If things had gone differently, David Stratton would now be running a large grocery chain in England. Instead, his snap decision to buy a ?10 ticket to Australia in 1963 meant he escaped the claims of the family business and became one of Australia's foremost film critics.

"As long as I can remember I have been fascinated by movies," Stratton says - now best known for his weekly At the Movies show on ABC1 with Margaret Pomeranz.

The 68-year-old vividly remembers seeing Disney's Bambi aged five and being shocked when the mother was shot. The other childhood movie that sticks in his mind is Duel in the Sun, which his grandmother took him to see when he was about seven. Apart from being unusually violent and totally unsuitable for a child, Stratton remembers the "tremendous jolt" he felt when the movie ended without the obligatory good guy winning and bad guy losing.

At 19, he founded a local branch of the Film Society Movement in Andover, where he lived, and ended up on the regional committee for south-west England. But movies, Stratton believed, were only ever going to be a hobby - his destiny was to take over from his father running a wholesale and retail grocery business begun by his family in 1820.

His trip to Australia, aged 24, was only meant to be for two years, visiting a friend in Sydney and seeing a bit of the world. He worked in the grocery business, first in a warehouse and then managing a store in Sydney's western suburbs.

But Stratton was also drawn to the Sydney Film Festival, working as a volunteer and, by the end of 1964, being elected to the board. He began agitating for changes to Australia's draconian film censorship laws.

In England, film societies were exempt from censorship laws but in Australia the Sydney Film Festival was subject to the same stringent rules as films shown to the general public. Quite a few movies were banned and about one in three was cut.

"The public were very hard done by, seeing mutilated films," Stratton says. He pushed through a motion that the film festival would agitate for an R classification to be introduced and, if a film was cut, would announce what had been removed.

The festival director objected to the motion and quit in protest, thus handing Stratton the top job, aged 26, just as he was about to return to England. "I have a feeling that today people of that age wouldn't be allowed near a cultural festival," he says. Stratton remained the director for 18 years, until 1983. "Youthful enthusiasm can be a pretty potent thing."

Since then, he has been in the happy position of being able to earn a living from his passion; reviewing movies for newspapers (including 20 years writing for the US trade bible, Variety) and teaching an epic 10-year course at Sydney University on the history of world cinema.

He also has a collection of 9000 films at his Blue Mountains home and watches about 10 movies a week, mainly in his home cinema.

For many years Stratton was also the feature film programmer and on-air presenter at SBS, from which evolved The Movie Show with Pomeranz, which ran for 18 years before the pair decamped to ABC1 in 2004.

The good-natured bickering between the measured, methodical Stratton and the feisty, spirited Pomeranz has been a popular aspect of both shows. "One of the reasons people respond is because those discussions are unscripted and we're very different," Stratton says.

"We both love good films and we're friends but we have our areas of disagreement. Margaret's very emotional and very passionate and I guess I'm a little bit cooler on things like that."

I Peed On Fellini: Recollections Of A Life In Film by David Stratton was published by Random House on March 3.

The big questions

Biggest break: Undoubtedly being appointed the director of the Sydney Film Festival at the end of 1965, aged just 26. It allowed me for the first time to work in the film world on a professional basis.

Biggest achievement: One would certainly be helping in some way to reform censorship laws in Australia. The other would be the programming of feature films on SBS through the 1980s and 1990s. I have a feeling some people watched a wide range of foreign films for the first time on SBS.

Biggest regret: I don't really think in terms of regrets. Perhaps not spending enough time with my children [a son and daughter].

Best investment: That moment when I decided to make an investment in Australia; when I decided to stay.

Worst investment: I couldn't say I've had any regrets about investments.

Attitude to money: I don't think very much about money.

Personal philosophy: There's no point in dwelling on things you can't change.

Favourite film: Singing In The Rain. It's wonderfully made, cheerful and a transition from silent to sound films. Gene Kelly was one of the great entertainers from the golden era of Hollywood.