Long, long ago when I drifted one market day onto the Wool Exchange in Bradford, we were all rapidly diverted up some stairs to a balcony overlooking the main floor.

The place was full of wires and lights and cameras and people busy being disorganised, or idling about waiting.

We were watching a film in the making. It was called Life at the Top - a follow-up (shown on TV in the middle of Tuesday night last week) of the much more successful Room at the Top, based on a novel by local librarian John Braine. The story was of a rather miserable and uncouth youth who seduces and then marries the daughter of a rich woolman, and lusts after another woman - with a gloomy end.

The elegant Laurence Harvey, as the uncouth Yorkshireman, was always a bit difficult to swallow. Sir Donald Wolfit as a rich mill owner attempting an ee-bah-gum accent was much the same. But the first film was better than the novel.

Its follow-up Life at the Top was not good at all.

As we looked down on the boards of the Exchange I can recall Laurence Harvey, with a long cigarette holder, strolling about below us.

The frightfully-well-spoken Honor Blackman was there too.

Did eyes meet, across a crowded room, a glint in my direction? (I was a lot younger then, after all. So, of course, was she.)

But my word, how things have changed, when you consider rich woolmen, and the whole attitude and background to such stories.

Then Bradford meant wool, and wool meant money, and that was it.

Mind you, there are surrounding districts where vestiges of this attitude still persist, and inherited money of textile origin is considered superior to ordinary money as made by the rest of us.

Especially if you want to play golf!

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.