As a child growing up in a grey-skied Yorkshire village, I would occasionally happen upon a Bollywood movie on the television. After a few minutes watching a bunch of sari-clad dancers cavorting on a Swiss mountain to tuneless music, I would switch over to some proper drama about housing estates and single mothers.

British audiences are toughest on British films. So often, a British film is the last thing they want to see. If you please them, you really know you've made an impact.

The recession of the late 1980s was a very visible humiliation. Cities across Britain had become the victims of botched battlefield surgery - surgery that involved the ripping up of factories, the flattening of buildings, and the razing of the Victorian heritage of heavy labour.

Slumdog Millionaire' is a fairy tale, but it starts in a place you really believe, and that came from spending two months wandering around the slums picking up stories and talking to people.

Community' is a comedy show, and one of the characters happens to be a Christian. I do think they have been very careful to make sure everyone is the butt of the joke for various reasons.

Steve Martin said that philosophy is good for comedy because it screws up your thinking just enough, and I agree with that. Being forced to see life's metadata is good training for looking for interesting angles on a topic.

Nobody who is a Penn & Teller fan thinks of us first and foremost as magicians, but as a comedy team.

Some readers took 'Heaven's My Destination' as a satire on Christianity and the Midwest, but today it reads like a loving comedy.