May the 4th be with you. I have been waiting more than a decade to use that one, because for some reason the publication of my column has never before coincided with this most auspicious of dates in the calendar, it sounding a bit like “May the Force be with you”, the slogan from the Star Wars series of films.

Be warned, there follows geekery so those of a non-nerdish disposition may wish to know: “This isn’t the column you’re looking for.”

That was also a bit of a sneaky Star Wars gag, so it will probably have finished off anyone for who lightsabres, droids and Death Stars aren’t suitable after-dinner topics. For the rest of us, let the nerdgasm commence.

I was seven when Star Wars came out, and it occurs to me now that I knew practically nothing about it before my Dad took me to see it at the local cinema.

I knew the very rough plot, of course, knew there was a bad guy called Darth Vader, and had seen very slight glimpses of it on TV reports about the movie. But that was in those dark pre-internet days when you had to sort of go out and experience things for yourself rather than logging on to see what other people had to say about it.

I don’t think I’d even seen a trailer for Star Wars, which is an amazing thing these days when blockbuster movies are chopped up into three-minute snippets and drip-fed on to the web by net-savvy marketing departments to great excitement.

Sometimes you don’t even need to pay money to go to the cinema and actually watch a film because the four or five different trailers that are teased out ahead of release date pretty much tell you all you need to know.

Back then, I watched Star Wars with a sort of innocent agog-ness, wide-eyed with wonder as this absolutely incredible thing unfolded before me. I wouldn’t have understood the concept at the time, but I was watching the genesis of a modern mythology, a latter-day hero’s quest in the classical mould.

Back then, I thought I was just watching spaceships fighting it out and robots saying funny things.

The funny thing is, I didn’t even like the next two films, The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi, as much as the first one. And when the prequels came out with their flashy CGI and idiotic characters like Jar Jar Binks, I almost felt a bit embarrassed by it all.

Almost, because the wonder of watching that first movie in a darkened fleapit cinema with my Dad has never left me, and I don’t think it ever will.

OK, non-geeks, the wacky stuff is over. You can all come back now. You, you and even you, though you do look a little short for a stormtrooper...