How do you get to be so good?

I work very hard at the writing, getting that balance of humour and tragedy. It is just an area that really appeals to me in film making and the last three projects have included that you know. And it is quite a hard balance to achieve. I think we've succeeded in these last three.

One of the reasons that humour and tragedy work so well in "Purely Belter" is the extraordinary performances of Chris and Greg, can you tell me something about how Chris and Greg came to be cast in the film?

Chris and Greg stood out for me because I think. Their inexperience actually helped, because they were fresher and more natural than all the other kids. And we got to the stage of trying out different duos and these two together worked better than anybody else. I was very, very pleased with them at audition stage. But watching the film now, they have sort of far outreached my expectations there, and I think they come out of it fantastically well.

What was the kind of mix with Greg and Chris and experienced actors like Roy and Tim working together?

We scheduled it really so that the first week I think the kids had so many scenes on their own to get the hang of it, and by the time the second week or third week came along and we were introducing people like Tim Healey.

There's a scene in the film when the two boys steal Alan Shearer's car and they end up ditching it and attempting to find Newcastle when they are in the middle of nowhere, but there is a great scene where they leap into a freezing lake..

I've never known temperatures like that, and it is all very well when you are writing the scene where they take their kit off and jump into the lake, and then when you get to shooting, the logistics of arranging that, especially in November. I think we had four doubles for each character, for each of the two kids. These mad Newcastle guys who were willing to do anything for money.

There's some terrific comic scenes with the kind of scams that the two boys pull, what was it like doing the research?

It was very hard to come up with all those things because they've got to be so snappy. Actually the first cut of the film was probably too long in the first 20 minutes because it was full of all these scams. But the feeling was, that this film is about much more than just getting money together. When we did a bit of a re-shoot we had to get these very snappy, little, gags together, scams, which was great fun.

Your last three films as I said were all set in the North of England, so, what's next?

I'm doing a film called Friends and Family for Miramax which is back to original screenplay time for me. Having done two adaptations I wanted to write my own stuff again but it is not going to be North of England and it is not working class. It's going to be very different but I can't tell you too much about this.