HRHs Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. After signing a contract on the back of a napkin in a restaurant on the Champs Elysee, Birkinshaw was hired to direct an action adventure movie variously called Greed and Invaders of the Lost Gold. This movie was shot in the Philippines and starred Stuart Whitman, Harold Sakata, Edmund Purdom and English actress Glynis Barber. The original screenplay was unworkable and Birkinshaw had to re-write the next day's script overnight, presenting the actors the latest version each day at the breakfast table. Birkinshaw also contributed to two feature films: Don’t Open Till Christmas (using the pseudonym Al McGoohan as writer and additional director), and directed additional action scenes in the Agatha Christie story Ordeal by Innocence, starring Donald Sutherland. In 1986, Birkinshaw went to India where he directed an award-winning film on the life of Jawaharlal Nehru, entitled But I Have Promises To Keep, which had been commissioned by Rajiv Gandhi and was made for the Government of India via Doordarshan, the national television network of India. The film was supposed to take three months in production, but ended up taking a year and a half. Now residing in an apartment in Saket, a suburb of Delhi, Birkinshaw used his spare time to study ancient Indian civilisations and artefacts, and research into his favourite historical subject, the Indian Mutiny of 1857. Questions were asked in the Lok Sabha, Indian Parliament, as to why an English director had been employed to make a film about Indian's National Hero, and not an Indian director. Returning from India, Birkinshaw directed several movies from original stories by Agatha Christie and Edgar Allan Poe with stars such as Oliver Reed, Donald Pleasence, Donald Sutherland, Herbert Lom, Brenda Vaccaro and Moira Lister – Ten Little Indians, The House of Usher and Masque of the Red Death. Birkinshaw also directed the boxing movie Punch starring Donald Sutherland and Swiss actor, Ernst Sigrist, based on a true story of the Swiss champion boxer, Walter Blaser. The boxing sequences were hailed as extraordinary given the time and the budget. There was a certain amount of controversy at the time around Birkinshaw's role as director of Punch, as the movie was a Swiss German French co-production and Birkinshaw is a New Zealand born Britisher. Punch was followed by more work in Germany where Birkinshaw directed several episodes of the action series Zorc, starring