Richard Curtis: 'Love is London's great superpower'

The Bafta-winning filmmaker and Comic Relief co-founder tells Katie Strick about filming mishaps, awkward dating encounters and his rollercoaster love affair with our capital city as he backs our Winter Survival Appeal

- Katie Strick

Tube announcers. "I still feel in Paris everybody's French and everybody's... mean," he teases. "But in London there's all kinds of people, from your original Cockney to your polite posho.

We've got such a rich blend of cultures and colours and particularly food. I feel as though when I come to London I'm just experiencing the world." Curtis has now said on multiple occasions that he regrets not injecting more of this diversity into what is arguably his most famous film, Love Actually, which celebrated its 20-year anniversary last month. The script originally contained an LGBTQ love story, which was cut "and I feel I let myself down there", and he'd have loved to have featured other religious festivals like Hanukkah and Diwali.

Instead, he chose to base the story in the run-up to Christmas because Christmas is a deadline. "I was trying to think of a time where if there were 10 people in similar situations they'd have to sort it out by December 25," he says.

Love Actually grossed $247 million, despite criticisms about its white middle-class London fantasyland.

Could Curtis be tempted to make another one that's more reflective of London in 2023? "There are things that I'd do differently... But I don't think I'll do [a remake] because Love Actually was one of my films that was closest to a disaster," he tells me.