Me and Lauren Bacall - 'Got a match?'

Many years ago, when I was a little boy, my sister, who is a little older, had obviously been very impressed by Ms Bacall's striking performance in To Have and Have Not (Ms Bacall being the ripe old age, we learned later, of just 19 herself at the time).

As a result, my sister had to slink into the doorway of our tiny dining room and ask me, huskily, for a match - a la Bacall. I was of course Humphrey Bogart (and please stop falling about laughing, will you!).

My performance was not the problem, though. The problem was that every time I threw the box of matches, a la Bogart, my sister was quite unable to catch them, sexily or otherwise. To the best of my memory, I think we had to do some 40 or 50 takes of this splendid scene, ruining it completely every time.

We never got it right and ended, I am happy to tell you, falling about laughing ourselves.