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In housing in the fifties in Britain and the sixties, we pulled down the terraces - destroyed whole communities and replaced them with tower blocks and we built walkways that became rat-runs for muggers. That was the fashionable opinion. But it was wrong.

I was always very focused on how people dressed.

There were loads of plays which were very popular before and after the war, where everybody wore a dinner jacket in the third act and it was in a house that you wished you'd owned with people that you wish you knew. It was life seen through a very privileged way.

I remember when people actually wore coats and ties to theatre every night. They don't anymore. It's very different.

Something about glamour interested me. All my schoolbooks had drawings of women on terraces with a cocktail and a cigarette.

And doing a film in that period, and having to really celebrate what they wore back then, how they sat and how they spoke. You know, what the etiquette was back then for a lady. All of those things are like putting on a wig and transforming yourself, which I love.

I remember wearing overcoats, hiding in the bushes outside of Abbey Road Studios, waiting for the traffic to clear. As it did, we would drop our overcoats and run out on to the cross walk and strike our poses.

We played in bars and other such establishments and anywhere where people would listen. Sometimes they did, and sometimes not. The outfits we wore were classics of the 50's.

My week at school would be good or bad depending on whether Balmain won. I have such fond memories of those suburban grounds, and everything was so undiluted. The players weren't censored, and for me it was a wonderful period of my life when everything was simple and pure. For me, that resonated with rugby league.

Sometimes it does me good to look back at the days when the living wasn't so good. I remember in 1945 the dressing-rooms were gone, the park was in ruins, no stand, nothing.