Congratulations are most certainly in order in the direction of the Watford Observer for producing two wonderful pages of nostalgia every Friday which are also on its nostalgia Facebook group ‘We grew up in Watford’. The group now has more than 1,800 members.

However with me belonging to a different world - predating mobile phones, texts and tablet devices - also I still live in the world of pounds, shillings and pence and imperial measurement, unfortunately it rules me out of adding my name to the 1,800 membership of the Facebook group.

Nevertheless, it does not stop me from turning to the nostalgia pages of the Watford Observer every Friday and having a trip down memory lane and enjoying input from the Facebook group with their memories of all our yesterdays.

On page 30 of last week’s nostalgia pages Lyn Smyth shares her memories of her taking part in Watford’s version of the TV game show It’s a Knockout when she played for the Odhams (Watford) Ltd team in 1983. It was the final time Odhams would play as they closed down that year.

I agree with Lyn, they were very happy days, until an unscrupulous character called Robert Maxwell arrived at Odhams on December 17, 1982 announcing in one breath that he had just bought Odhams and that now he would close Odhams down.

Prior to Maxwell’s arrival at Odhams he already had a reputation in the business world of buying, closing and asset stripping of companies. The Radio Times at Park Royal was just one example of this.

It took Maxwell just a few minutes to bring the curtain down on Odhams, which had been founded by Viscount Southwood in 1934 and had been printing millions of women’s magazines for nearly 50 years. It must have had Southwood turning in his grave.

Little did we know then that in a few years’ time in 1988 this unscrupulous character would get caught with his hand in the till and use his employees’ company pension pots to finance brokering a deal with £440 million to buy Macmillan Publishing in the States.

Nothing gives me more pleasure than seeing photos sent into the Facebook group by Lyn and once again have a top up of seeing many of my old work colleagues from Odhams. As Lyn says, they were indeed ‘happy days’.

Ernie Mackenzie

Gammons Lane, Watford