Well this week we embark on a long trip down Memory Lane to when talkies were replacing silent movies and Elstree Studios was helping to lead the way.

I first visited Elstree as a young boy in 1960 so I am a latecomer in regard to its unique history that stretches back to 1926. Over the decades I have met and sometimes interviewed hundreds of actors and behind the scenes people but even today I never stop learning. For instance last week I had a chat with a delightful gentleman named Leslie Coombs. Now what is special about him, you may ask. Well at a still hale and hearty 96, I believe Leslie is the oldest Elstree veteran still with us today.

Leslie's father was a stunt man at the studios and he still recalls when he appeared as a nine-year-old extra in the ground-breaking film Atlantic, shot at Elstree in 1929.

It was the first film in the world to be shot in three languages - English, German and French - at the same time, so it could be released in most parts of the world. Each version shared the same sets but with different casts as in those days sound had to be recorded live.

Leslie recalls: "I had to be on an angled deck, tilted so we were thrown into a water tank on the stage along with the furniture. I can still remember it now but the scene was cut from the picture as it was felt horrific for cinemagoers of that time."

The film was directed by a German, EA Dupont, who seems to have struggled with the English language, as the stilted delivery in certain dialogue scenes causes laughter today. Indeed they did, even in 1952 when the studio made a cinema-released documentary called The Elstree Story. Its editor and late friend Dickie Best told me: "We had to include a scene just to show it for laughs." The documentary is available on DVD, with an extra of me giving a brief history of the studio if you have trouble sleeping.

At the time the owners of the White Star Line, which had built the Titanic, on which the film was obviously based, complained to the Board of Trade about the film reviving memories of the tragedy only 17 years earlier in 1912.

Oddly enough in the 1980s I became a friend of an elderly lady named Eva Hart, who had been an eight-year-old survivor of the actual disaster, but that is a story for another day.

Personally I think the best film made about the tragedy was A Night To Remember, shot at Pinewood in the late 1950s and starring Kenneth More. However, I must pay credit to the 1997 version directed by James Cameron, which is spectacular regarding the special effects. At the time it cost an enormous amount and I wondered where the audience was about a story everybody knew the end of. I was very wrong and I knew it when I attended the Royal Film Performance premiere in Leicester Square, I think about 20 years ago.

I was seated a few rows away from the cast and Cameron but I became engrossed in the film regardless of its length, as did the audience. To be honest going to the Royal Film Performance was a great way to contribute to the film charity, but often the chosen film was, let us say, rubbish. This time we got our money's worth and I think it was the only occasion I recall when a film got a standing ovation. It was obviously going to be a massive hit.

Here is a titbit of local history. J Bruce Ismay, who was the chairman of the White Star Line, made the mistake of getting into a lifeboat and survived, but thereafter was shunned by 'society' . In that era a gentleman was expected to have gone down with the ship, especially if he was connected to it. The titbit is that part of Ismay's education was undertaken at a private school in Elstree.

Personally I never learned to swim, as my gran said an English gentleman should always go down with the ship. Perhaps that is why I have never gone on a cruise, so I will never need to test my resolve to do the decent thing. Until next week, my fellow travellers, try not to get wet and we will meet again.