HAMPSHIRE celebrity Esther Rantzen recalled her wartime childhood during a visit to a VE Day-style street party.

The nostalgic celebration was attended by 65 children, one for every year that has passed since the end of the Second World War.

Esther, 69, remembered donning a gas mask and also sitting under the family’s dining room table – a potential shelter in an air raid.

The former That’s Life! presenter told the children: “I didn’t have a party like this because I lived in the country. But my grandmother walked around our garden holding a battery-operated radio on which someone said the war in Europe was over.

“All the grown-ups in our family were so thrilled. I can remember thinking it was a very important day.”

Esther, who has a weekend cottage in nearby Bramshaw, presented commemorative mugs to the children.

The party was held at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu, as part of the three-day Trucks & Troops show, which featured more than 250 military vehicles.

Esther, praised all the enthusiasts who took part.

Another guest was Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, whose father, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, famously won the Battle of El Alamein in 1942.

Yesterday Viscount Montgomery was driven around the show in a 1939 Rolls Royce his father used as a staff car in 1944-45.

He also laid a wreath at a memorial to members of the Special Operations Executive, a secret wartime organisation that used Beaulieu for training.