Many of these people followed him to Channel 4 and enjoyed the relative autonomy of this new unit. Rose reflects that ‘these days everything has to be referred to middle management and focus groups. That’s the quickest way to lose the trust of any writer or director.’ Stephen Frears also points out that favoured writers and directors were paid to develop ideas in general and not just for specific projects.

Channel 4, freed from the shackles of production, had the advantage of speed. The BBC, hampered even in those days by its unwieldy bureaucracy and programme-making requirements, took eight years to set up a rival film operation and often lost films to rivals through indecision. Mike Leigh gives the example of Career Girls, which was originally commissioned by the Beeb. ‘It just dragged on and on and nobody took any responsibility for it and the producer at the BBC messed about. And finally for a wheeze we went round the corner to Film4.’ They took one look at Leigh’s script and gazumped the corporation.

This ability to act quickly netted other great successes. Isaacs was given 24 hours to decide whether to make a film about a gay inter-racial relationship set in a west London laundrette for double their normal budget. The rest, of course, is history. My Beautiful Laundrette, directed by Stephen Frears, and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, became one of the defining films in the history of British cinema.

The list of Film4’s successes grew thanks to a twin track policy of breaking new talent and nurturing the greats. Frears went on to deliver three more Film4 productions. A call for help with last-minute funding on a film called The Draftsman’s Contract by the unknown Peter Greenaway led to a long-term, fruitful collaboration. John Boorman recommended his young untried assistant called Neil Jordan, which resulted in three classics, Angel, The Crying Game and Mona Lisa. Rose spotted the genius of Alan Clark at Z Cars and Isaacs remembered Terence Davies from his days at the BFI.

With the exception of Wish You Were Here by David Leland, most of the channel’s investment could be measured in critical acclaim rather than box-office receipts. This included some of the investments in foreign films, which the channel saw as part of its commitment to international film culture. It’s a startling statistic that over 80 per cent of all foreign films shown on television have been shown on Channel 4. No one expected Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice or even Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas to set the tills jingling. This kind of investment in either foreign directors or languages paid off with Oscars for Solomon and Gaenor in the Best Foreign Film category.

However, even when films were hits, the investment was rarely recouped. The channel never made a penny out of Merchant Ivory’s productions including A Room with a View and the legendary Howard’s End, which packed the Curzon Cinema for a whole year, from which the channel, according to David Aukin, made nothing.

Six years after its birth, every single one of Film4’s twenty productions that year were at Cannes either as part of the competition, or in the Directors’ Fortnight or in the market. What, one wondered, was David Rose’s magic formula? Jeremy Isaacs credits Rose with ‘the best eye for a script in history’. Rose says it’s to do with nurturing talent and adds mysteriously, ‘Well, you know a film is a film is a film and that’s all there is to it.’

His successor, David Aukin, is equally elliptical on the subject of spotting winners. ‘It’s a bit like yoga,’ he says. ‘If you aim, you miss.’ He took over the department just as the British film industry was once again sliding into a recession. There were few sources of funding and all of Film4’s theatrical releases had failed to recoup their investment. The new Chief Executive, Michael Grade, and director of programmes, Liz Forgan, gave Aukin six months to prove there was any point in keeping open the window for theatrical release and, to add to his problems, they capped spending at £8 million.

However, Aukin credits Grade with the inspirational remit, ‘Your only sin will be to commission something you don’t believe in passionately.’ Few would have foreseen that Shallow Grave, a cheap anarchic first film starring an unknown Ewan McGregor, would become the saviour of Film4. Director Danny Boyle, who’d never dreamed of breaking into features, spotted its potential as it ‘shared a sense of humour, a morality, or lack of it with pop music’ – which Boyle considers the nation’s greatest talent. The film became the first in Channel 4’s history to make money and was quickly followed by Trainspotting, which united the same team, and brought home an estimated $70 million.