HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

The mind boggles. As film costs regularly rise above the £100 million mark, you have to wonder how some film-makers can seriously believe their films are going to make money.

A little bit of simple math underlines the problem. If you sell 100 tickets at £10 you pull in £1,000. So you only need to sell 1,000 times that to break even. Well, actually you need to sell 2,000 times that because, of course, the cinemas and distributions and various other aunts and uncles all take their profits first.

And yet some film-makers still believe it makes sense to make movies about dull people in dull settings not doing very much.

As if 10 million people are sitting around at home with enough time on their hands to rush out to that kind of offering. Get real. Surely you do have to throw in at least one damsel in distress to make any money.

And yet there is another way. And British films are actually pretty good at screwing a little bit of profit out of a sow's ear. For instance, did you hear the one about the miner's son who wanted to be a ballet dancer. No, that will never sell in Wolverhampton, will it? And yet ... to be continued ...