HOWZAT

But do you worry about writer’s block? “No, because I’ve got kids. And when you have kids you have to support them with your writing. So there’s no time for that namby-pamby s*** any more.”

Kureishi admits, however, that in the past there was indeed time for namby-pamby s*** such as writer’s block and creative angst. The son of an Indian-born civil servant, growing up in the Sixties and Seventies in the mainly white area of Bromley, in southeast London, the young Kureishi was inspired by his father’s repeated attempts at fiction writing to start his first novel at the age of 15.

“I was basically writing The Buddha of Suburbia,” he says, “which I didn’t really write until the end of the Eighties. But at the time I was writing about being in school, skinheads, Paki-bashing, the whole vibe of South London in the Sixties. I was aware that nobody else had written about that.”

He studied philosophy at King’s College London, and soon found success as a playwright at the Royal Court, where he became writer-in-residence in 1982. He nabbed an Oscar nomination for his first screenplay, My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), but was never seduced by Hollywood. It wasn’t out of some sort of integrity, though, but because he knew that it wouldn’t work. “I know British writers who are still out there, by the pool, getting paid $250,000 a week for doing rewrites. Well, that’s not me. You wouldn’t want me rewriting your script.”

Over the years there were more professional highs and lows, the highs including his Bafta award-winning Buddha of Suburbia (1994), and such flops as his only film as a director, London Kills Me (1991). There were moments of often controversial autobiography, such as his confessional novel Intimacy in 1998 (written after he left his wife and twin boys for a younger woman), and his softer, father-focused memoir My Ear at His Heart from 2004 (“All the interests I have now I got from Dad,” he says).

At times, his obsession with modern multicultural Britain gave him a seemingly perspicacious insight into the future. With My Son the Fanatic (1997) he was contemplating homegrown Islamic Fundamentalism more than a decade before it would have any lasting effect on the country. “I hung around the schools, the colleges and the mosques,” he explains. “I found out that these kids were very heavy. And some of the things that they believed were very dangerous.”

His home life now, he says, is divided between early stints at the keyboard every morning, and picking up the kids from school in the afternoon. He describes himself as heading a “blended” family, which includes the twin boys from his first marriage, and his young son with his current partner.

He says that his children have no idea that he was once an enfant terrible on the cultural scene. “They laugh at that,” he says. “They just think, ‘That’s our Dad. That old bloke in the corner.’”

He isn’t bothered by this, he says. Nor is he bothered by his legacy, nor the need to be Hanif Kureishi, provocateur, any more. “The best thing is just to have become a writer,” he says. “I don’t have to worry. I can sit at home and think, ‘I’ve written books and my movies have been made, so I can take it easy. The relief is great. I’ve done fine. Thank God for that.”

Weddings and Beheadings will be shown on More 4 on Jan 17 (9pm) and will be screened together with Iraq in Fragments at the ICA, The Mall, London SW1 (020-7930 3647), from Jan 19. Venus is released on Jan 26

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• London Film Festival

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010