Paul McGann

I never thought I'd be one of those old hams who favours theatre over everything, but I'm getting that way. Telly and film seemed more fun when I was younger; turning left on planes and washing up in nice places. But there are things that you only learn in theatre.

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.

The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization.