Mike Leigh has such appeal that even his untitled projects have fans lining up to buy tickets. “No one questions any more that Leigh is a ‘real’ writer, as they sometimes used to when they discovered how fully his actors participated in the creative process. He thinks the confusion was his fault – until 1987, his credit was always ‘devised and directed by’. Then he switched it to ‘written and directed by’. ‘It should always have been that. Nothing you can do about it now’.”