Recently by Alison Jones

If you have been holding out for a hero(es) day, the first ever UK one happens tomorrow (Oct 21). Its intended to honour anyone who might be considered a hero, from soldiers to pioneers to parents. Schools and businesses are being invited to participate, coming to work or class dressed as their personal hero.

If you want to keep it simple, and have something you can wear all year round, invest in this Hero Tee Hee shirt. The loose fitting pop-art tee comes in cool blue and costs £19.99 from www.moretvicar.com

After a short but undeniably sweet cameo in X-Men: First Class, Hugh Jackman is back on the big screen this week in Real Steel, a (slightly) futuristic tale about an ex-boxer in a time when robot fighters have replaced humans. Hugh's Charlie Kenton is a down-on-his-luck controller of battling 'bots who is forced to face up to the mistakes of his past when he is reunited with the son he abandoned.

The films is based on the short story Steel, by the horror/fantasy/sci fi writer Richard Matheson, whose work has proved to a fertile source for film and TV adaptations - among them The Incredible Shrinking Man, What Dreams May Come, Duel, A Stir of Echoes, Hell House, I Am Legend and Bid Time Return (filmed as Somewhere In Time)

Matheson also adapted Steel into an episode for The Twilight Zone, with Lee Marvin playing the unlucky scrapper, and penned the famous Nightmare at 20,000 Feet for the show. His Star Trek episode, The Enemy Within, is considered one of the best

Real Steel is aimed more at a family audience, its rather bleak story line given a little redemptive heart by introducing the character of Charlie's son Max (Dakota Goyo).

Alison Jones met Hugh on his recent visit to London.

Still bereft over the end of Harry Potter? The world become a little too muggle for you?

The exploits of the boy wizard were celebrated in this unusual tribute at the recent Nailympics at Olympia Beauty in London. Fantasy Nail Art is an admittedly niche extension of the manicurists' craft where practitioners can create the most elaborately-themed creations on little more than a fingertip.

These totally whacky talons are impressive to look out but probably not recommended for people whose lifestyle requires them to use a keyboard or...you know...their hands.

What made you pick trolls as the subject for your first film?

I have a love for this kind of monster movie. The only time I have ever dropped my jaw in that kind of cliché way is when I was watching the T. rex come out of the forest in Jurassic Park. It was so awesome it made a huge impact on me and I was 20 when I saw that, I wasn't a 10-year-old kid. 

So that was really influential on me wanting to do a film like this. Obviously fairy tales are the basis of the film. As a kid I grew up with these fairy tales and I always loved those drawings that depicted monsters in our own forests. 

Our family had property in the woods, so I have always been close to nature somehow. 

Did you do research into the folklore of trolls?

I didn't really do much research. I wanted to be so general that the audience would recognise it. 

If I went into the fairy tales and really found details there, the audience wouldn't know what I was talking about basically. I would have spent lots of time explaining stuff. 

It was much easier to use stuff that everyone in Norway knows about. Those big ideas that stick to your mind. Trolls under bridges and the blood of a Christian man.