I have three major debts to Roger Ebert. The first is obvious and freely declared. Once the most famous film critic in history started following me on Twitter, and occasionally mentioning reviews I’d written, I suddenly had appeal. I would still write film reviews without Roger Ebert’s e-patronage; I’m just not sure they’d be read by anybody who didn’t give birth to me. When Mr Ebert educated me about American marshmallows in a couple of off-hand Twitter messages, I’m certain it brought me more readers, web hits, Twitter followers and all-round acknowledgement than any of my efforts in self-promotion or any article I’ve written. Indeed, even though my Twitter handle is ‘ScottFilmCritic’, I had privately always suffered intense ‘Imposter Syndrome’ about being considered a ‘film critic’ – but then Roger Ebert called me one. If Roger Ebert deems me a film critic, I can (almost) accept I’m a film critic.

My second debt to Roger Ebert is broader, though just as obvious. It’s a debt anyone who’s written about films in the last fifty years, in any capacity and any language, owes him. It’s the debt of thanks for teaching writers and, just as importantly, those who publish them, that there is an audience – an enormous, loyal and hungry audience – for film criticism that covers, with equal sincerity and attention, the work of Michael Bay in the morning and of Yasujirō Ozu in the afternoon. Of course, those of us who aren’t Roger Ebert don’t attract his readership, but we can attract a tiny fraction of it, and that makes it viable for us to write.

The third debt I owe Roger Ebert is more personal than even the thanks due him for his promotion and encouragement of my articles. I have ME, an illness, I never know whether or not to acknowledge in print, that has kept me … well … out of the world for much of my life. Writing for magazines and the Internet gives me a voice that would otherwise not be heard – and Mr Ebert is a daily example of the power of refusing to be silenced by something as ultimately insignificant as ill health. Roger Ebert lost the ability to speak and became more eloquent, channelling his voice into writing: into Tweets that educate and amuse as much as any public service programming, and into online journal entries that do a great deal more than that. Now, with his example instructing me every day, I have no excuse to think that not being able to get out of the house much is any kind of reason for believing I can’t, or shouldn’t, make myself heard.

So, on his birthday, here’s a threefold ‘thank you’, and a hearty ‘Happy Birthday’, to the king of critics. To mark the occasion, I’ve embedded one of my favourite videos of him. In it, he discusses his picks as the four films of the 1990s with a certain Martin Scorsese, who has four picks of his own.