Look up at the Vue cinema in Leicester Square and you’ll get a lovely reminder that this multiplex was once an Art Deco single-screener. Bainbridge Copnall’s sculptures depicting ‘sight’ and ‘sound’ have adorned the façade since it first opened in 1938 as Warner Brother’s flagship West End showcase cinema.

Glance down, just before the main entrance, and underneath the paving you’ll spot a relic from one of the most enjoyable action films of the 1990s.

As part of Harrison Ford’s publicity tour for The Fugitive the actor buried a time capsule (“not to be opened before the year 2093”) that contained, among other treasures, a pair of handcuffs used in the film.

An evidently jet-lagged Ford got a little confused about which film he was there to promote and encouraged everyone to see Witness, a film he’d made eight years earlier. “Sorry, I should have said the Fugitive.”

The event marked the re-opening of Warner’s landmark cinema as a 9-screen multiplex in the heart of London. On release The Fugitive played in five of its screens.

Harrison Ford wasn’t present at the Royal Charity Gala for the film a few weeks later where Princess Diana was guest of honour. Instead one of Warner Brother’s longest established stars took his place – Clint Eastwood. This resulted in one of the most bizarre press events I have ever seen… Clint Eastwood, Princess Diana and Bugs Bunny. Together at last.

It wasn’t the first time royalty had visited the cinema. When the Warner first opened in 1938 with Eroll Flynn and Olivia De Havilland in the Technicolor, swashbuckling classic The Adventures of Robin Hood, King George V’s son Prince George and his wife the Duchess of Kent were special royal guests.

A crowd of thousands gathered to see them – so many that one headline read ‘Duchess of Kent mobbed. Crowd breaks the police cordon’.