According to Lenny Abrahamson, "commercials are harder to get into than any other form of film-making because they are lucrative and so many people want to do them.

"I was very lucky because I came in at a time when the old guard of commercials directors in Ireland were losing their appeal to the ad agencies, and the agencies were looking to find young blood. Jonny Speers very generously made an investment in me. We made a test commercial for a non-existent product, a newspaper, and it was good. That's what got me the work.

"I would say my best one is the Carlsberg ad, where Jason McAteer is dreaming of winning the World Cup and scoring the final goal. I liked doing the Carlsberg one where the guys are going to a nightclub and looking really scruffy, and the one with the catch line about Carlsberg not doing flatmates, but if they did they would be the best flatmates in the world.

"I liked the ads I did for The Irish Times Magazine, which had a kid going to school and taking a sponge pad out of his lunchbox because his mother has been so busy reading the magazine, and then we see her cleaning the counter with a ham sandwich.

"I did an ad for Tanzanian beer, Safari lager, and I made it with a Kenyan production company. That was insane, and really good fun. And I did a chewing gum commercial in Argentina with a little girl and a lion. I have to say it had it had the worst safety set-up for anything I've done. It was a miracle that no one was eaten alive."