MY LIFE IN MOVIES: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY LIFE TOLD IN 15 FILMS

This is my life up to date in 15 movies. Star Wars isn't there, but if it was it would be no. 5. and my memory of that isn't the film itself, which was awesome - before Lucas fiddled with it too much- but it was a pictorial feature in the first ever 2000AD Summer Special and a radio report I heard while on holiday with my family. I saw it three times in the first week, and twice on the first day I saw it. The queue stretched around the cinema twice!

My Life in 15 movies.

1. 1969. The Italian Job. The first non Disney film my mother ever took me to see. For a long time that scene were Michael Caine laughs and says, 'all of them' stayed with me for years and years!

2. 1972. ABC Minors, Buck Rogers and the CFF. My Saturday morning routine, a badge, an old serial, a Children's Film Foundation movie and a 2 penny toffee chew. The perfect Saturday morning.

3. 1975. BOND: My first Bond film was Live and Let Die and it was part of a double bill along with Man with the Golden Gun. My mum thought the films weren't appropriate and so I went to see these with a friend of mine and his older brother. Wow, I felt so grown up. I'd long been obsessed with James Bond, ever since I'd seen the poster of Diamonds are Forever, which completely ignited my imagination, and an episode of the Golden Shot which focused on From Russia With Love. In fact, I collected the books long before I could read them and understand them, just for the amazing covers.

4. 1975. Jaws. Oh my god! That man died! I thought as I watched Robert Shaw being eaten by a shark. God I love that film!

5. 1977. The Incredible melting Man. My first date movie, (LD)  It was at the Northfields Odeon, a cinema built in the Spanish school of architecture. I bought her a Mars bar, but we didn't kiss or anything, there was a film on!

6. 1979. Life of Brian - The first time I ever got to first base with a girl, (JL). She wore a string top which accounts for my fetish, I suppose. ABC 3 Ealing, downstairs, on the left back row. It would be several years later till I finally watched the whole film.

7. 1979. My First 'X' Film, I wish I could say Alien, which I saw a week later, but it was actually Quadrophenia. ABC 1 Ealing.

8. 1980. Game of Death at the Empire, Bridgetown, Barbados. Sadly long shut down, but what a thrill. My first Bruce Lee film, my god that man was a god! Barbados was also fantastic, I was 16 and had my first cigarette to impress my cousins, Stephen and Natalie. I spent two months on that island and fell in love with it.

9. 1981. The Exorcist scared the crap out of me, I had to walk down the middle of the road on the way home. West Ealing Lido.

10. 1982. Bladerunner - I saw this at the Shaftsbury Ave Odeon as it was in 1982, it was a special Starburst preview. I sat on the right hand side of the theatre and the excitement I felt was glorious, when the lights went down and first the Alan Ladd logo came on and then the fireball in the eyeball, a shiver rose up my back. I knew I was going to love it and I did.

11. 1986. The Wraith, the last film I saw as a single man.

12. 1987. Crocodile Dundee the first film I saw with my now wife.

13. 2002. 101 Dalmations, the first film I took my daughter to see. Barbican

14. 2010. Kick Ass the first 15 cert film I bunked my daughter in to see when she was just 10. High Wycombe Cineworld.

15. 2012. Avengers Assembled. Two months before this film, I found myself suffering from a what I thought was a massive heart attack. As horrible pain radiated out from the center of my chest and into my arms, I was sweating, over-ventilating and panicing. At the time I was sat in the Trocodero cinema in Piccadilly watching Rampart. An ambulance was called and I found myself rigged up to an EEG machine having my heart monitored. As I lay there, three thoughts went through my mind.

1. Oh my god, I'm never going to see my children again, I'm not going to see them grown up! 
2. Oh my god, I'm never going to see Pet again and tell her I love her! 
3. I'm going to miss the Avengers!

Luckily it was only an acid indigestion attack.