I had been brought up in Newcastle where the RSC used to come for a season every year. I thought theatre was Shakespeare. But this was something else, this was magic. The story was about all the officialdom and desperate politeness around death, everybody having to pretend they are absolutely fine. It made you laugh, and cry, so hard: Marcello Magni’s dextrous and inimitable clown routine in the office for registering births and deaths. Jos Houben making a flickering fire with his fingers. A scene by the grave with them slowly, sadly, sinking as they walked away across the churchyard to leave. Simon McBurney alone at the grave at a loss for words. We lost brilliant Marcello in 2022 and so A Minute Too Late now feels ever more poignant. Afterwards, I needed to find out more about what I had seen. It was something new from Paris, I was told. It was called “physical theatre”. That was it. My life set on a new course. I left university and followed them to Paris. Philippe Gaulier, the renowned teacher, gave me a scholarship to train with him alongside Monika Pagneux. Six months later, I came back to England ready to make a show with Jos, Marcello and Simon. It never occurred to me that they might have better things to do than work with a 21-year-old with extremely limited experience. But I was unknown, undaunted and unaware. And hailing from Newcastle, I was a born blagger. I took a train to the Assembly Rooms where all the big names played at the Edinburgh fringe and sailed into its offices, explaining that I was creating a new show with the makers of the hit play A Minute Too Late. Looking back, it is astonishing what happened: the programmer agreed to give me a slot. Granted, it was in their smallest venue at noon, which in those days was the slot of death, and only for one week. I think she offered it to me to get rid of me as much as anything. “I’ll take it,” I said, before she could change her mind. I had two months to make the show, and set about finding out how to get hold of my new, unknown-to-them, collaborators. The first one I found was Jos, who was working with a company called The Right Size at Battersea Arts Centre, so I went along and cornered him in the bar after the show and asked him to discuss how we would work together. Jos has since become a good friend, and that day he was gracious enough not to squash my dream, but simply pointed across the bar towards Hamish McColl and Sean Foley from The Right Size and said: “Those boys will help you with your show.” I looked over at Hamish, and he looked over at me. Without really saying much, we made some kind of agreement to meet in a rehearsal space in Hoxton in east London. Two months later, we had a hit show at Edinburgh, which won a Fringe First and toured around the world. By Christmas that year, Hamish and I were living together. We are still together now, collaborating, bringing up our kids, and sparking off each other. We have just made a new show together called Blizzard. So I’d say A Minute Too Late has a lot to answer for. It changed my idea of what theatre can be, and the course of my life. Blizzard is at 59E59 theatres, New York, 12-30 June.