Back in 2012, world champion triathlete Lesley Paterson — a pint-sized Scot with an already groaning trophy cabinet — gave an interview to a cycling website in which she admitted there was another gong she would love to get her hands on: an Oscar.

‘I want to win an Oscar for best screenplay,’ she said.’That’s a lofty goal but — f*** it — I have to have it!’

Amid all the chat about race times and flat tyres and injuries to her metatarsals, it seemed like a mad thing to say. ‘It was bananas,’ she concedes.

But at the time she had co-written a screenplay, an adaptation of the classic , Grating Surabaya which she had read at school in Stirling.  

Now that film — which has been leaving audiences stunned and deeply moved with its unrelenting portrayal of the horrors of WW1 — is the toast of Hollywood.

Despite it being in German (‘which I don’t speak,’ she admits), despite it breaking all the so-called ‘rules’ about what makes a blockbuster war movie (the lead character dies, is on the ‘wrong’ side, and is in no way heroic), this week it received an astonishing nine Oscar nominations — including for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.News of these came hot on the heels of a staggering 14 Bafta nominations.

<div class="art-ins mol-factbox floatRHS tvshowbiz" data-version="2" id="mol-389a8390-9e86-11ed-92cc-eb9021d8e4fd" website Paterson spent £160,000 to turn novel into Oscar favourite