Now, where was I? Well, actually – Norfolk. The East Anglians had had television for some time, true, but it came up from London and all the people on it "talked a load a' squit, bor, I tell 'ee." To have studios in the centre of Norwich, and to be able to look through the huge plate glass windows and sometimes to go inside and look around – well, that somehow was real magic. Anglia belonged to the people of East Anglia and they were proud of their region. Standing at a bus stop waiting to go to work, someone in the queue would recognise me and say, with disarming charm "you'm made a right muck up a’ that programme last noight – you don't a-know what you be a-doin'" And, often, they were quite right, we didn't know, but boy, were we having fun!

One of our voluntary duties was to act as host to visitors. I liked showing the ladies around: they wanted to see the make up and wardrobe departments, of course, and to sit in the announcer's chair. We had a camera set up so that they could see themselves on the small monitor in the studio. That made for some hilarious facial attitudes. It was that studio that nearly led to my downfall. In the early hours of one Sunday morning, I went into the studio "to remind viewers to remove the plug from the wall before going to bed." Remember when television used to close down? In doing so I banged my knee hard against the table.

The sound engineer had unwisely left the microphone open a little and an agonised voice, usually so calm, let out a very loud four letter word. Now this particular word had been on television before – Kenneth Tynan had used it, causing uproar. But this was different: this was on Sunday morning – just. So I was severely reprimanded, not for using the word but for using it on the Sabbath! Visiting school parties were good for a laugh, too. Our outside broadcast unit was housed in what had been Victorian stables and I used to tell the children that that was where we kept the horses used in Wagon Train and Bonanza – but unfortunately, all the horses were away on their holidays.

But there was a serious problem at Anglia Television – of necessity it was local and parochial and that meant that the same stories would come around year in and year out. We could guarantee the first lambs born in January; spring's arrival with thousands of daffodils around Norwich Castle; happy holidays on the Norfolk Broads (one has to be very careful with that phrase) and the first baby born on Christmas Day. I often thought that we could repeat last year's broadcasts and no one would ever know the difference. In short, I became bored with the "sameness" of it all and I began to cast around for something different.

Again, I seemed to be in the right spot at the right time because I received a telephone call from Pinewood Studios, asking if I would care to run the Rank Organisation's libraries. And so it was that we sold up our lovely little home in Norwich and moved to High Wycombe . Pinewood Studios in the sixties was indeed a very strange place to be making a living. My office was a nondescript brick block with an outside staircase connecting the three storeys. I never knew from one day to another what that exterior was going to be when I arrived for work. Sometimes it was an hotel, sometimes a bank that had more than its fair share of armed hold-ups! On one occasion I found myself working in a prison – my office window had bars (made of plywood) up at the window.

One Monday morning I arrived for work and found myself walking down a cobbled street and the buildings to the left and right of me had suddenly sprouted German names. My office had been turned into military intelligence headquarters overnight and had a very large red and black swastika flying from it . You can still see the office if you watch a re-run of Triple Cross, with Christopher Plummer walking in and out of the front door, (which, in reality, led to the coal hole.)

The job inside that office was strange as well. We received requests for pictures and sound effects for everything imaginable. An exploding iceberg for a toothpaste commercial, tiny distant figures skiing down incredibly steep mountains (for Black Magic chocolates), one day the sound of creaking logs upon which immense blocks of stone were being moved to construct the pyramids. That one? A pair of wooden stepladders heavily weighted, dragged slowly along a tiled corridor. The resulting sound on tape being slowed to half-speed was very effective.

On one occasion I had to strip to the waist, head over a bowl of water, lapping like a kangaroo at a water hole for a "Survival" programme. I do a very good kangaroo! Last year, on a visit to Australia, I discovered a close bond with these charming marsupials. Next issue? Well now, there’s a thought…