well, you sense that if you are not perfect, you make yourself very vulnerable.”"And you can’t sustain a relationship unless you can show vulnerability?”"I think that’s right, yes.”Of course, all this has much to do with his extraordinary childhood. He was raised by his grandmother, Olga Winogradsky, a Russian-Jewish émigré and formidable mother of showbiz barons Lord Grade and Lord Delfont and Michael’s father, Leslie, the great theatrical agent. They did all right, Olga’s boys, didn’t they? “I’ve often wondered about that. How come they were all so successful? Well, I think they were very hungry, and it’s a fantastic motivator, hunger.”Lord Grade – that is, Michael’s Uncle Lew – took Michael to his first movie “It was Yma Sumac in the Secret of the Incas. Actually, the actress was really Amy Camus, but she’d turned her name around.

Ha! She had a seven or eight octave voice which meant that the film kept stopping, so that she could wail from the top of pyramids or whatever. I can’t remember much more about the film, but Yma Sumac is engraved on my heart. And all the way home, Uncle Lew – God rest his soul – did his impression of her.. “Michael adored Olga. She could be tyrannical, yes, but she was also very affectionate and had a beautiful singing voice “When she was happy, she would warble away in the kitchen Her voice really was the strongest thing about her Her favourite expressions were ‘oy’ and ‘mustn’t grumble’. How are you today Olga? ‘Mustn’t grumble’.”This, neatly, gives me a good opportunity to tell him my favourite Jewish joke.”How many Jews, Mr Grade, does it take to change a light bulb?”"I don’t know,” he replies gamely “How many Jews does it take to change a light bulb?”"None ‘It’s alright.

I’ll just sit in the dark.’”He tells me his favourite: “Dolly and Sadie are talking when Dolly says: ‘Sadie, are you wearing a wig?’ ‘Yes,’ says Sadie. ‘Well,’ says Dolly, ‘you’d never know’.” We chuckle quite a lot.Still, can a grandmother’s love ever replace a mother’s? Perhaps not. Leslie had married Michael’s mother – a Welsh woman, Winifred Smith – in 1940, when she was already pregnant with Michael’s older sister, Lynda Olga was not, initially, told about the marriage. (Pregnant! And a gentile!) Luckily, Olga had been evacuated from London because of the blitz, so Leslie was able to lead a double life for the first year of the marriage, oscillating between a flat in Hackney with his wife and baby, and visits to his mother where he behaved as if he was still single. There was, apparently, “hell to pay” when Olga found out, and she then absolutely refused to accept Winifred. Then, when Michael was 15-months-old, his mother fell in love with a Canadian airman and left. Michael has not seen her since, even though he knows she is still alive, and living in the Home Counties.

Now, of course I don’t know why she has never bothered to contact him, but why has he never bothered to contact her?He is certainly a man of some curiosity. Indeed, he once even described himself as: “not remotely intellectual I’m more a kind of intellectual spiv. I have great curiosity and Hoover things up.” So I put it to him: if you are a curious person, then the one thing you might be really curious about is your mother No? He sighs I am being very tiresome now, I know He says: “I think there is a gender thing going on here. I think all the women that I’ve ever met blink with disbelief because I haven’t followed it up.”But I think on the emotional side of one’s life, men are more prone to bury things and not confront them.

I think a woman’s curiosity is much greater on the emotional side A woman needs to understand that stuff. I’ve talked about it with Francesca and she’s very respectful and understands that side of things, but is still mystified, yes.” What if someone were to call, saying your mother was very ill and wished to see you? Would you go? “If that were to happen, I’d listen to my instincts at the time.” Did your mother have more children? Do you have any half-brothers or half-sisters? “I have no idea.”I’m not sure he has ever properly resolved this mother business Or forgiven his mother, even. Does he abandon relationships for fear that, if he doesn’t they will abandon him? Wasn’t he worried when he married for the third time? No, he says, absolutely not: “I never thought I would get married again, but I met Francesca (who used to work in the film rights department of a publishing house), and that was that Plus, we’d had a very long courtship and I’d matured a bit Not a lot. But enough.”They have a son, Samuel, who is now 17 months old And Michael is smitten. “He can say ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’ and ‘picnic’.” He has two grown-up children from his first marriage but, although he is close to them now, he wasn’t around for them much when they were little “Did I miss out? Yes.”He says he is happy, running Pinewood. Plus, he has recently been appointed the new chair of Index on Censorship, the magazine of free expression He has no plans to return to telly. What? Not even if you were offered director-general of the BBC? “God, no,” he gasps.”There was a time, when I was young and foolish, that I might have harboured such an ambition.