 Stephen Moore was on a last-minute Christmas Eve trolley dash in Waitrose when his phone rang. On the other end of the line was Ian Cheshire, chief executive of B&amp;Q's owner, Kingfisher. He was also in a Waitrose at the other end of the country, but Cheshire wasn't calling for advice about turkey stuffing.  He wanted to offer Moore a job. Not as a high-flying executive at Kingfisher, but as the boss of a MediCinema, a charity that builds cinemas in hospitals so that patients can enjoy a modicum of normality.  Moore, former president of 20th Century Fox's international division, applied for the job after returning to Britain to continue his career in the film industry, before becoming disillusioned. He admits he was the "left-field candidate" to run MediCinema but suspects he was selected because the charity, which Cheshire chairs, needed a "businessman's head to get to the next level".  although he misses the Hollywood lifestyle and movie star-sized pay cheque, Moore says he has "absolutely no regrets" about leaving showbusiness to work in a utilitarian office in a south London hospital.  "I did have all the trappings of the corporate world, but there's a price to pay for that. I was really unhappy," he says of his former life. "I mean I was almost depressed."  Moore had moved to La from London in the 1990s after winning over his wife. "My wife didn't want to go. We had long negotiations and agreed to go for a year or so, but we ended up staying there for 10 years," he says. "It was either divorce or coming back. and coming back was cheaper."  Climate change  Returning to Britain may have saved his marriage, but his children were less keen on leaving California's sunshine for a traditional British winter. "'Thanks very much dad, you've ruined my life' is the quote that stands out," he says. "It wasn't helped by the fact that it seemed to piss it down with rain and my youngest didn't have any shoes - she's only ever worn flip-flops."  after introducing his daughter to delights of sensible footwear and tights - "She'd never heard of them before" - Moore worked as chief operating officer of aardman animations, the Bristol-based animation company behind Wallace &amp; Gromit. after a couple of years of schlepping back and forth between London and Bristol, he joined Disney in London as vice-president of Europe, the Middle East, africa and Canada in 2009.  But he left last year after becoming frustrated by Disney's "internal crisis of confidence", which he says had made it almost impossible to make decisions. "after a while I thought: Is this the way I want to live my life?" He stopped to remember the "hundreds of thousands, but not millions" he was making every year and the knowledge that "if I do this for another 10 years then I can give up and do whatever I like".  "But then I thought, why the hell would I want to waste another 10 years doing this?" He quit and set his heart on working in sport or the charity sector, and when he spotted a newspaper advert for a new chief executive of MediCinema he had a "this is it moment".  The charity, which is backed by big names from the film industry including Lord attenborough and Kate Winslet, was founded by campaigner Christine Hill in 1996. "She saw nurses wheeling kids out of the wards at St Thomas' hospital on to the (Thames) Embankment to watch the boats go by," says Moore, who has become firm friends with Hill. "She stopped to ask the nurses what they were doing and was told 'it keeps them busy for a few hours'. 'What they need is a cinema,' she said, with a blinding flash of genius that hit on the obvious solution."  It took Hill four years to raise enough money for the first cinema at St Thomas' and it was seven years before it opened. "It took a herculean effort to build three in 15 years," Moore says. "Now the trustees want to build three to five a year to build a decent infrastructure."  a new cinema is about to open at Guy's hospital in London, funded by a charity day at Icap, the interdealer broker run by former Tory party treasurer Michael Spencer. It will join others in Newcastle and Glasgow and there are also screens planned for Newport, south Wales, and the Headley Court rehabilitation centre for service people in Surrey.  "The idea is that someone in hospital can have the same experience you can have on a Saturday night, complete with surround sound and tiered seating," he says. "They're as good as any preview theatre . . . The only difference is, it's nil-by-mouth, so there's no popcorn."  Best medicine  a cinema may not sound like the most pressing requirement for our cash-strapped hospitals, but Moore has the nurses on his side. "One of them said that if laughter is the best medicine I think MediCinema is the best medicine," he says. "When you've been in hospital for a long time you get kind of institutionalised. You don't go outside, every day is the same."  Moore tells the story of a teenager with terminal cancer in Glasgow Royal Infirmary who hadn't spoken to his father in months because they "just didn't have anything left to say to each other". "as soon as he got back from the movie the first thing he did was ask his mum if he could borrow her phone and he rang his dad excitedly to say 'I  