I think what happened was that, as I say, the me that was the me of my teenage years, which was always wanting to head towards writing and making my own things, and self-expression, began to collide with the World in Action that was about exposing – and not that I didn’t love those programmes, I did – but I started to feel like I had more to say and more to give. And I remember vividly, it would have been about ‘85, I suppose, but also bear in mind, I was growing up too. I was getting towards my 30s by then, late 20s, you know, you’re not 21, 22, suddenly you’re 27, 28, you’re maturing, you’ve got kids of your own, all that stuff’s happening in your life. I’d moved to London. That was a tremendous battle between a lot of us and Ray, because they quite rightly wanted people to live in Manchester, but I came from London. It wasn’t… I couldn’t see myself staying there forever. But most importantly, it was the creative thing.
I remember suggesting doing a programme about Live Aid, which would have been July ‘85. And that was sort of an unusual programme for me. And I wanted to do, you know, as I like music and so forth, I ended up following Geldof around. And it was an observational film. It didn’t have any story other than it was observational, and from memory, it was cut by Eddie Mansell, I want to say. And I remember… now, was it Eddie Mansell? There were two editors. Tony Hamm, was he one?
Tony Hamm was a VT editor, wasn’t he, I think?
Oh, was he? No, I think he was a film editor.
A film editor? You might be right. Anyway, I remember, I think it was Eddie Mansell. I remember cutting this film with him and suddenly film becoming fluid, storytelling on film. You know, you’re always trying to make it fluid and one thing moves to the next, and it’s not driven by commentary. It’s just got its own life and you can tell your story that way and you enter a different timeframe, the timeframe of film. And I remember feeling, “Oh, this is me.” I just remember that very vividly. And music on it. And then that spilled over. And really, when I mark the moment when it was obvious to me that I was moving on, it took a couple of years perhaps from that point, but it was that time that I wrote what became the first film that I made, the Film4 film, Resurrected, that I started that summer, I want to say
