Peter, it must be strange for you to see a movie you've worked on for so long go in front of the public, is that a weird experience?

It's strange, you get very nervous, it's like having a child that you are taking to school for the first time and you've got to say goodbye to them at the school gates and off they go into the big bad world...

But if that child was Gollum you'd be quite glad to see the back of him I think!

That's right!

He's a real triumph in the movie - that's a difficult thing to get right.

It was a worry because Gollum needed to be an actor, he neded to act as well as Elijah Wood or Sean Astin. He needed to have real character depth and so we were a little bit worried about it. But I think we approached it the right way, we cast Andy Serkis as Gollum and he performed for us and then our amazing CG artists were able to really match all the muscle structure of Andy's face with the computer face.

I'm really looking forward to the third film, I suspect you're looking forward to it for any number of different reasons.

Yes, I am, the third is my favourite of the three actually, I think it's the best one.