It was a huge task.

The fibrous black ball was bigger than he was. The desert bigger than any of us.

Wherever he was going it would he a long haul. Shorter if I hadn't looked down just as I was about to step on him and his prize - a welcome gift from a passing camel. The life of a dung beetle is nearly as precarious as that of a Hollywood actor. Though them are similarities.

Another gloriously hot day - especially for me - back at the old sandcrawler in its new and final resting-place. We'd left its earlier position, the old homestead, to the vicissitudes of the weather, which had mired several production vehicles in the muddy wastes of Uncle Owen's front sandpit - soon to he joined by one of the Tunisian army's beefiest trucks, sent on a now ignominious, failed rescue mission. Moisture farming as an industry in that area had suddenly become redundant due to an overabundance of the wrong sort of rain. And alas, all too late for Uncle who, with Aunt Beru had just undergone a major dehydration process courtesy of the dark side.

But what had happened here? Whilst never looking totally squeaky, the sandcrawler had experienced the sort of damage that gave the Titanic such an unfortunate reputation. Overnight, vandals had arrived and wrecked it. Fortunately the crawler rested on terra firma or the holes would have sent it to the bottom of the nearest dune sea, lickety-split

It had been a rather magnificent piece of scenery whose heavy metal the art department had created out of bits of wood and judicious painting. Now we were faced with the style more suited to Mad Max XVI. Had it been mightily trashed by the attentions of the Sand People, or was it Imperial stormtroopers? The debate would rage on until Obi-Wan gave his judgement and Luke rushed back to his equally vandalised home. Fortunately for the producer, them was a brand new rusty sandcrawler on the model stage some 7000 miles away in California. But no one was meant to know that. I'd read the script before lights out, the night before. I had no lines in this scene but it's always good to know what's going on. The professional approach. Anyway, there was no television in the hotel. (Actually there was, but it was clearly produced by the crack Transport Squad of the Tunisian army. Well, perhaps not clearly.)

Parked amongst the assorted trash of blasted metal and whatever Jawas area made of was, for me, a new contraption. A strange and wobbly roundabout run not on horse but manpower. Or on occasions, for that extra run of speed, men power. It all looked mediaeval. But one end was instantly recognisable as Luke's landspeeder. The script had told me that's how we would arrive at this scene of devastation. It lied. I'd got there in a four-wheel drive with windows tightly shut against the desert dust. It was parked behind the camera for a quicker get-away than Luke could ever muster in his unconvertible.

My job was to took rather depressed and do a bit of tidying up. Fastidious by nature, Threepio was naturally affronted by the mess. He gazed at the defunct and silent Jawas. He might have said, 'And I thought they smelled bad - when they were alive.' Possibly the scriptwriters had already decided to give Han Solo a too similar line in a sequel, so I was left speechless. But at least someone had found a use for Jawas. Normally the planet's scavenging system, they had just been replaced by the local beetle and recast as kindling material. Not until the Ewok celebrations would such a bonfire light the skies.

And the bonfire was all mine. No good asking Artoo to lend a hand. I was chief stoker. As if it wasn't hot enough already

Being at some distance from the camera, it would take my prop man Maxi several moments to run away out of shot. He hefted the lifeless Jawa into my outstretched arms. I stood there, posed like some Aztec god with sacrificial offerings as he dashed off through the assorted debris and out of frame. "Action!" and film shuttered through the gate at 24 expensive frames per second. I watched Luke swing into action - literally. Only one manpower this time, as the prop-man pushed the horseless carousel and Luke, just into frame. Any further would have revealed the simple truth. Movie magic at its best.

Luke sulked by and I turned in the blazing sun to drop my Jawa on the fire. Restricted vision or perhaps a fear of the Joan of Arc Experience led me to miss the flames completely. We stopped. Mr Lucas felt either that Luke had not been unhappy enough or that Threepio had not paid proper respect to the dead. Soon more film shuttered through.

Luke swung. I turned and walked forward. As I prepared to dump my load, how hot the day now seemed. But it was my last in this alien world. Tomorrow... There was a yell and running feet. Maxi was at my side, well actually behind, pulling me out of the flames - always concerned for my safety. He my also have worried about my now melting golden shoes. His quick reactions saved me from the barbecue and the dramatic climax passed - the tension eased and we went back to making movies. Luke swung once more and I, coolly now, stood at a short distance and chucked.

I glanced at the ground but my beetle had rolled into the distance or been squashed into the planet's floor. My four-wheels sped me back to the hotel as dusk quickly turned to the bluey darkness of night. We dined on chicken, or fish, I can't remember now. Mark sat across the table, so unkindly lit, as was the pallid food by naked neon tubes above. We talked. We had enjoyed working together in this peculiar world, on this peculiar film.

"It's been amazing, hasn't it," he said.

He glanced thoughtfully up at the ceiling and, I supposed, the heavens beyond. "Amazing. Just think, soon we'll be..."

"Dead?" I asked, surprised.

"No," he laughed. "Stars!"

I smiled - and went to bed.

The plane lifted us off the scorching tarmac for the uncertain damp of Elstree. We had left the dwarfing desert, the land of camels and Coca-Cola. We left behind so many memories and plastic scraps of Threepio the wind had snatched away. Already the ancient sands would be etching and absorbing them. The dung beetle would impatiently ignore them in his quest for something mow meaningful to life.

Extract taken without permission from Star Wars The Official Magazine issue #15 (1998), pgs 36-37.