They went private again in the early 1990s, and have since operated more or less invisibly out of the clutter of old buildings. They are tucked away few hundred yards from the redbrick bustle of Ealing Broadway, between the green and a park, with middle-class housing to either side - and very close to architect Sir John Soane’s lovely Pitshanger Place of 1800.

California it ain’t, but here you would recently find sequences from the latest Star Wars being filmed, alongside the new American Ally McBeal-clone sitcom Emma Brody and - recently completed - the forthcoming film of The Importance of Being Ernest with Dame Judi Dench, Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, and the rest of the Britpack gang. All this in a run-down complex down a side alley few people even notice. Sir Peter Ustinov once described Ealing Studios as “defiantly small”, their character synonymous with the subtle, chameleon nature of one of their most famous products, Alec Guinness. Such they will remain. But differently small.

The consortium that bought the studios in 2000 includes property developer Harry Handelsman - whose Manhattan Loft Corporation was synonymous with London’s white-apartment boom of the 1990s - Uri Fruchtmann and Barnaby Thompson of Fragile Films, and Jon Kao, business entrepreneur and film producer, of The Idea Factory. They brought in architect James Burland, who during his years at Arup Associates more or less invented the upmarket British business park, developed a specialism in sports stadia, and then went solo. His task is to improve the production facilities, clear away the clutter and contribute new buildings to make Ealing into a media centre. Which essentially means that you don’t just have sound stages and workshops, but also office space for all the ancillary companies that make up the film industry.