We were looking for someone who could get the film [Filth] made at that kind of level, with the finance we wanted, and we spoke to a lot of people. When I met James [McAvoy] in the Soho Hotel with Jon Baird, the director, he looked about ten years old. I thought there's no way he's going to be a forty-year-old divorced alcoholic cop. I thought, really lovely guy, I'll let him and John talk and see if they get on.

I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.

You can't just have stuff that is free and escapist, you have to have stuff that is confrontational as well. You need stuff that is mystical but you need the realism too.

Are you asking me or telling me?

Now, for the first time, he's seeing that there really is a way out of this, and it's all so simple. You don't have to run away. You just meet somebody special and step sideways into a parallel universe.

I was anti-everything and everyone. I didn't want people around me. This aversion was not some big crippling anxiety; merely a mature recognition of my own psychological vulnerability and my lack of suitability as a companion. Thoughts jostled for space in my crowded brain as i struggled to give them some order which might serve to motivate my listless life.

I'm working on a screenplay right now for the BBC, but I hope to have the decks cleared soon so I can get into the studio with my pals and put down some more tracks, try to get a strong dance single together.