film (the only half way decent film on offer my entire stay) to a pint in one of the pleasant looking Fakenham pubs. Sadly, Sean Bean took so long to die, the pubs had closed by the time we came out. Bean played a character called Lurch in a TV play of mine back in the Eighties. When he hit fame a few years later, his biographer rang me. 'He was a very quiet lad,' I said. 'Didn't say anything at all to me. It was only a small part which, I wondered, wasn't big enough for him? Maybe he'd not been enjoying it much.' 'No,' she said, 'It was his first television part. He was terrified.'

And this week, as I write, he's the lead in the newJimmy McGovern, playing – superbly by all accounts – a Catholic priest. Again, I have to say, it looks grim, folk up against it – as folk are. The title 'Broken' doesn't leave you in much doubt. My film with Sean was called 'Punters,' and like a lot of my stuff was kind-a comic, though I made the mistake of calling it a comedy in advance, which meant those who wanted laugh out loud were disappointed.

I write comedy in its much more general sense, characters I want to live with for however long I takes to write a play. Montaigne (the man and my version of him) has a lot of humour, and balance. And my fictional character, his secretary, Peslier (I took the name from the French