You may not know this but the reason newspapers can print rapid obituaries when the great and the good pass on is that they keep obituaries on file, with just the need to put on a header and perhaps a final few paragraphs.

I have my own on file ready to go. At the moment the opening paragraph reads: “Paul Welsh died today aged [blank] having conked out/ fallen into a vat of wine on a vineyard visit/ been catapulted into space/ suffered fatal injury while portraying Indiana Jones in a new movie [delete as applicable].”

There are a number of screen stars who thankfully are still with us but for whom the final credits are looming ever closer.

The oldest is double Oscar winner Luise Rainer, who I had the pleasure to invite to two of my Elstree film evenings a few years ago. Luise won her two best actress awards back to back in the 1930s and then left Hollywood having fallen out with Louis B Mayer, the boss of MGM. He died nearly 60 years ago but the lovely Luise is still with us, aged 104.

Not far behind is that survivor Kirk Douglas who was starring in films in the 1940s onwards. Kirk has survived a helicopter crash and a severe stroke and is still active aged 97. I had the pleasure to meet him at the Edgwarebury Hotel in Barnet Lane about 30 years ago.

I remember Clint Eastwood as a television cowboy star but he later became a film star and is still active as a film director aged 80 and the 1960s Australian action hero Rod Taylor is looking good at the age of 87.

Going back to the golden age of Hollywood, three of its most famous pre-war child stars are still with us. Mickey Rooney began his career in the silent era of movies and was the top box office star in the world just before the Second World War thanks to his movies with Judy Garland and the Andy Hardy films at MGM. By the 1950s he was washed up but came back decades later as a stage star and with award-winning television roles.

Mickey, aged 93, is a survivor and it was a pleasure to shake his hand after seing his one-man show a few years ago.

Singer Deanna Durbin is credited with having saved Universal Studios from bankcruptcy in the 1930s thanks to the success of her musicals. Deanna retired from the screen 65 years ago and lives privately in France aged 92.

Her contemporary Shirley Temple became the most successful child star of all time in the 1930s. She was due to have starred in The Wizard Of Oz but 20th Century Fox did not want to loan her to MGM so the role went to Judy Garland. The careers of child stars rarely survive their teenage years and Shirley later turned to politics and is now enjoying retirement aged 85.

The oldest surviving Hitchcock star is no doubt Oscar winner Joan Fontaine, aged 96, and her sister Olivia de Havilland, star of Gone With The Wind, is still with us at 97 and is writing her autobiography. Angela Lansbury has enjoyed an amazing career from starring in movies in the 1940s to the highly successful Murder She Wrote in the 1980s and is still treading the boards aged 88.

What about the younger generation from the 1950s and 1960s onwards? Well, Sean Connery, my favourite 007, has retired aged 83, which is probable sensible as cinemagoers tend not like to see their action heroes beyond a certain age.

I remember reading Cary Grant retired aged 62 as he said he did not want to become a parody or look like an old man romancing young leading ladies on screen.

Sir Michael Caine rolls on aged 80 and Sir Roger Moore is still very active at the age of 86 but Dame Julie Andrews, 79, has given up singing in the hills.

As for my pin-ups of the silver screen from yesteryear, who can forget Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC, who proved cave girls had access to make up and hair stylists, or Ursula Andress as the one who must be obeyed in She? They are both still going strong aged 73 and 77 respectively.

That sex kitten of 1950s French cinema Brigette Bardot is a bit of a recluse nowadays but still with us at 79.

All in all, I feel quite young having written this so there may be hope yet. Finally, I wish some television directors and producers were a bit older. I was thoroughly enjoying an episode of Foyle’s War set in 1946 the other night when a Routemaster double decker bus appeared — these did not actually hit the streets of London for more than a decade. A bit more effort, gentlemen, please.