The violence at the end is about personal torture.

In London, there must be thousands of people in the business of making films, whereas in Nottingham or Sheffield, you're probably talking about below a hundred. So there aren't thousands of people scrapping for the same money and for the same jobs. I went out in Nottingham the other night and there's a really beautiful community of people who are really supportive. It's not this back-stabbing thing, high-rent, high-cost, high-tension. Up here we are independent filmmakers and there's a lovely sense of camaraderie.

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.

You have to make a film and make it interesting, so you can't have a shot of you cleaning your teeth just because you did that. It's boring!

I suppose my dream was always about existing outside of London. Obviously the film world 10 years ago, when I first kicked off, was a very different landscape. Meeting anyone for a job on the crew, and on the cast, always meant a trip to London for me. But it's changed quite dramatically. You can't completely exist outside of what's down there, but things have changed massively.

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.

I haven't forgotten what it was like to be a kid; especially a misunderstood one