930s into the 1950s? He came to the long-gone MGM British Studios in Borehamwood to make several movies towards the end of his box office appeal days. Does anyone remember those costume dramas such as Ivanhoe and Knights Of The Round Table? For the former, MGM built a great castle exterior set on the backlot, which stood for years. It was finally demolished to make way for an extensive Chinese village set for The Inn Of Sixth Happiness. Today it is all housing and some green spaces. Sadly, Robert was a chain smoker and died at the end of the 60s from lung cancer.

Errol Flynn is better remembered today probably because of his devil-may-care lifestyle. He hit instant stardom in the mid 1930s at Warner Brothers in Hollywood in several classic swashbuckling roles. Alas, in his private life he enjoyed too much drink and drugs and was once quoted as saying "live life to the full and try everything before becoming 50, as after that it is just downhill." By the time Errol came to work at Elstree Studios in the 1950s he had seen better days both career wise and in health terms. In one film he was cast opposite Anna Neagle, who told me: "They needed to shoot any scenes with Errol before midday as the drink got the better of him after that, but he was always charming." Sadly Errol continued to decline and met his fate in Canada. He had gone there to sell his beloved yacht to meet bills and at a friend's house lay down on the floor and died of a heart attack. The local coroner's office took charge of his body. One assistant cut off a wart from his private parts as a souvenir but when his boss found out was forced to sellotape it back on as they would do another autopsy in Los Angeles. Eventually Errol was buried in a Hollywood cemetery that he hated and was without a headstone for some time. I suspect Errol would have found it funny, but to me it was a sad end for a Hollywood great.

I wonder who remembers Clark Gable today, although in the 1930s he was named King Of Hollywood and immortalised by his role in Gone With The Wind. My friends in their 30s have never heard of him, such is the nature of fame, but they have heard of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean while admitting to never having seen any of their films. Clark made three films at MGM in Borehamwood in the early 1950s. On one of his films, the three-time Oscar winning cameraman Freddie Young told me: "Clark was every inch a star and dominated any room he entered. My only problem was that his head tended to shake a bit so we had to be careful how to film him."

Sadly a few years later Clark suffered a fatal heart attack just after finishing a difficult movie called The Misfits, starring a very unwell Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift, who would both die within a few years from drink and drugs problems.

They were all very popular in their time, which of course is now a long time ago. I wonder which film stars of today somebody like myself will be writing about in 60 years' time. Well, time will tell and until we meet again take care.