Coffin bodger.

The original dead celebrity was Des O’Connor but his agent refused to show Des the script. Years later, Mark’s girlfriend Ju (also the Keen Young Assistant in Sixth Form) bumped into Des in the ladies toilet of Air Studios in London. We’re still not quite sure what he was doing there. Jim Bowen was set to replace Des as a freebie but a few days before the shoot started asking for money. With no money to give him Producer Guy Powell tried flattery, telling Jim he was ‘the man’. Jim replied, “If you want the man, pay the man”. Jim was offered the catering budget of £100 but refused it. At the eleventh hour local barman Bob Brandon stood in – but looked half-Jim Bowen, half-Jimmy Hill.

Ron’s ‘anal spasms’ in the film were inspired by Mark suffering from spasms of a similar nature. He got checked out by a specialist who diagnosed it as ‘an untreatable cramping of the pelvic floor’. They still occasionally wake him in the night.

Sixth Form premiered at the NFT as part of the London Film Festival and was too long (30 Mins) and too odd to do much more, but it led to Incubator Productions commissioning the screenplay for Crust.

‘dark and quirky‘ The Guardian – ‘hilarious’ Bradford Film Festival - ‘I was touching cloth all the way through’ Julian Cope