The 10 best Star Wars characters

Who is he?
An enormous green slug with a voracious appetite for heavy licking, hookah pipes, hard funk and little amphibious spider-creatures. Jabba is the most powerful gangster in the Galaxy – though precisely how he achieved this exalted position without really being able to move around or hit people (thanks to his undersized Tyrannosaur arms) is a matter of conjecture.

Why do we love him?
Because he’s such a staggeringly nasty piece of work: corrupt, lascivious, grotesque, an immoral monster to whom the execution of an underling is as everyday an occurrence as making a cup of tea.

Seen in:
‘Return of the Jedi’ (we’ll generously overlook his other appearances).

Key line:
‘You will soon learn to appreciate me.’ Unless your name’s George Lucas, that is.

Who is he?
A cheeky, level-headed dustbin on legs who comes complete with an Inspector Gadget-like array of convenient little nozzles and appendages. Think Henry the Hoover meets a Swiss army knife, only with personality.

Why do we love him?
From juggling turbolifts on an enemy battleship to saving Anakin Skywalker’s miserable life to fixing Luke’s X-wing stabilisers during the first Death Star run, from mending the hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon to cutting his way out of an Ewok trap, Artoo does all the hard galaxy-saving work and gets precious little credit.

Seen in:
All six movies (and more to come).

Key line:
Concerned uh-oh type beep, as if to say, ‘here we go again’.