Back in 2003 I attended a reunion of the Village of the Damned cast at Letchmore Heath as a sort of adviser to the BBC, which was making a radio programme about the film. It is sad no  video was made of it as the director Wolf Rilla, who was present, died a couple of years later.

I thought that would be a one-off, but lo and behold the other Sunday, a decade later, I found myself back in the village with a handful of the cast and about 40 fans of the film as a guest of Robert Hickey, who was one of the event organisers.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day as the weather was kind and Robert led a walking tour of the film’s locations, which are virtually unchanged.

We had a lunch break in the historic Three Horseshoes pub on the village green and I sat outside nursing a large gin and tonic as I am on soft drinks these days as part of a health kick with the big 60 in July.

One of the fans came up to me and asked if I was in Star Wars. I hope he mistook me for Luke Skywalker rather than Jabba The Hut.

It was nice to see actress Barbara Shelley, whom I have had the pleasure to know for many years, and several of the alien children, who are now, of course, all around my advanced age.

I had a long chat with Martin Stephens, who played the lead alien child, and appeared in a number of 1950s and 1960s films. He later became a successful architect and now lives in Portugal. Martin remembered when making Village of the Damned it was a cold, often wet, November in 1959 and he had to be tutored in between filming.

We all gathered in the village hall to watch the film, which felt slightly unreal as I sat next to Martin and the hall interior actually appears in the film.

MGM made the movie, with the interiors shot at its studio in Elstree Way, basically as a low budget effort with no great expectations, but it went on to take ten times its budget on its first release.

It naturally spawned a poor sequel called Children of the Damned and later a remake starring Christopher Reeve, which cost a great deal more and sank without trace.

I would recommend you get the film on a DVD as it moves along at a brisk pace and has a great period atmosphere.

In fact, we showed it at the University of Hertfordshire a couple of months ago and it gripped the audience, including the students who were present. However, the bit that the youngsters found staggering was that people in the 1950s and 1960s washed up in the sink, listened to music on a wind-up gramophone and had to put their phone calls through a switchboard operator in the local post office.

Having grown up in that era I was very socially deprived, in their eyes, to have lived without a mobile phone, computer, PlayStation, dishwasher and 40-inch plasma screen television. Perhaps I should contact a no-win, no-fee lawyer and sue somebody.

Finally, I have read that Dancing On Ice, which is filmed at Elstree Studios, is to be scrapped after next year, although it is still getting respectful ratings of about seven million.

Personally, I was an invited guest back in 2006 and am not surprised they are calling it a day. Torvill and Dean want to bow out and all these formats become a bit tired over time.

Even seven years ago I felt that “been there, done it” feeling when the warm-up man told us to boo Jason the evil judge, to have an orgasm when our favourite celebrity appeared and you knew presenter Phillip Scofield would say: “And the winner... will be announced straight after the break...” followed by a predictable gasp of anticipation from the audience.

I hope they are not going to replace it with The Only Way Is Essex On Ice as the television commissioning editors these days tend to have little imagination or a “let’s think outside the box” attitude. If ITV needs some new blood, I am available but will insist on a hospitality cabinet in my office.