Hello once again everyone and I hope you are all up to another walk down Memory Lane. This time I am only going back 20 years, so for those of you who have been reading this column for 40 years it is only yesterday.

I have just found a copy of the minutes of the Elstree Studios working party from January 1997. I have kept all this paperwork but never look at it unless by chance as I did today.

I was lucky enough to be the chairman of the Save Elstree Studios campaign from 1988 until 1996. Then in 1996 we forced the then owners Brent Walker, or more precisely the banks controlling them, to sell the 15-acre studio to Hertsmere Council for less than £2 million pounds. Remember, Tesco had bought 12 acres of the studio site several years earlier for £19 million.

Hertsmere Council was in those years controlled by Labour councillors for the first and probably the last time in its history due to the anti-Thatcher feelings of that time. I did not care less and accepted the role of chairman of the recently set up Elstree Studios Partnership company in a voluntary role.

The council had recently sold off its housing stock and was cash rich but facing the possibility of being absorbed into a greater Watford or St Albans unitary authority, so was minded to spend. I must pay credit to the then council leader the late Bryan Stanley, who supported our plans to relaunch the studio.

Believe me, it was a daunting task as we had a valuable underground car park for 200 cars but it was sealed off due to flooding and asbestos. We had to create new drainage systems and a new gas supply so we could heat buildings. We had to re-roof several major buildings on site and many other matters that were necessary but not glamorous.

In the meantime I pressed on, engaging with film producers, veterans and the unions to determine how we moved forward. I note that in the minutes I was pressing for two new giant sound stages, albeit against some opposition within the council. Thankfully wisdom prevailed and they were built and I arranged for them to be opened by Prince Charles in 1999. Personally I think they are the reason Elstree Studios survives and is still rewarding the Hertsmere ratepayers of today.

I still think we should have a study centre at Elstree Studios so people like myself can donate archives or items. Back in 1996 I remember the British Film Institute wasted a £60,000 grant from the Lottery to draw up a visitor attraction at Elstree Studios. It was a farce, including glass walkways so that members of the public could view film and television makers at work on the sound stages! Hell, these days I cannot even visit what is being filmed.

Personally I would like to see George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in their declining years give me a very large cheque remembering those great years they spent at Elstree Studios from 1976 until 1988 making a fortune so we could salute their productions and all of those over the past 90 years.

In 2000 the Tories took control of Hertsmere Council and I was called a Labour lackey and written out. I have not been offered a role since, although in those four years I was working with all-party support. It is all history now and water under the bridge but it would be nice to leave the true story to future generations.