The thing about this business is that it isn't the films you made that you remember but the time you had whilst you made them.
If your life is spent filming with no budget and in awful places you’ll look back at it all without affection.
The great thing about what we’ve done is that we’ve ended up with extraordinary memories. Here are some of the highlights:

When Classical Music was King standing for ten days in Austria and watching and listening as Nikolaus Harnoncourt
rehearsed and recorded the Beethoven symphonies whilst we videoed the whole process.
Spending a week in Manhattan filming Leonard Bernstein conduct for the one and only time his extraordinary musical West Side Story. At my first meeting with him he asked me whether I was Odille or Odette and I still don’t know which answer I should have given.
Filming at Abbey Road and watching Teresa Stratas and Fredericka von Stade sing "Fish Got To Swim" from the musical Showboat.
Being shot at with rubber bullets by the Israeli army whilst filming a Palestinian demonstration outside Ramallah and discovering that I could run at great speed downhill where I ended up in a fox hole holding the producer’s hand (he was very understanding.)
Going out in deep winter in a boat on a lake in Killarney with the eminent American conductor John McGlinn.We were filming a scene from our Irish drama The Vertical Man and the production manager was saving money so had done a deal on a dodgy boat. Miles from land the engine failed to restart, the temperature was sub zero and as we drifted we all thought we were going to die.
Working with Maurice Sendak, filming his fantasy opera Where the Wild Things Are at Glyndebourne,
and exploring our love of Mozart together
Making the film of the rebuilding of Glyndebourne with our own money in the hope that when the new building
was finished someone might actually buy it and the pleasure when Channel 4 did.
Seeing one of my cameramen Fiachra Judge standing under a deluge in front of Pavarotti in Hyde Park
and watching him carry on filming even though under a water fall.
Meeting BB King.
Standing in the middle of the Albert Hall and surveying with Paul McCartney all the work our team had done to stage his orchestral piece Standing Stone. Seeing the end result on a DVD and working with him again.
Winning the EMMY for our Prokofiev Fantasy and receiving it from the unlikely hands of Neil Sedaka.Giving an inexcusably embarrassing speech of joyful acceptance immediately after.
Working for six months with Trevor Nunn on the video of his staging of Idomeneo - a riveting experience
Turning up at a black tie dinner in Milan after directing the televised opening of the La Scala season wearing an American football jumper.
The producer flying me by private plane from directing in Milan to Sienna so I could direct a concert in the Piazza del
Campo and then sending me back to Milan in a 500cc Lancia.
Filming with Elton John in the House of Commons and the crew refusing to wrap because they were having too much of a good time.
Staging a Samuel Becket joke with Mel Smith at the Royal Court Theatre
Being allowed to browse by ourselves the Opie collection in the Bodleian Library
Working with Gillian Lynne on the only film of her original choreography for Cats.
Standing by a public phone box in the middle of nowhere. It rang, I answered. t was Stephen Oliver asking me to make a film with him. How he found me I still don’t know – we made the film.
Discovering Scottish malt whisky whilst filming with Bernard McClaverty on the island of Islay.
Our crew in party mood letting off a fire extinguisher in an Italian hotel which canged the decor to a delicate shade of powder blue.
Being told off by the Berlin Philharmonic for turning their concert hall into a film set for a performance of Scriabin’s
Prometheus and Claudio Abbado telling the orchestra to stop complaining.
Filming in Berlin as the Wall came down.
Staging On The Town at the Barbican and working with Tyne Daly.
Finding the perfect Peter for our film of Peter and the Wolf.
Travelling over night by train from Riga to St Petersburg and being woken at the border by a female Russian border guards one of who was wearing gold court shoes.
In Tuscany seeing our camera crew lean out of the window with a television aerial in a last attempt to get pictures of the British Grand Prix.
The general joy when we got them and heard Murray Walkers voice under the Italian commentary.
After an alcoholic meal doing a Le Mans start and racing our sound recordist’s car up an Italian road to see who could get to the location first. He won….
Filming in a snow storm in Liechtenstein.
Working with Mariss Jansons and taking Mariss back to Riga the city of his birth. He hadn’t returned there in thirty years. In a break in the filming he disappeared and found the shop where he had bought sweets as a child. They still sold them. He returned loaded down and shared the sweets with the crew.
Staging Jose Carreras’s 'Passion' Concert at the Royal College of Music – no TV, just for the audience!
Directing numbers by Eternal, All Saints, Mel G and Beeny Man on the MOBO awards
Staging the only 'Gramophone' awards that have ever been televised.
Seeing the genuine pleasure on our teams’ faces when we pull off a big show.
The relief when the last person with producer’s approval gives it
Meeting Gloria Swanson who said I had beautiful blue eyes (well she was very old) and being so overawed
by the prospect of interviewing Henry Fonda that I took a fellow producer with me for protection
only to find that Fonda was very deaf. I ended up shouting my questions at him.
George Burns staging a joke for me after I had interviewed him at his hotel.
Finishing the first movie script
Having lunch with Charlton Heston.
The next project