QX: Basically everyone is saying this film is your life up there on the screen. But how much of it is really you?
DR: There’s an element of me in all of it. My father and I really did have a vicious relationship. I really did leave home. I really did spend money on my own credit card to support a lifestyle. But I condensed five or six years into this film. And hundreds of characters as well. But I also wanted to write about how you come to terms with who you are, and that took me 30 years. Do you know what I mean? That took me up till now to do.

QX: Has this film been part of that process, writing it, making it and now flogging it?
DR: Yeah it has been cathartic. But the flogging it has been more astounding because people still harbour a lot of loathing towards me for what I did. At the end of the day I was spending money on my own credit card and I ran up a huge bill. I pretended to be somebody else and I went to prison for it. Big fucking deal. I mean the fact that everybody else made such a big deal out of it has somehow made me realise that maybe there was more to it that even I realised. This really was an affront to British decency.

QX: So what do you think of the state of gay themes and issues in cinema right now?
DR: Well there aren’t many. And I think we’ve been sidelined for a good reason and a bad reason. The best reason is that we’re mainstream. The worst reason is that we still don’t know who we are, so when we write about ourselves we can’t do it in a way that convinces other people to make our stories. We’re coming to a point now where we have to start asking far more difficult questions about what it’s like to be men together in the early part of this millennium. I think the majority of men that I now have sex with are men that you would describe as straight, who want to try it. And you know that suits me fine. Those are the kind of guys I find sexy. I think that’s an element of the next film I’m writing. But I really want to look at the whole issue of how we polarize things. How gay people and straight people polarize stuff. And actually there is a whole load of sexual diversity which I need to look at in my next film. Because do you know what? The gay bit, the really gay bit, and the really straight bit of society are really boring. It’s the ambiguity in the middle. It’s the will he/won’t he which keeps you interested.