I drove to London to sit in on a fascinating conversation between author Douglas Thompson and my mum.  He is the writer of Shadowland as well as best selling biographies of Madonna, Clint Eastwood, John Travolta and others.   Douglas has been a columnist and a Fleet Street foreign correspondent and co-written the memoirs of many Hollywood stars.  Mum and Douglas spoke about The Colony club – a casino in Mayfair in the late 1960’s, they talked about the American film stars mum met there and the mafia connections of some of the club’s American owners.  They talked about the Cannes film festival which mum and dad attended 9 years in a row.  Mum smiles with pleasure as she remembers seeing a young Richard Gere walking along the aisle of the cinema dressed in a white suit and looking “gorgeous”. They talked of dad’s childhood friend and football team buddy, Vidal Sassoon, and of the London of mum and dad’s youth when mum lived in what is now called Fitzrovia but was then filled with slum dwellings and dad lived in similar slums in the East End of London.  Homes that have now been “gentrified” and sell for vast sums.  Douglas hopes that mum will provide further information for a TV project he is planning about gambling, the Mafia and London of the sixties.  We have all told mum that she has to “stick around” to see this through however long it takes!