‘We’d invite famous actors to guest star for a fee topped at £3,000. “Come and have some fun!” we’d say – and nobody ever turned us down’

Richard “Kip” Carpenter, the writer, wanted our outlaws to be young. I’d once directed Michael Praed and had cast Ray Winstone in Scum. So Michael played Robin and Ray was his brotherly companion Will Scarlet. Then I spotted Clive Mantle and Phil Rose at a birthday party and said: “You two – Little John and Friar Tuck!” Marion was harder to find, until I suggested making her a redhead and thought of Judi Trott, who I’d cast in a terrible American TV film about Charles and Diana. They went for it straight away. She looked like she’d stepped out of a Millais painting.