Jack Wild

It's very hard not to let fame affect you because you are continually being told how good you are. After a while you begin to think there must be some truth in it because all those people can't be wrong.

At an age when most youngsters are preparing for their GCSEs, I was suddenly a jet-setter, briefly the toast of Hollywood and London's West End. My immature wishes and naive opinions were treated with respect.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.