I love this film. It’s the third in the Tina Trilogy and is about race and class and Islamic fundamentalism and how we can all live together. Lucy Pardee and I spent months hanging out with the Pakistani community in Leeds and Bradford and once again our worlds turned upside down as all the stereotypes tumbled and crumbled. Having met so many outspoken, funny, strong minded Muslim women, with and without hijabs, I will never ever again believe those submissive stereotypes. We can all live together. We must.
It was released the same week as Borat and although we got better reviews and I genuinely believe it is a wonderful, funny film the oxygen of publicity was sucked by the bigger film and nobody knew it was on. They had the sides of buses and all the articles in papers and magazines and we just had a good film. We lost.
But watch it – it’s really funny.
There were also a lot of funny stories associated with the making of it and not so funny (collapsing with a massive kidney stone and being hospitalised in the middle of the shoot) but I haven’t got the heart to tell them.