Well, we have all survived another week, so off we go on another ramble down memory lane via deadman’s gulch and up the yellow brick road. This time it is a pot pourri of items. As long-serving readers know, that means I have forgotten what I was originally going to write about but here it goes.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the 35th anniversary reunion of some of the cast and crew of The Shining, which was made at Elstree Studios and released in 1980.

The ghost story starred Jack Nicholson and was directed by the legendary Stanley Kubrick, who at the time lived in nearby Barnet Lane.

The event was the brainchild of Howard Berry and after a reception at Elstree Studios, we were all driven in a double decker bus, courtesy of Dean Sullivan of Sullivan Buses, to the newly-restored and reopened Odyssey Cinema in St Albans.

I looked around the building’s interiors five years ago and it was just a gutted hulk that had stood empty for many years. Now it is a luxury cinema with one giant screen showing old and new films. I always cheer when an old cinema comes back to life.

As for The Shining itself, I personally find the film a bit of a bore in that I don’t find it frightening and bits of it remind me of ideas pinched from The Omen and The Exorcist, which were scarier films.

The leading lady looks like Olive Oyl from Popeye and her character was so annoying throughout the film that I kept hoping Jack’s character would hurry up and kill her.

In the story, I think Jack is supposed to descend into madness but to me he seems not to be firing on all cylinders from the word go, which defeats the point. The film plods along in real need of editing, as apparently it was for the UK release.

Another character that annoyed me was the hotel’s chef, who returns to the snowbound hotel to help, but gets the chop from Jack on arrival. There are several scenes of the chef driving to the hotel, and I guess he is supposed to look tense but instead looks constipated – had he headed for the toilet on arrival he might have lived.

However, you cannot fault the crew assembled at Elstree Studios, who built such marvellous sets, and the excellent cinematography. I was glad we were saluting those unsung heroes at the event with about 25 of them joining us. There was also a lovely clip of the man who played the boy in the film, who rarely takes part in events, sending a message surrounded by his own young kids.

It was a very enjoyable day and at the end I helped escort the Oscar-winning director of Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich, now a power player in Pixar in Hollywood, to the Borehamwood railway station so he could return to London. Lee had co-hosted the event with Howard and is writing the definitive book on The Shining.

On arrival, it was embarrassing to find the station apparently shut up and closed but we found a gap to the platform and thankfully the trains were running. It is about time that shower at Network Rail gave us a better station. It would be good if they could do it in time for the 150th birthday of our station in 2018.

Do you know who are the six biggest Hollywood stars in that they can command salaries of $20million a film, plus a percentage of profit deals and various perks. Apparently it is a couple of ladies called Sandra Bullock and Angelina Jolie, about whom I sadly know little.

The rest are men, including veteran and two-time Oscar-winner Denzel Washington. At least I have met Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr at the Leicester Square premieres of Titanic and Chaplin. I have not met Matt Damon, but did see him on his West End stage debut.

I may be wrong, as I am out of touch these days, but I think only one of them has worked at Elstree Studios, that being Robert Downey Jr in one of those modern Sherlock Holmes movies.

Finally, I must pay tribute to the Oscar-winning costume designer Julie Harris, who has passed away after a short illness. Julie was on our list of veterans to interview, but such is life. Her career stretched back to 1947 and took in a number of films shot in Borehamwood and many diverse movies from Carry On Cleo to Live and Let Die.

Julie worked on the first film I ever visited the set of at Elstree Studios, as a kid in 1960, which was called The Naked Edge – the last film Hollywood legend Gary Cooper ever made.

One movie worked on in the early 1960s was A Hard Day’s Night, starring that new pop sensation called The Beatles. Many years later, Julie joked with me: “I designed their suits and I can go to my grave saying that when they came for a fitting I saw the Beatles in their underpants.”

Well folks, I fancy stopping for a drink at the Overlook Hotel in that gold nightclub and if Jack turns up with his chopper on display then I will tell you all about it next week. Until then, keep smiling.