When I came from Africa to England we lived for a year with my aunt in Carlisle before moving to a working-class housing estate in Newcastle. I failed the 11-plus, which would have taken me into a grammar school, but at the time they were starting comprehensive education, so I was in luck.

I had to wait for the Kenton comprehensive school to open, and for a year I attended the Northumberland Road school, which had a reputation for being very violent. It has now closed. As a middle-class white boy from the colonies, I was in fear of my life, but a child’s sense of preservation is an incredible thing and I learned Geordie quickly. I learned not to talk in a posh or colonial way.

My most important moment with a teacher was at Northumberland Road, with a Mr Forbes. He was like a teacher you see in films: he always looked tired and always carried a briefcase groaning with notebooks. I remember him once in exasperation saying to the class: “You’re absolutely terrible. Teaching you is a nightmare and if you were all put on a desert island you would all die very quickly because you have no interest in anything at all. Except maybe Figgis. I think Figgis would survive longer than any of you because he’s the least uninterested in everything.” It was the first time in that environment that I’d been picked out as anyone with any potential, and I have no idea what I did to make him say this. But more than anything else it got me through the next year.

When Kenton comprehensive opened it was bliss, and it had an intake of enthusiastic young teachers. Ian Carr, who is well known at the moment for having written the definitive biography of Miles Davis, was there for a year and he was my English teacher. He was one of the best modern jazz trumpet players in Britain and had his own band, Nucleus. Although my father was a jazz fan and pianist and I’d grown up listening to jazz, Carr introduced me to modern jazz; he gave me a drum and invited me to a gig.

The head of the music department, Kenneth Ormston, was a kind of a lyric tenor - probably his bag was Gilbert and Sullivan, but I think he more than anyone else inspired me with my music. Academically, I was not very good, and when I started learning the trumpet he made me the head of the school band. He was not a popular teacher, he was old-fashioned, but he recognised some talent and he pushed it. When I left school, it was his letter of recommendation that got me into a teacher training college because I had no qualifications.

The head of the art department was Jimmy Garbutt, an actor in the series When The Boat Comes In. He got me involved with the People’s Theatre in Newcastle. I was more interested in rock ‘n’ roll and jazz. After I qualified as a music teacher, I taught guitar as a peripatetic teacher for a while, then I started playing professionally.

I joined a theatre group called the People Show, as a musician, but when one of the main actors walked out just before a performance at the Royal Court, I was thrown on the stage to replace him. I thought this was far more enjoyable than being a musician, and I never looked back. I learned by osmosis; I learned quickly by failing in front of an audience. The People Show was an experimental theatre group and I went on the road with them for 10 years. I then formed the Mike Figgis Group, and our multimedia productions caught the attention of Channel 4.

Film director Mike Figgis was talking to Helen Barlow

THE STORY SO FAR

1949 Born in Carlisle, moves to Kenya as a baby, returns to Carlisle, secondary schooling in Newcastle

1967-70 Studies music education in London

1970-80 Involvement with the People Show leads to his forming the Mike Figgis Group, combining theatre, music and film in multimedia productions

1984 Television film The House for Channel 4

1988 International breakthrough with first full-length film Stormy Monday

1994 Makes Leaving Las Vegas; nominated for best director and best adapted screenplay at the Academy Awards, for best director in the Golden Globes and for best adapted screenplay in the Baftas

2000 Experiments with split screen and digital formats in Timecode

2001 New movie Hotel screens at the London Film Festival