Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight says American rapper Snoop Dogg told him how much he relates to the show.
Mr Knight told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs how the rapper talked about his life and family when the two met, and said the show “reminded him of how he got involved in gang culture”.
Mr Knight, who based the hit show and a forthcoming film on stories from his parents and his own childhood in Birmingham, also co-created game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?.
The show aired in 180 countries and counts celebrities including Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise among its fans.
Mr Knight described meeting celebrity fan Snoop Dogg and his manager in a room – the rapper smoking, him drinking beer, and the manager gin.
Mr Knight, who grew up as the youngest of seven kids, said Peaky Blinders was inspired by myth-like stories his parents told him about their childhoods.
When his mother was around eight or nine, she worked for bookmakers – who were called peaky blinders – when betting was illegal.
In her adult life, she worked as a cleaner and in a factory, supergluing grit to the soles of her shoes so she could get to work when it snowed.
His father was a blacksmith who received work from a nearby Romany camp and scrap metal yard.
Mr Knight said he began writing poetry around the age of 10. His first job after university was writing commercials for local Birmingham radio before he moved to work in radio and production in London.
It was in London where he and two colleagues created Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, the game show that became globally successful.
He also wrote the film Dirty Pretty Things, which was nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay in 2004, and three novels.
Mr Knight is now writing a Star Wars script and recently opened a TV and film studio in Birmingham called Digbeth Loc, where the Peaky Blinders film will be shot.
He also started a scheme financing courses for local people to get trained in film industry trades.
Mr Knight said that growing up working class “you have no expectation of yourself” and it took him until he was 35 to think “I can actually do this”.
