Google George Peppard and up comes a hefty drink problem in his middle years when things rather dipped after Breakfast at Tiffany's. In 1974 I had only a few mouldering cuttings in the IPC library painting a squeaky clean picture of him. And either he held his drink well or he was having a dry day.

Lunch was at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He was making a TV series called Banacek that did quite well over here – The A-Team was still eight years away.

George was charm personified. He had mesmeric blue eyes and over our Caesar salads and a minimal amount of wine I quickly became like a rabbit in headlights. Caesar salads are pretty stupid things to eat during an interview because somebody is always navigating huge unyielding lettuce leaves and trying to talk while dodging the splat-factor dressing. I was attempting to look fetching in a white trouser suit that was quickly becoming speckled. I did pretty nifty shorthand in those days which intrigued him, so after a while I was teaching him Pitman's. Then we fell to talking about women and George (between marriages two and three at this point; he'd been married five times when he died in 1994) announced he was looking for an English wife. He loved English women, he said, eyes on full beam, but, he added, he'd noticed my wedding ring. Goddamit, I knew I should have taken it off. We parted fine friends. And the next year he married an actress called Sherry Boucher. Caroline Boucher