Edward Judd

I mean, but...

Quite often when I'm asked that question, I say it was the First Men in the Moon, the Ray Harryhausen epic, scripted by Nigel Neill, based on Nancy Wells' novel, starring Ronald Jeffries, Edward Judd and Martha Hire.

It's a terrific picture and it's exactly relevant to all my grown-up interests.

So it's a perfect origin point for me.

But we love our children equally.

It begins with Edward Judd.

Now, Edward Judd, what a man.

Now, I didn't know much about Edward Judd.

I saw him immediately and my brain was doing that thing of, I know that voice and face from somewhere.

And then I realize he's in the 1988 Thames television production of Jack the Ripper.

It's full to the brim of those actors in sometimes quite humble parts.

Yes.

But my choice for this year has to be one of Val Guest's greatest films, the bleak and possibly terrifyingly prescient The Day the Earth Caught Fire.

It begins with journalist Edward Judd walking through an abandoned London, imaginatively shot by Guest with the use of orange-yellow filters, who begins to dictate what might be his final story.

Guest co-wrote the script with Wolf Mankowitz, indeed they were co-nominated for a BAFTA, and brings an almost documentary feel to this story of what happens when science goes wrong.

And in this case, going wrong means sending the Earth spiraling into the sun.