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becoming more obsessed with the reverse engineering of UFOs that he believed had taken place but was being suppressed. He thought the world was controlled by aliens and once asked, ‘How can they be human? Humans would never treat other humans so inhumanely.’
    I looked at him sitting at his computer in the middle of the party and knew I had to say something.
    ‘You can’t do this, Gary; you have to put the computer away,’ I said quietly.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because it’s smack bang in the middle of the room and is in everyone’s way.’
    ‘There’s enough room for them to walk around it.’
    ‘But they shouldn’t have to. Tamsin’s relatives have travelled from all over for this party and it’s pretty off-putting for them having you sitting at a big table in the middle of the room working on a computer when it’s supposed to be a party.’
    ‘But it’s my party too,’ he said plaintively.
    ‘Oh Gary,’ I whispered.
    Running my hands through my hair I was trying to think of how to deal with this tactfully without causing upset or arguments on New Year’s Eve.
    ‘C’mon,’ said Wilson matter-of-factly to Gary, while moving the computer to one side. ‘I’ll help you to carry the table, you take one end and I’ll take the other.’ And Gary did. Just like that.
    Wilson is gentle to the core, with a kindness and humour reflected in his eyes that is immediately recognised by children and animals. He’s one of the most innocent people I’ve ever known and this, along with his intelligence and tenderness, is what I love most about him.
    We walked out into the cold night air, and looked up at thefull moon, always a magical sign to us, as so many of our life-changing events have for whatever reason coincided with a full moon.
    Shortly after this I started to write a drama, which became the independent film
Lunar Girl
. It’s about a girl who is different and lives in a world of her own but is happy that way. Wilson produced the film. He used our music to create its mood, and also wanted to use our friends as the actors – but I wanted it to be as professional as possible and put an ad in
The Stage
. We were overwhelmed with the number of CVs, applications, videos and photographs we received. The postman brought them by the sack-load. I had to sort through thousands of photographs and letters and felt guilty that unless a stamped addressed envelope was included, we were unable to send the photos back as the cumulative postage would have cost us a small fortune.
    I found it alarming that some very young teenage girls would offer to do virtually ‘anything’ to be in a film. So many people wanted to be famous rather than to be good actors and were willing to pay a high price for fame, which I not only found sad but dangerous. Fame was highly unlikely in this instance as it was an independent effort financed on a less-than-a-shoestring budget.
    We hired a large rehearsal room in Jacksons Lane Community Centre in Highgate and the people we had shortlisted travelled from all over to audition. Jacksons Lane was perfect for us: it even had its own theatre and vegetarian restaurant.
    We eventually chose a fifteen-year-old girl from Edinburgh named Charli Wilson for the lead role. Basienka Blake and Pete Gallagher got the other major roles; they had acted together in
Buddy
, a high-profile West End musical. All three were the best choices we could have made.
    I used my credit card to finance the film and Wilson and I filmed it ourselves down at Covent Garden and along the SouthBank where kids used to skateboard. There was a lot of artistic graffiti on the walls – sadly later cleaned off for a visit by the Queen during her Golden Jubilee year in 2002.
    We filmed in our house and garden and used our music and Gary’s as the soundtrack. Gary also played a homeless person and I directed, although at the time I didn’t have much idea how to. Luckily Charli was a natural and Basienka and Pete were incredibly