Albert Vandersteen has been a driver to the stars.

Sean Connery, James Mason, Lee Marvin, Diana Rigg, Honor Blackman --they've all been in the back of his limo.

As a driver employed by most of the British film studios, Albert has spent countless hours watching classics such Dr No and Oliver! being made. Sometimes he'd play the bittiest of bit parts.

It's fair to say Albert's life has been spent on the very outer edges of great wealth and fame.

He worked as a personal chauffeur to a multi-millionaire banker who thought nothing of sending him out the South of France just so his own private Rolls-Royce would be ready to meet him.

One would think, therefore, that being chauffeur to the distinctly less glitzy likes of Thurrock's mayor and mayoress would be a bit of a disappointment. But not a bit of it, says Albert.

"It's regular work and regular hours. And we get treated well. We were always given our dinner when they have theirs."

It's clear that Albert, of Lambourne, on the old Bata estate in East Tilbury, places a high priority on such paternalism.

For this 60-year-old grandfather is what used to be called a loyal retainer. He's servile in the nicest possible way, a servant right down to the tips of his highly-polished black shoes.

Indeed he got a vicarious pleasure and pride through working for some of Britain's richest men rather than a nagging envy, a desire for a slice of the action which many of us might have experienced.

"Oh, it's not in my nature to be envious," he says mildly. "I have been looked after very well. When I worked for the banker, his wife used to go shopping in Harrods every week and I'd go there with her.

"She'd see a big joint of meat and she'd say: 'Would you like that, Albert?' She'd tell the assistant to wrap it up and put it in a separate basket. I'd come home with boxloads of food. All the best stuff."

Some might chaff at being thrown crumbs from the rich man's table but the thought never appears to have crossed his mind.

No, in a world of unreliability, of chippiness and "call-me-Tony" mateyness, Albert's deference, discretion and near devotion to whoever he is working for have ensured that he has always been in demand.

Born in Hackney, he has fond memories of an East End where you could always leave your door open. "We had villains living above us and they never bothered us," he says. "Kids could play out in the street till 10pm and there was comradeship."

His father was killed training in Scotland at the end of the war. Albert was five and can still remember the body being laid out in a coffin on a table which doubled as a bath when a board was removed.

The family moved to Stepney. Albert's school was in the midst of the ruined rubble of London and was much in demand for film locations. He and classmates were often used as extras for now-vintage movies such as the Intruders, the Mudlarks and the Yellow Balloon.

He left school at 15 to be-come a pageboy at the Great Eastern Hotel at Liverpool Street. He stayed a year and then did a variety of jobs until joining the Army to do his National Service at 18.

He came out at 22, married Daphne, his childhood sweetheart (they had met when she was 14, he 17, and are still together this day; she works in a bakery), and got a job as a dustcart driver with Stepney Council, moving on to become driver to the mayor and mayoress.

By night he played drums and sang in a pop group called the Initials. This lasted five years but the growing demands of a young family, Sandra, now 35, and Mark, 33, meant Albert gave it up.

He then worked for a Hampstead company which supplied limos to film companies. He chauffeured Donald Sutherland and vividly remembers pushing Kiefer, just a baby, in a pram round Hampstead Heath.

It was the middle '60s and London was swinging. Albert went on to work for John Green, an American musician who co-wrote the music for West Side Story and was in London to work on the musical Oliver!

Albert was with him exclusively for his two-year stay and was offered a job in Beverly Hills. "I wanted to go, but the wife wouldn't leave the family. . . ." he trails off.

John Green went back to the States but Albert got a job through him with Brian Sandalson, a wealthy banker in 1968, whose wife was so fond of Harrods.

He stayed until 1986. "I was well looked after," he said. "I only had to cough and I'd be seeing their private doctor. I was allowed to drive their Rolls-Royces and Daimlers if I wanted to."

He left after his employer retired and went to chauffeur for Robert Earl, the man behind Planet Hollywood. The hours were long and a fed-up Albert left after three months to work on the buses in central London.

However, his past caught up with him. It was while driving a double-decker down Oxford Street that he spotted Sir John Woolf, a film producer from the Oliver! days and then chairman of Anglia TV. The result was a new job with TV mogul Tim Wooten.

The hours were crippling but well paid and Albert stuck it from 1988 until three years ago when the TV whizz-kid retired.

He was out of work for a year -- but eventually got the job at Thurrock Council.

And now he's quite content with his memories, the company of other drivers and the social aspect of the job.

May I assist? -- Albert in his part as the perfect chauffeur and a flashback to Albert iun 1962 with a gleaming Austin Princess

Pictures: MAXINE CLARKE

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.