Politics is very interesting and always leads to conflict.

I do like to make films with a political theme, but sometimes it's nice simply to make people laugh. That's the hardest thing to do in fact.

I went to Art College and during the summer I made a movie with my brother. I got hold of a little camera, wrote a script and dragged my brother, Tony, out of bed to help me (which he did not like), so that we could shoot a film every day for six weeks. It was made for £65 and it was called Boy On A Bicycle.

Digital is a different world because you are sitting at home and a hi tech piece of equipment today is within reach of most people, so they are watching a pretty hi tech version of whatever you've done.

The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.

People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God's sake, I'm not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I'm making a movie that people are going to look at.

And I maintain good relationships with all the studios so I've never been bullied into any cut, frankly.