Yesterday's Film Programme on Radio 4 is available to listen to here (and stays up for longer than the usual Listen Again week too). It was a proper treat for me to host, as I got to interview Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, two of my all-time film heroes. Mike was in the studio throughout and I was quite nervous about meeting him, with his non-fool-suffering reputation. My nerves were not calmed by the email we received via his office before the show stating that he would only discuss High Hopes (out for the first time on DVD) and would not talk about either Ken Loach or Shane Meadows (who also has a box set out and was planned as the third corner of our British film special - the heir, one might say, of Loach and Leigh). Anyway, I needn't have worried. On the day, Mike was happy to talk about everything and everybody, and it was he who moved the discussion away from High Hopes. We played out the Loach interview, which I did last week at his Soho office, and I couldn't tell if Mike was listening intently to the playback, or thinking about something else entirely. It turned out to be the former, and the "tedious left wing polemic" remark was his, refuting that that's what Loach deals in. A few of my questions and generalisations were shot down (what a fool I was to compare he and Loach's working methods!), but ignoring my fragile presenter's ego, Mike was entertaining, passionate and revealing. See what you think. I was thinking, "top of the world."

Incidentally, I watched High Hopes again, and notwithstanding what Leigh denies are the caricatured upper class couple played by David Bamber and Lesley Manville, I found it extremely warm and moving.