As one who got under their seat at The Wizard of Oz, I haven’t a great record at the cinema. When I first came to Oxford as a student, some friends turned up from Cirencester Agricultural College. It was early afternoon. I couldn’t think what to do with them. Punting was out. Too cold. I suggested the cinema. I’d heard of one off the Cowley Road – hip and happening, no need to book. We made our way there.

As the lights dimmed and the curtain rolled back, a film in a language I vaguely remember as Hungarian began. I don’t speak any Slavic languages, but it didn’t matter. Not a jot. Suddenly, the screen was filled with naked bodies – swinging through the air on trapezes, hanging off ladders, writhing about in combination in a variety of novel ways. This story was getting more interesting by the minute. Language? Pah!

The next thing I knew, someone was pulling on my sleeve – first tentatively but then more urgently. “We don’t think you should be watching this”, one of my manly guests hissed in a low voice. “We think you should go – right now.”

With that, I was hauled out with a firm arm and emerged, blinking in the foyer. “You’ve ruined the plot,” I said, indignantly. “Now I’ll never know if they put their clothes back on.”

A hamburger at Maxwell’s seemed tame, by comparison.

What of contemporary choice? Settling into my seat at the Phoenix Picture House in Walton Street, I looked around me. The cinema was full of enthusiasts: elderly friends carefully arranging their coats beneath their seats, students with spiky hair and Converses, self-contained singletons, young couples cutting loose from reading The Hungry Caterpillar, for one night only. The show was the National Theatre’s celebrated production of Richard II, with David Tennant taking the lead, in another kind of time travel. No Daleks but perils aplenty.

It was a marvellous evening. So was the previous one, when I saw the Irish Catholic drama Calvary at the same cinema. The coffee and cakes, the chilled white wine and food and drinks offered up in the bar mean going to the cinema in Jericho is much more of a teasing, tantalising occasion than the advertisments and trailers usually deliver.

“Coming to the Phoenix is about so much more than seeing a film, carefully chosen for our local audience. It’s about wanting to come early and stay late. We don’t want you to hurry off, but stay around and enjoy what’s on offer – again and again, week after week,” Martin Langley, the Phoenix’s general manager said. Phoenix Membership, student deals, special screenings, Q&As with directors (Ralph Fiennes dropped in last month): so much to surprise and delight – even with your clothes on.