More than 4,100 miles away, in Gallatin, Tenn-essee, former Elstree resident Dave Miller recently found some photographs from his past.

One which particularly caught the attention of the 68-year-old was a photograph taken in 1960 with his friends Brian, Johnny Moxom and Len Harding heading back to Willesden’s Ace Café after a day at Brands Hatch race track.

A keen motorcyclist, Mr Miller arrived in Elstree in the Fifties where he lived for more than ten years with his parents and sister.

Spending his formative years on a housing estate in Sullivan Way, riding his bike through the streets of Borehamwood and Elstree “opened up the world to him”.

But he mused: “Many of the places I frequented, from the Fifties and Sixties are long gone.

“It was possible in those days to walk anywhere safely.

“Fares were cheap on the buses and Tube.

“Not like now, where you have to get a loan from the bank, just to take the Tube from Burnt Oak to Edgware.”

His stint in the Hertsmere village was interrupted when he joined the Royal Marines, but he soon returned to familiar surroundings and the same friends he had shared that day with at Brands Hatch.

While working at a telephone company near Elstree Studios, Mr Miller saw many stars.

He said: “I would see Burt Lancaster on a regular basis, riding his bike into the studios.

“Sophia Loren was a treat to see, walking into the studio and on to the set. I could see all this from the window at work.”

Soon after his return from the marines, Mr Miller married and moved to Watford, where his son was born and, in 1967, with his young family by his side, they headed to the United States, eventually settling in Tennessee.

The couple soon had their second child, a daughter, and Mr Miller spent the next 18 years working at the BioMedical Department of Nashville Memorial Hospital.

But from the other side of the Atlantic, Mr Miller is now keen to be reunited with the friends who lived on the same Elstree housing estate and shared his younger years with him, riding their motorbikes and visiting their regular haunts such as the Ace Café.

He said: “The last time I saw them was in Sullivan Way, near the old bus works — which has now gone I hear, at the foot of Brockley Hill.”

And despite several attempts to make contact with his Elstree friends in the years that followed, Mr Miller has not been successful.

He added: “I have tried to locate these guys during several trips to the area.

“It would be of great interest to me to see what they did with their lives, and be able at some time to chat about the old days.

“I only knew them for a few short years, but they introduced me to motorcycles, and we spent every night and every weekend tinkering and modifying our bikes and roaring around the area.

“Mainly to the Ace Café on the North Circular, and the Busy Bee in Watford. Great days and they are still heavily imprinted on my mind.”

Mr Miller is keen to hear from the men pictured or from anyone who knows of their whereabouts.

To contact Mr Miller, email the Borehamwood & Elstree Times office at bwnews@london.newsquest.co.uk