Opinions: What is the most rebellious thing you have ever done?

KATHY BURKE, actress and writer: I was the first girl in the school to shave all my hair off to be a punk and as soon as I walked into assembly the head teacher said to the whole school, ''Don't give Katherine Burke any attention because that's obviously what she wants''. In fact, what I really wanted was a boyfriend and since I wasn't going to find one at an all girls' school, my new hairstyle was more like a burden.

IVOR CUTLER, poet: I nearly married a woman of the Orthodox Jewish faith. Two days away from getting married I went to Edinburgh to think about it. I sat in the National Gallery and realised that I had to choose between love and art, so I chose art.

SIR TEDDY TAYLOR, MP: When I was a 14-year-old pupil at Glasgow High School I organised a petition expressing outrage that we were forced to play rugby and demanding that we should be allowed to play football. It was a great success, but when I took my demand to the headmaster he explained that a school was not a democracy and threatened me with the equivalent of the removal of the whip.

JAN MacDONALD, librarian: On my first day at secondary school, I flicked a big ball of chewed up paper at the deputy headmaster. I don't know why I did it.

JOHNNIE WALKER, DJ: Defying the British government in 1967 on the pirate radio ship Radio Caroline. It was exhilarating and frightening - we thought that the Royal Navy were going to turn up and put us in chains at any moment. I also rode a Harley Davidson around the foyer of the Regents Park Hotel the other day.

SOPHIE FIENNES, ad prod-ucer: I went to an all girls Catholic school, and when I was 13 our male RE teacher made the class read St Paul's instruction on how women should serve their husbands. I told the teacher that to teach such an archaic doctrine was an insult and absolute rubbish, and walked out, never to return.

GERALD HARTUP, director, Freedom Association: Although the Freedom Association are far too respectable to ever rebel we did try to prosecute the Foreign Secretary for treason over Maastricht. I'm also proud to say that we placed ads encouraging the Norwegians to ignore their politicians and stay independent.

JOSEPHINE WISE, belly dancer: Becoming a Middle Eastern dancer instead of doing the philosophy degree I was supposed to.

DAVID McGILLIVRAY, editor, Scapegoat magazine: Having been a goodie-goodie all my life I'm now doing what I should have done when I was a kid by publishing a magazine that rebels against censorship. To say ``We're not going to take it any more'' is a young man's rebellion and since I am middle-aged now I feel rather Jekyll and Hyde-ish.

CARL ROBINSON,``Dreamboys'' stripper: I streaked through the Pullman Express Buffet car on my way to Bristol after a woman looked at me and said I looked tasty.

DAVID, freelance television producer: Society would say that it was getting 112 charges with 216 others taken into consideration as a teenager for offences ranging from joy riding, to smashing up the college.

I got nine months in youth custody, but it really didn't seem like rebellious behaviour to me or the other kids from the home, it was just something we all did.

NICK GULHANE, traveller: Finally confronting my father at 17. It meant that he was no longer able to rule me by force. What clinched it was throwing a tea-towel at him - a remarkably effective weapon in retrospect.

ADAM BARTON, accountant: I didn't buy a train ticket for a week after my season ticket ran out. But I felt terribly guilty.

(Photograph omitted)