Following his award-winning documentary about Jonny Kennedy, in The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off, Newcastle film maker Patrick Collerton has focussed on another sensitive subject, this time much closer to home. He tells Steve Pratt about his work.

Film maker Patrick Collerton realised he was going to have a "tumultuous year, but in a good way" when he began collecting awards for his C4 documentary The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off. His moving and irreverent film about 36-year-old Jonny Kennedy, who died after suffering with a rare genetic skin disease all his life, earned him more than a dozen prizes.

All the more reason, thought the Newcastle-born and based director, to find something "very grounding" to do as an antidote to all the celebrity razzmatazz surrounding the awards ceremonies.

That's how he found himself flying home from America, after collecting a prestigious international Emmy in New York, and heading with his camera to a cancer ward at Newcastle General Hospital.

It was the same ward where, five years ago, he underwent chemotherapy for testicular cancer. He decided to take advantage of the high profile The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off afforded him to work on a project close to his heart. The result is the provocatively titled Bollocks To Cancer, which follows 19-year-old Steven Liddell as he undergoes chemo for cancer that has spread from his testicle.

"It's been in my mind since my treatment," explains Collerton, 36, who heads North-East production company Yipp Films. "It kind of sits with you and once Jonny's film went out I realised I had an opportunity, because it was such a big hit, to do a film I really wanted to do and which might not have been commissioned if I hadn't won those awards."

Cancer is a word that offends and frightens people more than the other c-word and he hopes that his film will help remove some of the mystery surrounding the illness and its treatment. "It's difficult for anyone who has not been through that process to see that it's not wholly grim. Good lessons are learnt for life," he says.

'What I was really interested to show, especially with testicular cancer, which of all cancers is quite curable, is that what actually makes someone look like someone with cancer is not the illness but the treatment. Steven starts out looking like any other 19-year-old and, in the end, has turned into the stereotypical victim because of the chemo, not the cancer.

"People say, 'oooh, are they having chemo?' but no-one understands what it means. It's all the what-might-be that plagues you. The fear is of the unknown which makes it commonplace and comical."

The obvious connection with his previous film is that they're both about health, but Collerton always viewed his new documentary as being a survivor's story told from the position of a 19-year-old. "Like most people of that age he's unaware what goes around and I wanted to show that learning process. Jonny was at the end of his life looking back," he says.

"This was very personal to me. It's five years since I had my treatment.

"I'd been back to a couple of Christmas reunions but not really thought about it that much. The thing you want to do afterwards is to move on with your life. It was a good time to go back and measure how far I'd come."

Finding a patient willing to be filmed was not as difficult as you might think, he says. "It was my old ward and staff knew me. I spent a couple of months hanging out there, getting to know them again. Steven's a kind of extrovert, gregarious guy and knew I'd been through the process he was going through, so I was trustworthy.

"He took about five minutes to say 'yes'. I met him on Tuesday and he started chemo on Thursday. It was such a topsy-turvy time for him, a totally surreal time. But at that age you take what comes along."

During treatment, Steven discovered that his 17-year-old girlfriend Katie was pregnant.

Collerton found filming in the cancer ward "surprisingly difficult" as old memories were brought back. "You put it to the back of your mind once you've gone through treatment and get on with your life. I was quite chipper about it. But as you go through the whole process, reliving it with someone else, I was finding it emotionally tough. Without being masochistic, in a sense if you didn't care and didn't get involved, it wouldn't be right."

Collerton's style, as shown in The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off, isn't exploitative like some other reality TV shows. Subjects are allowed to speak for themselves and their personalities come through. He's not afraid of humour in deadly serious circumstances. "Uplifting misery," is how he's described his work.

"I tend to concentrate on the emotion and human qualities they display. The things that make them different they take for granted. I show how they're normal in many ways," he explains. "I don't think you can calculate these things. If you do, the viewer can sense this. You have to be as honest and uncalculated as possible. Do the best job and see the results."

He films a lot by himself with just a small camera. For what he calls "bigger times", when he knows something major is going to happen, he'll work with a crew. "What I like doing is hanging out. I live in Newcastle and just popped round to the General," he says.

"My style is non-observational. I don't pretend I'm not there, but don't take over the film. It's very much his story and he narrates it."

The title, Bollocks To Cancer, very much reflects his approach. "I wanted to capture the irreverence," he says. "Even if you're young and in a cancer ward, you don't sit around moping. It's very much a survivor's story. A 19-year-old, even one with cancer, thinks he's indestructible. Steven is through it all now and he's shown amazing resilience.

"It's very much an uplifting film. There's been a shift and with cancer, although not all cancer, people do survive. It's what people learn from their experiences and how to keep surviving. That's really the point of the film."

His own experiences differed from Steven's in several respects. "I didn't have a kid on the way," he says. "The other thing is you have specialist nurses now who oversee the whole package of care. They weren't around in my day. The standard of care at the General is fantastic."

Collerton worked on BBC2's youth strand Def II and BBC documentary series before The Man Whose Skin Fell Off put him in the spotlight. His involvement came through a friend who knew Jonny and his wish to leave a legacy. Because the director had been through the chemo thing, Jonny felt he'd be able to deal with making the film.

"I went to see him and thought it would be really grim but he was so full of life and humour," recalls Collerton. "You make an emotional commitment to people. He wasn't this weird little guy with a terrible skin condition. What he went through and the qualities he displayed were extraordinary and touching.

"It was incredibly hard because we filmed over six months and we became quite close. Then I was filming him die and then having to edit it for the programme."

The documentary has been sold to over 60 countries. Collerton himself intends to stay in the North-East "which has such a great quality of life and, if you can get network and international work, which we do, you have the best of all worlds."

He has a few things in mind but has yet to decide on his next project. "In a sense until the documentary goes out, it's not fully discharged," he adds.

* Bollocks To Cancer: tonight, C4, 9pm.