It didn’t stay like Disneyland. Charles now moved to Australia to work at the Chinese Embassy, and Jackie, now named Yuen Lo, saw the true nature of the Peking Opera School. The training in music, acrobatics and many martial arts lasted 18 hours a day. Exercises were brutal, the kids performing headstands for hours on end. Beatings were commonplace, both at the hands of the Master and the other boys. Eventually, Jackie’s mother left too, to join Charles in Australia, Jackie being adopted by the single-minded Master.

Being something of a prodigy, Jackie was introduced to public performance early. He belonged to a school troupe known as The Seven Little Fortunes, other members including Yuen Biao, Sammo Hung and Yuen Wah, all of whom would go on to be big names in Hong Kong cinema. In 1988, Sammo would star in Alex Law’s Painted Faces, about their early lives together – the Jackie character being called Big Nose! The film would show them as young stars of the traditional stage, yet still grooving to the new sound of The Beatles.

Painted Faces also featured the kids’ efforts to break into cinema, not easy, as everyone treated them as schoolboy non-entities. But Jackie was lucky. At age 8, he was cast in Big And Little Wong Tin Bar, with the great Taiwanese star Li Li-hua as his mother. She took to the boy and had him appear in her next series of features. Good experience, though his Master took his paychecks.

Leaving school, having been protected from reality for so long, Jackie took time to adjust. Having studied hapkido, tae kwondo, judo, wing chung and many other martial arts, now he took to soccer, then boxing, then gambling, then pool. There were many 24-hour pool-halls in Hong Kong and Jackie played hard, often sleeping at the halls. This was a potential disaster, as these were hang-outs for the Triads, who’d often attempt to recruit the young boy. Seeing some of his friends join, and deal drugs, he attempted to distance himself from the gangs, often by playing dumb and innocent (his dad’s sternest advice had been “No Triads, no drugs”). There were fights, though. Once he recalls he and two friends beating up six motorbikers. Fleeing down the street, he heard his slipper slapping on the ground. Looking down, he saw it was soaked in blood. His hand throbbing, he noticed a white thing protruding from his knuckle. Thinking it to be his bone, his tried to push it back in – to no avail. When it later fell out, he realised it was one of his opponents’ tooth.

Fortunately, he soon got into bowling, the alleys being Triad-free. Despite great pressure, he would never join them, even when they attempted to muscle in on the film business. He famously challenged them to come break up his office, and led a march against them. By then too famous to be touched, he won the heart of Hong Kong, being henceforth known as Big Brother.

Jackie’s extraordinary athleticism and inventive stunt-work quickly brought him a lead role, in Master With Cracked Fingers. This role, where he learns kung fu and eventually uses it to battles an extortion ring, would set the stage for many to follow. But for the next couple of years, Jackie would play second fiddle to the man credited with bringing kung fu to the West – Bruce Lee – appearing as an extra in both Chinese Conection and Enter The Dragon. When Lee died, though, in 1973, the path was open. There were many pretenders – Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Dragon Lee – and Jackie was at the forefront. It didn’t work.

Having searched for a screen persona, as a villain in Rumble In Hong Kong and a spear-fighter in Hand Of Death (an early John Woo effort),