"Lots of friends of mine had read the book and went completely bananas about it but I hadn't read it and when someone said there was a script around, it was familiar...I don't know why...and I read it and it was just hysterical. It's very rare that you read a script and you bark out loud laughing and there were a couple of times that it just shocked me...it was just so cheeky, and so rude...it took me completely by surprise. You can't ask for anything better than a script that makes you laugh.

It's absurdly simple. I read lots and lots of very crap scripts, everyone does, everyone in the business does. I'd just done a big special effects film for about six months in a studio somewhere where the director and the special effects were the star, and it was great, fantastically good fun, but then suddenly you read a small character piece that is dripping with wit. It was very refreshing.

It's just a fabulous atmosphere on set, you know...David's a really young director, obscenely, perversely, he's younger than me...so he's just starting out as a director really. Everybody on set has an enthusiasm for the script. In fact all round Belfast they're mad keen on the book. They all know the book everywhere you go, and places where they wouldn't let us in, as soon as you tell them what you're doing they open their doors to you. And we're having more fun than people should who are getting paid quite honestly.
To get to say these words is the kind of thing that I would do a normal acting job during the week, to get to do this weekend for free. It's just a privilege to do it."

Jason Isaacs