I think I may have soared somewhat beyond my brief. It was meant to be a shabby little thing; a five-minute Guy Ritchie-style movie, shot in some cobbled streets near the Times offices in a single day, and with me playing every character in a slightly different hat. We ended up shooting in an ultimate combat ring, Stringfellows and the actual environs of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. We had a cast of professional actors, one of whom had actually been in a Guy Ritchie film. Needless to say, I went over budget. Way over budget. In total, I ended up spending almost £80.

They don’t look difficult to make, Guy Ritchie films. Revolver, his latest, came out yesterday. Many were expecting a return to form after the nepotistic straight-to-DVD roadcrash of Swept Away (2002). I haven’t seen it yet, but according to the critics, he’s bodged it. “Semi-incoherent,” said one reviewer. Fans sound equally unimpressed — Ritchie and Madonna were booed at the Leicester Square premiere on Tuesday.

How come? How hard can it be? Gangsters, hardmen, guns, card games; all the ingredients delivered so pleasingly in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and — let’s be honest — slightly less pleasingly in Snatch (2000). Even I could do that. Couldn’t I?

First of all, I found my crew. He is called Jon Gilbert, and he’s 35. A television news reporter and devoted film buff, Gilbert has worked in New York, the Middle East and Afghanistan, and must have seen the occasional shooter pulled for real. Most importantly for me, he owned a camera and knew how to direct. We met in a Soho pub — where no women were naked, and nobody was set on fire — and knocked together a plan. All I’d been able to think of, so far, was that there should be lots of guns, lots of shouting, a chase scene to the tune of Zorba’s Dance from Zorba the Greek and lots of people calling each other “slaaaags”. Gilbert had given the matter rather more thought. “There’s always some sort of prodigy,” he began. “Have you noticed that? In Lock, Stock it’s Nick Moran as a poker prodigy. In Snatch it’s Brad Pitt as a bareknuckle boxing prodigy. We need a prodigy of our own. The question is, what is he a prodigy at?” A couple of pints in, we settled on tiddlywinks. A tiddlywink prodigy, on the hustle. Things began to evolve.

Gilbert had a checklist. “Multiple ethnicities,” he said. “Some kind of little-known mafia organisation. A hitman. Everybody has convoluted alliterative names — Hatchet Harry, that sort of thing. For locations I’m thinking a boxing ring, a strip club, alleyways in the East End. Lots of split-screens. Rhyming slang. Oh, and a voiceover. Can’t have a Guy Ritchie film without a voiceover. And I want a shot of the inside of a car boot, with the lid slamming. Essential.

“One other thing,” he said. “A friend of mine knows Nick Moran. Maybe he’ll be in it.”

A couple of weeks (and about three hours of actual work) later, I had a script. Daily Monkey by Hugo Rifkind. A gangland caper, set in the murky world of underground tiddlywinks. My Moran character was, indeed, the hustler. I had a gangland villain, dubbed the Pieman because “he’s got a finger in all of ’em”. My little-known mafia group was the Scottish mafia. I had scenes in a boxing gym, a strip joint and the East End. I also had an enigmatic hitman who, in tribute to Snatch and the Ritchie family’s rumoured Kabbalistic leanings, I decided to dress as a Hassidic Jew. Moshe the Mangler. I was rather proud of him.

“I’ll sort out the boxing gym,” Gilbert said. “You find the other locations. Aim high.”

I did aim high. I e-mailed Peter Stringfellow. Half an hour later he called me back from Majorca. “I love the idea," he told me. “Of course you can use my club. You need any girls?” Girls would be nice, I told him.

“As many as you want,” said Stringfellow. “People are always asking me to film stuff. Trouble is, it’s this week here, that week there. You’re telling me you’d only be half an hour?” That’s the plan, Peter.

“I approve of that,” he said. There was a pause. “Can I be in it?” Tragically, our budget couldn’t stretch to a trip to Majorca. And Moran, it turned out, wasn’t happening either. Fortunately, Gilbert found somebody else. He found Dave Legeno. Legeno — and I say this with all due respect — is a terrifying man. He played one of the bouncers in Snatch, those huge scary guys in black leather coats. As well as being an actor, he has worked as a real bouncer, a debt collector and an unlicensed fighter. He’s in his forties and huge. I promised him I’d mention his forthcoming DVD, and I frankly don’t have the guts not to. It’s called Hell to Pay, and it’s out on October 3. We cast him as the Pieman.

Gilbert had also found us a location far better than any mere boxing ring. On our day of filming there was to be a Cage Rage event at the Wembley Conference Centre. Cage Rage (www.cagerage.tv) is a mixed martial arts, no-holds barred style of fighting that happens . . . in a cage. In return for a plug, the friendly but very scary men behind this event agreed to let us film there before the event began. Thanks to this very paragraph I’m hoping they now have no inclination to break my knees. It was all getting very Guy Ritchie indeed.

For the lead, a hustler called Geezer, I cast Andrew Watson, a graduate of Bristol Old Vic Drama School. He’s 28 and alongside regular theatre work has had roles in a swath of TV shows. He’s tall, blue-eyed and looks every inch a leading man. I was at school with Watson and I’m not scared of him at all. An Old Vic colleague of his, Jonathan Forbes, played Moshe the Mangler. “I hear Moshe as a New Yorker,” he said. “You know best,” I said.

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