Visitors to the Mill at Sonning Dinner Theatre these days – I was one of them last Thursday night – are likely to wonder whether its illustrious next door neighbours George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin are in residence. Probably not, considering their lavish supply of properties elsewhere.

The power couple snapped up £10m Aberlash House, a listed Georgian building, in the immediate aftermath of their hugely publicised marriage last year. At the time, it passed me by completely that this was a mansion I had visited. This was because I knew it as the Mill House, a name to which it would seem the Clooneys have returned.

The house was the former home of my good friend and Osney neighbour, the late Patricia Moss. I drove her over in the late 1990s when the place was on the market and a sale of its contents was under way. It was a nostalgic visit that she often spoke of afterwards.

Patricia was – as one would never have doubted – a true child of the Raj, among the last of the breed. Returning to Britain in the aftermath of Indian independence she and her parents settled in Sonning and the riverside house on its own five-acre island.

Nearby stands the French Horn, in an imposing setting of some grandeur. A very upmarket hotel and restaurant, it was long a favourite of the late Michael Winner. My own recollections of the place include a sumptuous lunch there in the company of Alan Crompton-Batt, the doyen of restaurant publicists, now sadly departed. We ate ducks cooked in front of the open fire in the lounge. The secret was on no account to touch them, ensuring that the skin achieved a perfect crispness.

I mention the hotel, stressing its swankiness, for the part it played in Patricia’s early life in the village. The story illustrates the very different attitudes to class and social etiquette that existed in the 1950s.

Now it happened that the proprietors of the French Horn had a son, who had been an army officer in India. Patricia had known him there and renewed acquaintance on return to Britain.

That he lived in Sonning was a complete surprise to her. He had spoken not a word about the French Horn out in India lest he be stigmatised among his fellow officers for the shameful business of having parents who were working for a living. Though the inn was a smartish place even then (though not so smart as it became from 1972 with the takeover of the Emmanuel family), anyone associated with it was deemed to be ‘in trade’ and therefore unsuitable for civilised company.

Something of the same attitude was shown by many to John Fothergill, the upstart proprietor, as he was considered, of the Spread Eagle in Thame and later establishments in Ascot and Market Harborough, Leicestershire.

Nor was it only in India that this stigma existed. Once Patricia renewed her friendship with the officer, she took to knocking about with him, enjoying outings riding pillion on his motorbike. Very soon, following these public displays of intimacy, the telephone was ringing at the Mill House with callers warning Patricia’s mother of this very indecorous association. To her credit, you might think, mater took no action in the matter, and the motorbike rides continued.

Patricia spoke occasionally of those times during her later years as a wonderful hostess at her riverside home in Osney. Her entertainments were always enlivened by considerable quantities of fizz (to be bottle opener, as I sometimes was, was a tough call). Her lunch party at Phyllis Court during the Henley Regatta, likewise champagne drenched, was a highlight of the year. She died shortly after one.

Were she still with us, she would, I think, be amused at the idea of Clooney in the home of her youth. Apart from anything else, she enjoyed the company of Americans. I recall a dinner in Osney where a former US army officer told us of his friendship with the rock star Neil Young who lived on a neighbouring ranch. I was fascinated to hear tales of the rock legend. Our visitor’s son, it seemed, had a special intimacy with the star; indeed, he had designed a number of his album covers.