Mr Sean Connery Must Ride In On A Milkfloat Of Human Kindness And Save Edinburgh's Beautiful Cameo Cinema

I read in The Herald that Edinburgh's Cameo Cinema is to be sold, and its main auditorium transformed into a "super-bar".
Oh, how the heart sinks.
I have a great fondness for many of the Capital's picture houses, and a great many of them have disappeared. But the Cameo is a special place, which should be treasured. It has stood on the same site since 1914, when it opened as the King's Cinema - a companion to the King's Theatre, across the street. Although it spent some of the 198os in the doldrums, most of its essential architecture is intact.
It is a lovely place, and one of the few cinemas in Scotland where it is possible to experience the thrill of going to the pictures as it used to be. True, the live orchestra is no longer in attendance, but the Cameo's interior marks it out as Edwardian palace of entertainment, which has a long tradition of showing continental films. I remember the excitement in 1963, when a Milk Bar was added to the cinema, and for a while, the local papers carried advertisements wth the image of that famous milkman, Mr Sean Connery, implying that 007 could be glimpsed nightly in the bar, sipping a pinta.
Clearly, Lothian Road is not in need of a super-bar. By evening, the area around the Usher Hall and the already-defiled Caley Palais cinema is like one of the outer rings of Hell, as it fills with aggressive, under-dressed teenagers trying to cram a lifetime's pleasure into an evening of over-indulgence. The King's Theatre is already a shadow of itself, but to add the Cameo to the endless happy hour of Lothian Road would be an act of unforgiveable cultural vandalism.
Does Edinburgh still have a council? Is it too much to hope that it will stand against the licensing trade, and the forward march of crude money?
Also, what of 007? Well, Mr Connery is to receive the Life Achievement Award, the highest accolade of the American Film Institute. Closer to home, one often hears of schemes by which Scotland's greatest film star is to be commemorated. The Cameo is five minutes walk from the dairy where young Tam Connery used to work. Let him buy the place, and keep the special intimacy of a beautiful cinema alive.