Welcome back. The nights are drawing in so it is time to stop our weekly ramble down Memory Lane and withdraw inside and gather around a nice log fire while we go back in time to yesteryear. Is it a sign of age when things gone by seemed better back then, or is it rose tinted glasses? I recall the coal man delivering five bags of heavy coal on his back to our coal cellar and having to lay the fire with wood and putting a newspaper over the grate to get an updraft to get the fire going. Then there was the fun of depositing the ashes each morning on the garden but somehow I still woke up as a kid to ice inside the bedroom window on a cold day. Now all I have to do is click a switch and the whole house is warm but I still enjoy those memories.

I am sad to hear that Bobby Vee, the early 1960s pop singer, has died after his fight with dementia. I can still singalong to his hits such as Rubber Ball and The Night Has A Thousand Eyes and I wonder if youngsters today will be able to say that in 50 years time to the stuff that occupies the charts of today.

I was also saddened to lose a friend and a real gentleman Jimmy Perry, who created the legendary television series Dad's Army. I knew him for the past 30 years but before that of course he ran the theatre in Watford and served in the Home Guard there. Jimmy told me he based his characters on real life people he had met and the character of Private Pike on himself. He said that the BBC were at first reluctant to commission the show as they feared it might be deemed insulting to the real life Home Guard, but we British have always been able to poke fun at ourselves. The distinguished actor Sir Nigel Hawthorne, who later found fame in Yes Minister, told me he turned down a role in the first series, although a struggling young actor, as he felt it would never take off. Jimmy, myself and Nigel had a laugh over a drink at his misjudgement a few years ago. Sadly they are both gone now, as are most of the Dad's Army cast although I am pleased to know Frank Williams, who played the vicar, and Ian Lavender who portrayed Pike. Personally I thought the recent film was a mistake because you cannot compete with the memory of the original cast.

Today silent screen comedians rarely if ever feature on the main or even satellite channels. However, in their day they were enormous stars around the world as silent comedy was visual and could be enjoyed in any country. I guess there were five really big names of that era, and four of them visited Borehamwood.

Charlie Chaplin is still an iconic figure today but I doubt most readers have ever seen one of his films unless you are a movie buff. Charlie had an awful childhood and escaped to Hollywood where he became an immense star. In the 1930s he visited Elstree Studios and declared Borehamwood "the Hollywood of England" as there were four operating film studios in this sleepy little village.

Sadly Charlie was refused back into America in the 1950s and went to live in Switzerland. Far too late, at the end of his life, he was awarded a knighthood and given a standing ovation at the Oscars. I think Charlie would have found it amusing that his body was stolen from his grave for ransom but luckily quickly recovered.

Stan Laurel also visited Elstree Studios in the 1930s, albeit without his screen partner Oliver Hardy. I have visited both their modest graves in Los Angeles. Stan is buried in a star studded graveyard but Oliver is in a modest suburban cemetery now forgotten except for dedicated fans.

Harold Lloyd was a big silent screen comedian, famous for enduring disasters hanging from high buildings and other death defying stunts. He visited Elstree Studios in 1960 long after his retirement and I still have the estate agents brochure from when they sold his luxury Hollywood estate in the 1970s after his death. It was subsequently cut up to maximise the land value.

Finally there is the legendary Buster Keaton, who made a film for Douglas Fairbanks Jr at what is now the BBC Elstree Centre in the 1950s. Doug told me: "Buster was a great pal of my dad and my step mum Mary Pickford but he was an alcoholic and down on his luck. Thankfully before he died in the 1960s he saw a revival of appreciation of his comedic skills ."