DERREN: She was a chorus girl, but my father and his brother were the biggest stars in London in 1928. They only retired in the mid-1950s. Dingy, sleazy and dispiriting beyond belief: this is what the last days of the traditional post-Carry On film comedy in Britain came to, a film which is, however, indisputably the work of an auteur: writer-producer-director Derren Nesbitt, whose hopes of ever embarking on a long-term film-making career vanished when his wife filed for divorce on grounds of cruelty. The allegations of wife-beating hit the tabloids just as The Amorous Milkman was released, making the film an even more unpalatable proposition than it would have been anyway and pole-axing Nesbitt's acting career in the bargain.

As some other reviewers have noted, THE AMOROUS MILKMAN must be the nadir of the grubby British craze for sex comedies in the 1970s. Certainly this is poor stuff indeed that makes CONFESSIONS OF A WINDOW CLEANER and its ilk look like polished and professional films in comparison. It's as if somebody decided to make their own version of that kind of storyline but jettisoned everything fun about it. His father was Harry Nesbitt, a comedian and music hall artist who came from South Africa with his brother Max and they performed as a duo on stage. Randy Milkman Davey (Brendan Price) bites off more than he can chew when he starts to deliver more than pints of milk to some of the bored housewives on his route. DERREN: Yes, I did and, afterwards, I thought: Well, I’ve done it and that’s good enough. I wrote the novel, then wrote the screenplay from the novel. But then, afterwards, I felt: I’ve done it. So why do it again? DERREN: Yes. He chose me to go to the Oxford Playhouse. But he only did one play there and moved on and then I was very fortunate. I think the movie Victim was the turning point. And I have never done an audition.Randy milkman Davey ends up delivering more than pints of milk to some of the bored housewives on his round. In a short space of time he finds himself engaged to two different women, Janice and Margo, on the receiving end of a bad beating from John, the local gangster, whose girlfriend Diana has been two-timing him with Davey, and finally ending up in court on a rape charge when Gerald, an irate husband, comes home unexpectedly and discovers Davey and his wife Rita in a compromising situation. Comedian Steve Oram turns up as a drug dealer and comedian Brendon Burns wrote some of the on-stage gags and appears briefly as a club MC. DERREN: Yeah… Yeah… And I’m more interested in knowing the person. I’ve read a lot of biographies and autobiographies and I want to know the person. Finally, he ends up in court on a rape charge when an irate husband comes home unexpectedly and discovers Terry and his wife in a compromising situation.

DERREN: I did. I finished it about two months ago. I thought: Who would want to read it? But I wrote it more as a cathartic thing. Whether or not anyone wants to publish it, I have no idea.Apology (1986) An above-average made-for-cable chiller that makes some telling points about the nature of voyeurism. Lesley Ann Warren plays an avant-garde… A raw and tender drama about an ageing 80 year old drag queen who forms an unlikely friendship with a younger queen, both struggling with their own issues of gender identity and mortality. As they discover more about each other, they realise how to truly be themselves. DERREN: Well, you can never be anybody else. So what you have got is me as a drag queen in those circumstances. What would I be in those circumstances? And that’s what you try and do. JOHN: For your role as a nasty Nazi in the Clint Eastwood movie Where Eagles Dare, you reportedly talked to an ex-Gestapo man to get the feel for your screen character.