We have lost a legend in Lauren Bacall

Lauren Bacall was a true screen goddess and her death this week means there are very few legends from the golden era of movies still with us.

I interviewed her back in the days of TVam when the truly big stars would cross the Atlantic to appear on the BBC’s Terry Wogan show.

Our producers would nab them as they came off air at the Beeb and persuade them to come on our breakfast show the next day.

More often than not they succeeded which is why I can say I interviewed the likes of Kirk Douglas, Sammy Davis Jnr and Tony Curtis live on that famous sofa, as well as Lauren Bacall.

She would have been in her seventies back then and still looked beautiful with that classic bone structure and lithe figure.

As a dedicated film buff, I was both intimidated and extremely excited to be sitting beside the woman who was married to Humphrey Bogart one of THE all-time greats, but a bit worried that she would be weary about answering questions about him.

There was no need for concern.

It helped that she was over in the UK to promote an updated version of her autobiography and obviously her years with “Bogie” were a large part of the book.

She was still a teenager in 1944 when she met him and he was a married man. Despite the 25-year-age gap, they fell in love making the classic movie To Have and To Have Not.

They eventually married and had two kids and made another three films together and were only parted when he died of cancer in 1957.

Her friends knew her by her real name of Betty, but when she appeared with us on TVam she was most defiantly “Miss Bacall”. We were all on our best behaviour and it did feel as though royalty was visiting the set.

Once she had the measure of me and my co host, the late, great Mike Morris, the aloof frostiness melted and she was hugely interesting and entertaining. I remember being hugely impressed at how effortlessly elegant she was.

Despite that, I could have spoken to her for hours about her relationship with Frank Sinatra (he broke off their engagement when it was leaked to the press) and working with Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and of course Bogart.

She was indeed a true screen legend and I feel privileged to have met her.