There may be one or two people reading this who dream of exchanging their classroom view of damp school playing fields for the Hollywood screenwriter’s vista of Beverly Hills palm trees.

For all those readers, take a long, hard look at Philip McGrade. He’s 42. Tallish. Ginger-ish. Scottish. And your dream come true. Until recently he was teaching full-time at a north London comprehensive. This month his first feature film hits our movie screens.

I’ll Be There is a mainstream English romantic comedy.nbsp;It might not have laid-off steelworkers taking their clothes off, or Hugh Grant doing his bumbling act, but all the familiar ingredients are there: the jokes, the accents, the tearjerking moments, the inevitable happy ending. The twist to this one is that it is a vehicle written specifically to allow child singer Charlotte Church to make her movie debut as a young Welsh girl (surprise) who wants to be a singer (surprise).

To find out more about I’ll Be There read this week’s TES Friday magazine