The Ingrid Pitt Column: an autograph worth keeping

I've never really got into autograph collecting. I do have a picture and signature of Winston Churchill hanging on the wall but that was a birthday present given to me by a friend.

Then, last week, I decided that my office needed a bit of a going over.

It 's fifteen years since I moved in and a lot of stuff has marched through the door since then. And has nested there. A morning's work! Three days later I was still sitting there mooning through old photographs, reading fading letters and trying to remember what cryptic notes on scraps of paper could refer to.

Then I opened the big old wooden Mexican chest that followed me home from South America. Its main function is to harbour old bits of china, books, various defunct beauty aids and bric-a-brac to which I am too attached to throw out.

One of the first things I found sent my mind cart wheeling back to 1982. I had just finished making Who Dares Wins and was doing a bit of a publicity tour of the south coast with the leading man, Lewis Collins. He was the laconic bloke in The Professionals.

The studios had provided a lovely red helicopter and the idea was to drop in on a number of Naval, Army and Air Force establishments along the coast. There was a strict timetable of events but as usual with these sort of things the schedule started to drift.

One of our ports of call was the HMS Fearless just back from the Falklands. The Fearless had also appeared in the film The Spy Who Loved Me when it rescued James Bond from the sea. Lew and I were given a wonderful welcome, had lunch in the Ward Room and then had a tour of the ship.

Somewhere along the route Lewis went missing. Time to leave. I was presented with a pair of black knickers with 'Fearless' embroidered across the front and escorted out to the waiting helicopter. Still no Lew! I sat in the cockpit next to the pilot and chatted. I've always been mad about flying machines and listened avidly while he explained how the instrumentation differed from a fix-wing aircraft. Still no Lew! And it was getting late.

At last he was found in the Mess swapping stories of derring-do with some of the sailors. Once Lew was persuaded to join us we swooped off eastward along the coast to our last port of call, RAF Manston. Manston had been a front line airfield during WW2. It is situated near Ramsgate in East Kent, quite close to what used to be a Chain Home Radar station at Dunkirk.

But we were late. Too late! We had been promised a meeting with one of the great fighter aces of the war against Nazi Germany, Douglas Bader. Bader was the inspiration for the film starring Kenny Moore, Reach For The Sky. He had always been a great hero of mine and I was dying to meet him. No such luck. Due to Lew's romp below decks on the Fearless we were too late. Bader had got fed up waiting and left.

Before he went he did do one little act of extraordinary generosity, considering our bad manners in keeping the great man waiting. He signed, alongside the CO of Manston, an illustration of a MK16 Spitfire. Now that is an autograph worth keeping. I'm getting it framed and it is going in pride of place over my bed...

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