My friends of the time - whether now in places as disparate as Seattle, Lecistershire or Barry, also in Wales, or scattered in other places across the hemisphere - with whom, thanks to the web, I still discuss our experiences of being in the Cafe in the early 1960s, - all agree, that, what we learned from Leno was toleration and an acceptance of difference.

We also learnt that an understanding of why people behave as they do might aid our reaction towards and orientation to difference. I recall one time, talking to Leno about the Bracchi Cafe phenomena in South Wales and the passage of many people, in the 1940s, from Busso and other areas in Italy to Bedford and other towns in Britain for different kinds of work, within which, the Cafe played an integral role.

Of course, for this boy from Llanfair Clydogau , like others who are contributing here, the Lampeter, 'big city' taste of the ice cream is an abiding memory and one that, in the British Isles at least, has never, down all the days, been surpassed.

But, put it together with Coca Cola and icecream in the same glass, a pack of five Dominoes and 'She loves you' by the Beatles on the Juke Box for 6d and you had a paradise of childhood and youth, a haven in a sometimes seemingly hostile world, regulated in an even, avuncular way, by Leno.

Nostalgia? Yes, I will admit to that, but this guy in that town was, and has always been 'something else'. Grazie così tanto/Diloch yn fawr/Go Raibh Maith Agat/ Thank you, Leno your kindness to strangers as well as to familiars lives on in our memories."

Written by Professor Kevin J Brehony