Manchester has a certain reputation of being cool.

Growing up, I didn't feel very cool having come from the Midlands.

I think 99% of the whole thing is to have passion about the idea yourself. I think part of your job as a filmmaker is to tell someone that might not think it's going to work that, actually, it will work.

I think both of us [ with Steve Oram], once we decided to do comedy, knew that we would have to come to London to do that.

When I was a kid the highlight of my week would be doing a fossil hunt at the local quarry... that kind of thing.

I think what's difficult is proving to people that a script actually does work and sometimes the laughter might not be on the page, it might be between the lines.

We always wanted to make a comedy that was a little bit more than that, which had tragic elements to it... that people engaged with - an intelligent comedy essentially.