THE closure of Mecca Bingo in Regent Circus lowered the curtain on a lifetime of memories for Roy Howland of Overtown Hill, Wroughton.

But he had done his mourning for the place in 1974, when he showed the last film ever to be screened there.

Roy was chief projectionist at what used to be the Odeon cinema, previously known as the Gaumont and before that as the Regent. The cinema has been in his blood ever since he was given a toy projector as a little boy. He stayed on as house engineer after Rank turned the Odeon into a bingo club, but his job no longer game him a buzz.

"I still hate it when I hear that another old cinema is to close," said the 80-year-old, whose first job in the movie business was as a 16-year-old rewind boy in the projection box at the 2,200-seat Globe in Acton, west London.

From there Rank sent him to major movie theatres in Southall and Hounslow.

Roy came to Swindon in 1957 when he and his family were given the tenancy of a house under the London overspill scheme. With the house went a job - at the new Pressed Steel car bodies factory.

"I loathed it from the day I went there," he admitted. "I stuck it for eight years, but whenever I could I worked as a part-time projectionist at the small Classic cinema in Regent Street, previously the Arcadia.

In 1966 when an opportunity to take voluntary redundancy came he grabbed it. Then a vacancy for a projectionist at the Odeon was advertised and he applied for the job and got it.

Roy saw major technical advances in the movie business.

"When I started we were working with nitrate film, which was highly flammable and tended to break."

It broke quite often and projectionists and cinema managers lived in dread of the catcalls from the audience when it happened.

No longer does the operator have to stand by the projector in case of such emergencies. Or look out for the green spot in the top right-hand corner of the screen that warned it was time to change the reel.

"You had just seconds in which to do it," he recalled.

"It was also our job to open and close the curtains and operate the stage lighting."

He believes today's slick technology has made the job almost boring.

Roy met his second wife Jeanne at the Odeon. She was working there as a cashier and later became the cinema's assistant manager.

They remember the days when many people went to the pictures every week and some twice or even three times weekly.

A uniformed doorman supervised queues that often stretched round to the back of the theatre as people waited to get in.

Roy, who earlier in his career spent eight months as a projectionist in the dubbing theatre at Ealing film studios, loves old movies as much as he loves old cinemas.

James Mason, Jack Hawkins, John Mills, Phyllis Calvert, Margaret Lockwood and Patricia Roc are still among his favourite stars.