My parents did take me to the cinema from a very young age, to The Aristocats, The Jungle Book and also The Battle of Britain (to show me what their own childhood was like!) but I have little recollection beyond the film titles.

I remember making my Mum take me to see a very obscure John Hurt / Hayley Mills drama called Mr Forbush and the Penguins at Studio 6 & 7 in Lewisham, as the film had penguins in the title and I must’ve seen a poster, but on watching it since it’s not really a kids film but about a scientist going through a break-up.

My parents also took a group of us to see The Poseidon Adventure at what was then the Carlton Haymarket (recently and sadly closed), and my memory is of the auditorium’s ceiling (which was still there in screen 1) looking very similar to the ballroom ceiling of the SS Poseidon through which the passengers plunged to their death when the ship capsized!

As a teenager, a school friend’s father, who was an actor, performing in small theatre roles, including at the National, took us to the National Film Theatre to see the original 1950s version of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, which opened my eyes to London’s rep cinema circuit. There was a Robert Altman season there around the same time, and I remember going to see Nashville and 3 Women on my own, and I was also renting videos such as One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, but the life changing cinematic experience around this time was seeing Taxi Driver.

It was screened in a double-bill with Midnight Express at the Filmcenta 1-2-3 in Charing Cross Road (now the Montagu Pyke, a Wetherspoons pub). I’d gone with friends who decided when we arrived they’d prefer to go to the pub, so I went in on my own. Midnight Express played first, and although I enjoyed it, I’ve since seen it and it’s not very good, but Taxi Driver completely redefined my view of what cinema could be, given I knew nothing about the film beforehand.

The BFI Southbank has been part of my life since I discovered cinema, and I still love going to see films there, due to its programming and events, and I have presented many screenings there myself as part of festivals. The recent refurbishment of NFT1 and NFT3 is positive, but they now need to sort out NFT2!

The Scala in Kings Cross was an important cinema to me even if that sounds a bit clichéd saying it, given its legendary status through Jane Giles’s book and subsequent film. But my Scala experiences didn’t include all-nighters, John Waters films, and drunkenness and hedonism.

I experienced it as one of London’s rep cinemas, so I would be there for the likes of Scorsese double-bills, Marilyn Monroe double-bills, and I first saw Apocalypse Now there. Seeing those films in the Scala listings such as Pink Flamingoes and Thundercrack! terrified me, and I stayed well away! There is a lot of rose-tinted nostalgia about the Scala, but there’s no denying it was an amazing cinema, though the Rio, Dalston is a worthy successor that has a lot of amazing history and an excellent current programme.