A great thing about being a journalist is the chance to travel. Last week I went for the first time to Northwood.

I mean I’d never before got off the train there. To me Northwood was like one of the disparaged fly-over states in America for air travellers from New York to San Francisco.

Northwood boasts among its celebrities Betty Marsden, a mainstay of Kenneth Horne’s radio comedy shows for most of the 1960s. She did indeed die in Northwood, but only because she was at the time in the bar of Denville Hall, the retirement home for actors. If I dreamt of a retirement home for actors I would be glad to wake up with a start.