Welcome everyone on our weekly ramble down Memory Lane via Dead Man's Gulch and through fields of hay or somewhere Sting sang about.

Have you ever visited Shenley Road in Borehamwood? It is blessed with a staggering array of restaurants featuring cuisines from around the world and is known as the dining destination of Hertfordshire. We even still have a Wimpy. Remember in the 1960s when you had a Wimpy burger before the Big Mac arrived?

Shenley Road is also known for another thing. More members of the Royal Family have been driven along it than almost anywhere else outside somewhere like Windsor or Balmoral.

It all revolves around the fact that Borehamwood has been a film-making town since 1914 and since the 1950s home to many television series. The first royal visit was by the future King George V1 in 1930 to view the not long-opened Elstree Studios. He was greeted by the legendary pre-war studio manager Joe Grossman, who was a working class Cockney. In the 1930s he also showed round the King of Greece, who stopped to examine a camera and looked a bit mystified. Joe unwittingly said: "I suppose this is all Greek to you, Sir." That is a true story and I wonder how that expression came into our language, although in this politically correct world we must not use it today.

During the early 1930s the Prince Of Wales, later King Edward, made private visits to the studio, no doubt attracted by the glamour of such places. His parents, Queen Mary and George V, were driven along Shenley Road in 1934 on their way to open what was then called the Middlesex Mental Hospital in nearby Shenley. As they drove past the studio, hundreds of locals lined the road mixed with costumed extras from a film called Blossom Time. You can view the occasion on an old newsreel on the British Pathe webpage. The then Queen Elizabeth, soon to be known as the Queen Mother, visited the set of The Magic Box in 1951 with her daughter Princess Margaret.

In 1974 Prince Charles and Lord Mountbatten made at private visit to Elstree Studios to the set of Murder On The Orient Express. Then, in 1985, I had the pleasure to help organise the visit of Princess Anne to open the new offices and workshops at Elstree and she made the point that she wanted to meet the employees and not dignitaries. After Her Highness had to depart we had a great party on one of the sound stages and I remember sitting with Michael Winner and Trevor Howard. Little did we know just a year later what stormy times lay ahead and within four years that stage and much more would be demolished to make way for Tesco.

In 1999 I had the pleasure to help organise and host the visit of Prince Charles to open the two giant new stages we had built. It took me many months to organise but he was just great with everybody and I remain an admirer. I have suggested those in charge of Elstree today invite Prince William to open the new stages now being built and I would be happy to help, although I doubt I will get a call. I have also suggested they name the two stages after Hitchcock and Spielberg, and perhaps even a toilet or something after me. Perhaps the entrance could be called Welsh Way.

I must also of course mention that our wonderful Queen Elizabeth visited the set of EastEnders at BBC Elstree Centre where the Queen Vic is named after some relative.

So next time you drive along Shenley Road remember, you have shared it with royalty.

Paul Welsh MBE is a Borehamwood writer and historian of Elstree Studios