Only fifteen years ago did I learn that the premises from which, as a schoolboy, I nicked a couple of Blacker bombard anti-tank missiles and a box of L-delay fuses was "Winston Churchill's Toyshop", the UK's premier weapons experimental station in WW2. I wrote to the BBC suggesting they make a documentary: their response was: The BBC “does not accept ideas for programmes of a documentary or factual nature” so I decided to put together my own Powerpoint presentation. The title is arrived at in that when becoming PM Churchill knew of the massive War Office red tape; to by-pass this he appointed himself Minister of Defence and created just one Department – MD1 located at Whitchurch just north of Aylesbury.

The department was to be under Churchill's direct control via Lord Cherwell and over 50 weapons were invented which went into service . An example of the rightness of Churchill's thinking was that when the authorities sought to obstruct production of the sticky bomb Churchill issued a note: "make 1,000,000 sticky bombs –WSC". I have carried out extensivef research at the Nuffield library in Oxford reading the papers passing between Churchill and Cherwell and the Churchill Archives in Cambridge – fascinating stuff and the source of much information for my talk.

James Tuck was a very important member of the team: he was a nuclear scientist who played a vital and unsung role in the design of the plutonium atomic bomb.

After presenting at the Gurkha Museum Gerald Davies there wrote: “I would like to thank you on behalf of Winchester’s Military Museums for the tremendous lecture you gave last Thursday. I have had numerous telephone calls from members of the audience saying how much they had enjoyed it.”

The National Army Museum at Chelsea said they would like me to repeat the talk and three MOD weapons experts in the audience e-mailed to say they were “enthralled with what they heard” – it is such an untold story and I manage to find some humour too.

I did manage to persuade the Discovery Channel to make a documentary but they omitted so much.