So last week, Hanan decided we would go to Oxford for a recce for our next feature, The Dreaming Spires. Generally, you do a location recce when you have most or all of the financing in place, but Hanan has a tattoo on her forehead which says 'Rules Are For Wimps' and she bundled me into the car together with Lou, who had been our line producer on I Can't Think Straight, and Aseem Bajaj, my stunning cinematographer on the same movie. I was excited to look at locations for the new movie, but as we roared up the motorway I began to get cold sweats because it took us all back to the our previous film experience in Oxford for I Can't Think Straight, an experience that is now known as 'The Nightmare Spires'.

We were supposed to shoot in Paris, you see. That weekend between Tala and Leyla was all set for some glamorous shops and gourmet restaurants, and about 3 days before we were due to go, the then-financier announced that Paris was no longer an option. Wild-eyed, in the middle of a rough shoot, we all stared as he came up with a list of options closer to home. Cardiff. Blackpool. Maybe something even closer. Southall. Now I have no issue with Southall but it didn't have quite the same ring. Did you ever see Casablanca? 'We'll always have Paris.' I tried it in my mind. 'We'll always have Southall'. I turned to Hanan and started to weep. Anyway, after much scrambling, we hit on Oxford, which seemed to work as a place that appealed to Leyla, and somehow in 24 hours, Lou conjured up locations while Aseem and I and Hanan tried to hold the rest of the shoot together. We rocked up in Oxford late one night, a white van full of Indian crew tailing us, and a couple of bemused actors trying to learn new lines.

Our time there was a blur - I remember re-writing the script in a hotel room at 2am while our hair stylist set to work chopping off my hair (I complained every day, so she gave me a cut that she swore was funky, but which made me scare myself every time I glanced in a mirror). During our trophy shot in the beautiful Ashmolean Museum, I learned that the financier had driven off to London with all the film stock (probably selling it in Southall) leaving me enough to get that scene with only one take. And every time I shouted action during the picnic scene, the cows in the background started humping each other. Romantic comedy? It was a horror film...