Greetings one and all (or is that just, one?) It seems like an age since I last wrote, and indeed it has been. The reasons for this are that I have been alone at the helm of the good ship movieScope for the past couple of weeks while the publisher lords it about in LA. There hasn’t been much time to write, and in all honesty, there hasn’t been much to report.

However, last night I went to the launch event for the International Screenwriters Festival in Cheltenham and feel compelled to say the following: if you are an aspiring writer, or a producer looking for scripts, or a director looking to collaborate, go to this festival. Yes, it’s a bit of a trek from London and yes, it is a wee bit pricey, but I have been to this event for a couple of years in a row now and can honestly say that it really is an event where things happen for people like you and me. You’re just as likely to be stood in line for coffee with the likes of Mike Leigh or Kay Mellor as you are another aspiring hyphenate, and the sessions and speakers are world-class.

I hope that the festival won’t lose its friendly feel by moving to a larger and more central location, but the organisers assure me that won’t happen. In the three years since it’s been going, Hammer films and Red Planet pictures have picked up scripts, countless writers have found agents and screenwriters everywhere have made friends with real live humans.