People usually make out that "before they were famous" footage is somehow injurious to the celebrities involved. "The pictures they didn't want you to see" - that type of thing.

Actually, the effect is often beneficial, since it makes you warm to the stars. It strips away the inflexible public image and exposes the shy, likeable child underneath.

Then again, sometimes it just makes you laugh with derision...

Matt Bellamy
Witness the future Muse frontman tinkling the ivories as a cherubic 12-year-old. The jetpacks and conspiracy theories came later.

continued...

Amy Winehouse
To think: she was once a fresh-faced teenager with flowers in her hair, reciting lines from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Then look what happened.

Gerard Way
Now: self-possessed, teetotal arena-rocker. Then: shambling emo chubster whose trousers once fell down onstage. Shameful.

Pete Doherty
He wasn't born a drug-blasted tabloid rogue. In 1997, Peter Doherty was the well-scrubbed 17-year-old son of an Army Major, queuing to buy a copy of Oasis' Be Here Now on the day it came out, and spouting pretentious guff about Umberto Eco.

Jimmy Page
He grew up to be a dabbler in the occult and even purchased a house once belonging to Aleister "Wickedest Man In The World" Crowley. But back in 1957 little Jimmy's only ambition was to play skiffle and "do biological research." Cute.