Jeremy Cooper’s novel about a lonely clerk at Camden Council, who finds solace and a sense of belonging in cinema-going, is informed by his own experiences of attending the National Film Theatre (now BFI Southbank). Cooper was ‘intrigued by the sight each night of the same small group of regulars in a corner of the foyer. Speculation about the lives of these insular figures led many years later to the novel. Almost all the films which Brian sees I too have seen, none of them re-seen for writing the book. I’ve only ever watched film live on a cinema screen. The book was made possible in this form because, early in the process, I unearthed from the back of a cupboard the folder of information sheets I carefully kept of every film I saw from about 1985 until 2000 at the NFT.’

Brian first went to the NFT, aged 19 when he was taken to see Kes directed by Ken Loach. However, Clint Eastwood is his movie idol and it is the film The Outlaw Josey Wales, seen at the NFT 20 years later, that really ignites his love of cinema. Over time, he becomes one of the NFT nightly regulars – the first film he sees in this new capacity is The Fruit Machine (Dir: Philip Saville 1988) – and an authority on postwar Japanese cinema.