In the Eighties, the landscape was changing. No one knew if they had a future. It's not like now. There was no satellite. Kids were still out on the streets playing all the time. For me, it was the last great hurrah! People don't take those chances anymore. Everyone's far too reserved. Men look like women, women look like men.

I'm obviously first and foremost a British filmmaker on a global scale, but when it comes to narrowing it down, I really feel like my voice is in the Midlands and outside of London.

There were more people against going into Iraq than there were going into the Falklands... but the shame I carry as a British resident, was that it was a war handled in the media as if it were a World Cup summer. Like when England go into the World Cup, there are Union Jacks on the papers, and you can look at headlines from the time and it sounded just like that. Ultimately, I was privy to footage from ITN archives - that wasn't shown on television - of the people we were fighting, and it was shameful. It was bullying. It was really horrible. How could we have been proud of winning that?

In the Eighties, the landscape was changing. No one knew if they had a future. It's not like now. There was no satellite. Kids were still out on the streets playing all the time. For me, it was the last great hurrah! People don't take those chances anymore. Everyone's far too reserved. Men look like women, women look like men.

If you look back on the period, the 1980s has never been seen as cool. You think of the music, and it always has a kitsch quality to it because everyone looks so ridiculous. Even the Nineties, with The Stone Roses and other bands, was cool before the Eighties. It really missed the boat! The Sixties was always cool, even then. That was my Dad's era and I was always jealous of that. But now, as an adult, looking back, we were part of this mental time. It was the most enormous amount of tribes that could have ever existed in one place.

As a director, your job can range from having to lean on someone to get a performance out of them, to someone being so built for the part that all you have to do is make them feel confident and comfortable and assured of what they're actually doing, and you just wind them up and watch them go.

In the Sixties, it was mods and rockers, and hippies and casuals, whereas in the early Eighties, there was Goths, punks, mods, skinheads, New Romantics, casuals, metal heads... the streets looked completely different. You go into town now and you can't tell one kid from another - you don't know what they're into. You can sort of tell a skateboard kid because his trousers are half way down his legs, but that's about it. Back then, people wore their hearts on their sleeves. It was a really bold time.