Anyone who knows me knows I’m a James Bond geek. I must have seen them all a hundred times each. So, the offer of a trip to Pinewood, where all but Moonraker was filmed, was too good to pass up. And so it was that I found myself in a 20-seater limo cruising far too slowly out of London this morning.

From the outside, they look quite flash, but in actual fact limousines are the most hateful vehicles ever produced. Almost everyone has to sit sideways on, facing the bar, which means that when it accelerates or slows down you alternately slide backwards and forwards along the polished leather seat. Then there’s the lack of legroom, and the heat (18 people in a 20-seater car is a very good test for the air con).

So, we crept through the traffic to the outskirts of the city and then buzzed down to the studios, finally pulling up on Goldfinger Avenue, so-named because it was used in the climax of the Aston Martin chase in that film. The doors to the next studio were sat wide open and through them we could see the massive sets of the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film, which seems to have taken over several of the biggest studios and almost all of the office outbuildings in the complex.

Rather disappointingly, we weren’t on the 007 Stage, which was built in 1979 to house the Liparus set in The Spy Who Loved Me. The finale sets of several Bonds since then have been the same shape: sloping walls and a peaked roof. You can see why from the outside.

Instead, they took us into a smaller smoke-filled studio to watch the filming of three scenes from what they told us was a British remake of Oceans 11 (which, I believe, was an American remake of the British Oceans 11 in the first place). I’ve not seen it, so I don’t know how accurate it all was, but they dispatched us with a copy each on DVD, so I’ll have to check it out at the weekend and find out.

I’m not convinced they were being entirely honest, though. We were there for the launch of a new broadcast video camera, and the scenes they chose to film rather conveniently showed off all of its best features. The ‘director’ had the air of actor about him, too, which was immediately suspicious.

One of the scenes involved them blowing the door off a bank vault using marzipan. Of course, in the film it wasn’t really marzipan: it was plastic explosive, but on account of the fact that the charges underneath it caused it to explode and pepper us all with sweet almondy paste, it was like cracking a door with a volatile Christmas cake.

Once inside the safe, our balaclava-clad villain had to creep around without breaking the laser beams that cast a vivid green net on the floor. Bizarrely, the clapper board guy seemed to be confusing real life with fiction, and spent a lot of his time very carefully stepping over them so as not to break the beams. Strange boy.

We must have watched them filming for an hour or so, then wandered through the backlot past 007 Drive and several other Charlie and the Chocolate Factory sets (including the Floater thing where they go floating up to the big fan at the top of the room and almost get sliced up until they burp away their gas) to the manor.

It has a very grand entrance: all carved dark wood, around which are plaques commemorating some of the great and the good of Pinewood History. One of them was for Peter Rogers who directed the Carry On films there, and apparently still eats in the canteen every day, having nothing else to do.

Opposite was the British Comedy walk of fame, which is a grotty outdoor corridor on the walls of which are another series of plaques. One is for the 40 years of ‘humour’ in the Bond films. Hmmm…

We stopped there for lunch in the dining room they used as the consulate in Carry On up the Khyber. The food was fantastic, and the hallways fascinating, being plastered with photos of some of the most ambitious sets to have been built there (including the Liparus). It made going to the Roger Moore commemorative toilets (probably not called this, but they should be), and walking past them all, a very lengthy undertaking.

I’d been up hours by then, having started work at seven this morning, so barely eaten anything all day. The wine went straight to my head, so I popped out with Rosie for a walk in the gardens. These, and the ornamental bridge by the Q memorial, were used in the opening scenes of From Russia with Love. Very beautiful.

Exciting though it all was, I was quite glad when it was time to move on. It was issue closing day, so I needed to get back to the office.

We got lost finding our way back to the limo, and ended up on the backlot again, where we walked past one of the costume departments. Three women and a very short man sat sewing together long strips of grass, and called us in to look at what they were doing. Turns out they were making costumes for the Oompa Loompas. They were very beautiful and not at all like the dolly-mixture brown tops they wore in the original film.

Standing in the corner was a dummy wearing a chocolate-coated outfit, no doubt destined to be Augustus Gloop’s unfortunate costume.

The only mildly embarrassing moment was when Zoe asked the short man if he was an Oompa Loompa in for a fitting. Turns out he wasn’t. He was just short.

Back in the limo, we cracked open the champagne and did out best to forget out indiscretion.

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