For Amelie's second birthday, our good friend Marie gave her 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' book by Eric Carle. It's one of the classic works on gluttony and eating disorders for young children, and features sausages, ice cream, chocolate cake, and various other things that Amelie eats on a daily basis, so naturally she loves it.

Marie's had a tough couple of weeks, so to cheer her up, Amelie suggested that we combine her advanced reading skills with my fat stomach to create an audio-visual presentation on the joys of over-eating...


I can only apologise for my immediate over-reaction when Amelie fluffed her line about the strawberries. I'm very much a Christian Bale type of person on the movie set. I demand perfection from everyone I work with, and if I don't get it, I'm liable to go crazy. But I've since apologised, and we've sat down (on a wooden sheep stool) and worked through our differences over a Fruit Shoot and a couple of gingernuts. I'm confident that given the right circumstances, we'll collaborate again on future projects.

As a goodwill gesture, I then offered to take my young actress out for a haircut at an exclusive salon in Hove...


It's what you might call a fringe benefit of working for me. And it gave me another chance to shout "Cut!".