As long as both sides are attacking you, you’re probably doing it right.Robin Duval is director of the British Board of Film Classification. There’s a danger that you will go into the film thinking, “Oh God, I’ve got to censor this movie.” Conversely, because certain journalists make a living out of generating excitement about shock-horror movies, you might find yourself thinking, “Well, the one thing I’m not going to do is make cuts and satisfy that individual!”Get used to being attacked for being too relaxed or too censorious. For example, some of the sex scenes in the controversial film Romance were judged to be so sensitively shot that they were left intact. In Fight Club [see Anthony Quinn's review, page 11] there are two scenes in which the British Board of Film Classification judged that the violence was excessively sustained and in conflict with BBFC guidelines about taking pleasure in pain or sadism. In both scenes there was an indulgence in the excitement of beating a defenceless man’s face into a pulp. The board required that cuts be made.
It can be difficult to separate your personal opinion from your regulatory role but you must develop a curious technique. THE DECIDING factor in whether or not to take the scissors to a particular scene is the effect that the scene would have on the audience If you don’t think it’s going to be harmful, don’t cut it.

I happen to believe there is another life, life just doesn’t finish when you die.”As well as his dream to see the billboards bearing his utterances – which he hopes the Government or Richard Branson will fund – Wilkins would like to see his quotes on prison cell walls. “The way things are going I could see perhaps a little TV chat show. You know like you get a Mr Motivator? Well, Mr Mental Motivator – that sort of thing I could easily see that happening. We’ve just been to Jersey and we worked it out that about a quarter of a per cent of the population who came to our talk.”Wilkins, who lives with Gillian in a rented three-bedroom house, insists that his motivation is not to make another million, but to help others.“It makes me feel good,” he says, putting his hand over his heart. “When someone contacts me to say that something I said really helped them, I get a feeling inside me which I never got from owning a Ferrari or living in a mansion.”.

is it!”Wilkins, who also gives “inspirational” talks, can ramble with great gusto, and at great length, about his ideas on life, some of which are instantly recognisable: be happy with your lot, follow your dreams, hope for the best, and your mind affects your body.He describes his view on happiness as “quite controversial” He adds: “I think happiness is a big con trick. “I think it’s Shakespeare, or someone who’s famed for saying: `Life’s no dress-rehearsal That’s exactly what I think it is – a dress-rehearsal. And I really think that if there was a secret answer to happiness someone would have discovered it. My belief is that it’s natural to have the down sides to your life as well.” If not controversial, then it’s certainly unoriginal – who has not read, or been told by a parent, that to appreciate the good times, one has to go through the bad?But clearly there are many ears craning for a new prophet with ancient wisdom. Such is his standing that Wilkins has received countless letters of appreciation from people he has inspired; one of his poems is read out at funerals around the country and he was once asked to give a sermon at a Church of England service He says he is not religious, but “spiritual”. But Wilkins says people understand things put in different ways.There is also a certain amount of stuff which seems too obvious to be truly wise such as: “People may hand you the bullets but you don’t have to use the gun.” Then there’s the tortured analogies of: “Your body is the car which takes you through life One day the car will be scrapped.. but that isn’t the end of the driver …

“Many a tear is born of haste” will remind many of “Look before you leap”; “There is a beginning with every ending” is similar to “When a door shuts another one opens”; and “You can be happy with money but money won’t make you happy” is surely the same as “Money can’t buy you everything”. His first book of poetry, From Black & White To Colour, is out this week.Wilkins is overjoyed with their success. While not quite rivalling Paul Wilson’s Little Book of Calm, which has sold almost 2.5 million copies in the UK alone, Wilkins’s three collections of “wit and wisdom” have sold some 60,000 copies, and are now available in mainstream bookshops.Readers may find a ring of familiarity to some of his work. Turned down by every publisher he approached, he and Gillian, 38, borrowed some money from a relative and, in 1996, they published 150 Ways To Make Your Life Ten Out of Ten. “They [the publishers] thought it was too simple,” says Wilkins, adding that they questioned whether people would buy a book full of “one-liners”.

He says the following year Random House, one of the publishers who originally turned him down, offered to take him on. One night I thought I would take my own life, and I actually found some peace in that.”Instead of ending it all he found a new beginning when he overheard someone saying: “Fred will get there one day.” “The word `there’ stuck with me,” he recalls. “I thought: `Where’s there?’ I had had the sort of money that most people dream of, I’d been married, had children, I had my health but I never really thought I was `there’ It was never enough and I was always on to the next thing. By 37 he had a mansion with 13 bedrooms set in 70 acres of land and could afford a fleet of classic cars including a pounds 240,000 Lamborghini and a Porsche worth pounds 350,000.But he faced a costly divorce at the end of 1989 and the recession hit the following year Within months he was bankrupt. “The worst thing of all was that I lost my self-worth,” says Wilkins who peppers his conversation, delivered in a Northampton accent, with therapy-speak “I found myself at rock bottom I felt very lonely and tormented. Raised on a council estate, he left school to work in a local boot and shoe factory. At 21, he became a labourer but was soon in a position to take on his own staff and started specialising in refurbishing pubs Six years later, Wilkins had his own building firm.