World: My Portfolio - David Shane.

You don't normally associate senior citizens with porn, but the director David Shane, signed to Hungry Man in New York, likes a bit of humorous juxtaposition. The feature he's currently working on, 69, is a comedy about an elderly couple who feel that society has desexualised them.

To date, his casting of older actors has been impeccable. In an ad for BT home monitoring, a family departing on holiday draws straws for who has to stay and look after the house. Grandma loses. 'Don't touch me,' she snaps icily to her son when he hugs her goodbye.

In another spot, an old lady won't return a Black & Decker power tool she has borrowed from her unhinged neighbour. Usually, the joke with older people in commercials is that they're breakdancing, Shane says 'But this character is just a badass. She had a steely edge to her, yet was so sweet-looking.'

Comedy is Shane's forte: 'I admire people who do straight drama, but I think it's much easier to slip in a moment of pathos when you're surrounded by funny stuff.'

His ads for the pet charity BCSPCA exemplify this. The tagline is 'some things you can only do with a pet' and, in Shane's personal favourite, a man comes up behind his wife when she's looking in the fridge. He starts nuzzling her and calling her 'chubby' in a high-pitched voice. 'It was a delicate balance of genuine sweetness on the one hand and cruelty on the other,' Shane says. The ads picked up a gold ...