Frankly, I can’t answer most of these questions. I can admire an actor’s performance or a director’s or screenwriter’s work

on any given film but I don’t ‘admire’ any individual. I take each piece of work on its own merits.

I don’t wish that I had made any particular film: why would I want to write a film that somebody

else has written? I don’t have any desert island discs, I don’t know what my death row meal would be.

But more than all this, these arbitrary questions restrict me when I’m supposed to be introducing myself; I’m expected to

limit my self-description to someone else’s parameters, most of which have nothing to do with my cinematic interests.

Here instead is a list of some stuff that I like: Universal horror films, cider (NOT on ice!), Disney features,

Warner Brothers shorts, giant monster movies, seafood, early blues music, stop-motion, military history books, writing about films that no-one else

has ever heard of, silent films with live musical accompaniment, biochemistry, ties. And here are some things I don’t like:

most comedy and comedians from the last twenty years, dance music, fanboys, anime, people who ride bicycles on the pavement.

(Also, FYI, I was Deputy Editor on SFX magazine 1995-1998 then a freelance horror/sci-fi journo until 2010, after which I concentrated on books and scripts. By day I run a university website.)