To talk about Hornblower, I could probably entertain you for another two or three hours, because it was an incredible period.

It was a period shortly after the war, you know, and you had a lot of smuggling going on, and a lot of English ex-naval officers who bought these Fairmiles or Air Sea Rescue launches for very little money, and then went across to Algiers or somewhere that they thought… and used to buy cigarettes and take cigarettes, and so on. So Villefranche was... unbelievable. And I remember when the Royal Navy came in, and one of their senior officers had a brother who was having one of those boats; he couldn't... wouldn't go on the boat because his brother was a smuggler, you know. But in those days everything that was… American woman… and now that's come to me... Madame Ourillion, her name was, and she had one of those smuggling boats, and when somebody didn't want to do what she ordered him to do, she threw him overboard. At least, that was what they said, you know.

It was an unbelievable time in Villefranche, but I learnt a lot, I had a fabulous friend, who was Bernard, and family of… present at their children and grandchildren, and all that – actually, he was the best friend I... I think I've ever had – and also they took to Letitzia. They… first of all they said, 'Why do you have to get married to a Spaghetti when we have enough pretty girls in the South of France?' I said, 'Yes, I know', but then they all fell in love with her. And it was an incredible time, you know – there were people… Garbo was staying in Haut de Cagnes, and a lot of film people from the past…

And my supervisor was a man called Edmond Gréville, who was quite a well-known French director, but he didn't know the first thing about boats, or something. But he still had a job, he was paid by Jack Warner, and we used to go out a lot together and have fun.