I have mixed feelings about the couple of years I spent directing TV commercials early on in my filmmaking career. You can read more about my misgivings in this piece I wrote for the Gloss magazine, which they gave a self-fulfilling prophesy of a title :

Earlier today a twitter account posted one of my ads for Barry’s Tea, with a question in the caption:

Legendary copywriter Catherine Donnolly wrote the script, and I think the subtext is pretty clear - the daughter's real father is actually her uncle Jack. You can watch the ad here.

Of all the ads I ever made, the ones I’m still proud of are a series for the National Lottery, showing the beneficiaries of Lottery funding. I still like them because they don’t really feel like ads, and travelling around the country to shoot them was an absolute joy.

Since they were made, my feeling about charity have also changed, and can be best summed up by German stand-up comedian Henning Wehn: “We don’t do charity in Germany. We pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments’ responsibilities."