That's it, no more Mr Nice Guy

The earliest thing I remember is a very big classroom and feeling isolated in a room full of 65 other children in Our Lady of Good Council school on Mourne Road in Drimnagh. They were big classes and the education system was diabolical. The people who shone first were the ones who were tended to and the ones who were a bit late on coming around lost out.

I was down the back on row D. There were four rows in the class, but that didn't seem good enough for the teacher - he then put rows diagonally across to make a grid system, so you were really defined. He was telling you exactly what you were from the start.

One of my first memories of the school was asking the teacher if I could go to the toilet and not being allowed. Being very young at the time, four or five, I had a bit of an accident. I remember the teacher tapping her table with a piece of oak timber with lots of serrated edges from constantly tapping the side of it. The waving of it and the way she used it as a pointer to speak to you, I just thought it was all a bit much. Her tone and her whole approach to children was to control.

I can understand that the classes were quite big - there wasn't much money about, education was underfunded, so in one way I can understand it and in another way I can't. These people were educated and they got the opportunity to be educated and they should have had more understanding.

When I went on to the main bit of the primary school it was obvious that there was a reading difficulty, because I suffer from dyslexia. It was obvious to me there was a reading difficulty and it was obvious to the teachers and my parents, but I was classified as being stupid.

My reading difficulty was used as an example to the other kids that one could be humiliated. There was corporal punishment so they could physically hit you, but they would humiliate you as well. One teacher's way of punishing me for messing was to make me stand up and read from Exploring English. It was like asking a cripple to walk - it couldn't be done, not with any clarity, and it would be obvious that there was a problem. I'd get bored trying to read it and start making up a story myself and he wouldn't be listening terribly closely, but some of the guys would and I used to make them laugh. Then I went into myself and I didn't really like myself. Later I found that if I portrayed somebody else it was easier, so dyslexia probably helped me in acting. I found I could hide behind another character.

The reading never came to me in primary school and it didn't come to me in my late teens either. I failed dismally at exams. I did my Group Cert and I failed practically everything and that time was really, really difficult for me. I was still a kid and I'd failed.

It was only when I started working that I started trying to find out about the problem and trying to deal with it. The moment I did that I felt more secure within myself. I found in a short time that I could read with a bit of fluidity because I wasn't afraid to read and once I wasn't afraid to make mistakes I could progress further and take on bigger and better, more in-depth books. I knew I had a memory bank that was exceptionally good and that helped my in my reading as well. It also helps to read slowly and repeat a line twice to yourself - you can almost tell what the next line is.

Now it's a different way to enjoy a book, but my enjoyment was finding out that I was reading it right. From there I progressed a little further and began to read poetry and I got a wonderful voice teacher by the name of Jimmy Caffrey. He taught me the understanding of words and the way words could be used and reading became more enjoyable.

My dyslexia now is an enjoyment. I know that's a strange way of looking at it, but it's positive. I write film scripts. I've written poetry. I like picking up the dictionary and sitting down with my kid if he has a problem with a word. He also understands that I just can't spell, but it still doesn't stop me from writing.

People have said about some of my writing that it has wonderful dialogue. The reason for that is not because I'm a great writer, but I had to listen an awful lot - a problem can be an asset. All my learning occurred outside of school, not just of reading but of life, of not being afraid to meet people, of not being afraid of having something to say.

In conversation with Olivia Kelly