The time Titanic was set in a branch of Marks and Spencer

“Rose, I knew you’d come back for me,” cried Jack with relief.

The  young couple kiss passionately and Jack urges Rose to find an axe.

Rose is confused, but then she realises Jack’s terrible predicament.

He was been handcuffed to a bra stand in the ladies’ unmentionables section of Marks and Spencer in Brighton.

It was 1995, and James Cameron’s new film was not going well.

Best known for Sci-fi blockbusters like Aliens and the Terminator, Cameron had set out to do something different – Titanic, a heartfelt romance between a British woman and an American.

The script was great, the cast – Kate Winslet and Leonardo Dicaprio – was stellar.

The problem was that the setting, a provincial branch of the popular underwear and ready-meal store Marks and Spencer.

“Well, it was an odd idea, but I was just looking forward to working with James, he’s a visionary,” said Kate Winslet in a 2002 Wogan interview.

“But, I think that basing a three-hour romance in a Marks and Spencer was ambitious, even for him.”

The plot was that Rose, her fiancé and her family decide to pop into Markses for a big Shepherds Pie and Rose has a moment of horror at how her life will unfold, so she runs off with Jack, a poor American artist who is bemused that a department store doesn’t sell a pencil.

They have sex on top of a pallet of reasonably priced Burgundy, but Rose’s fiancé finds out and chases them around the shop until it closes.

Rose and Jack are trapped in the store overnight and tragically, Jack dies.

“It was a good story, but Marks and Spencer just wasn’t the right fit for it,” remembered the Pride and Prejudice star.

Ultimately James Cameron shut the production down, and went on a three month holiday in a submarine, along the seabed of the Atlantic Ocean to have a big think.

Whilst enjoying a relaxing break, the director discovered the wreckage of a spectacular cruise liner.

On learning that the great ship was called ‘Titanic,’ the same name as his troublesome film, he knew what to do. The setting was changed from Marks and Spencer to a doomed ocean liner and the rest is history.

However, as an interesting tribute, if you look closely during the scene where Jack joins Rose and her family for dinner, you can see that they are all eating Marks and Spencer luxury shepherd’s pie as a special culinary wink to what might have been.