Dylan Thomas, in case you missed it, was born 100 years ago this week.

Thomas was a master of his craft; a wordsmith shaping language to his will, scaling new heights of imagination, ingenuity and description. No mere freak user of words.

His artistry took Wales to an international audience, and he remains perhaps our greatest export.

For the land of poetry and song, he is the great ambassador of all we long to be.

But while the world sees Wales through the prism of Llareggub and Fern Hill, we must be wary or else we too will see ourselves as shadows glimpsed only through the bottom of his glass.

In Brazil, each young footballer of nascent talent is burdened with the label of “the new Pele”.

In Wales, we would not dare – such claims considered tantamount to a blasphemy.

Thomas towers over us like a god - a myth beyond our reckoning.

Rather than view him as one of our own - one of us, this adoration feeds the sense that we are lucky to lay claim to him.

If half the money lavished on his centenary was spent supporting new young talents, how many more fresh intellects would not go gentle?

But money alone is not the issue, the problem with our Dylan-worship is the way it nurtures the doubtful seed that we can never scale such heights; never achieve such mastery of our art; never seize the opportunities within our grasp, within ourselves.

None could ever be the next, the latest, Dylan Thomas.

Thomas is the giant of our culture, but we should tread carefully lest the rest of us be crushed beneath the memory of his feet.