In my normal way of doing things, there's a little bit of 'going native' that takes place, where you're in a world long enough, you can't really help but start to see things in a nuanced, more humanistic way. Just because you're with people and you start to, in general, slightly like the people you're with.

I'm not pugnacious or argumentative. I'd probably feel fear going into a pub in the Outback.

Empires will come and go. The Soviet Union collapses; China can become a superpower, but 'Blue Peter' stays the same.

I think Donald Trump's had a pattern of leaping on the bandwagon of anything that he feels will further his candidacy, and if that means sowing more fear and paranoia and playing into a kind of xenophobic populist strain, then that's what he will do.

Look after your body, because I'm 44, and things are happening that I never dreamed of - like bad joints and man boobs!

Although my dad's a writer, we grew up in a telly-watching household. I never found him disparaging about television.

I really do try not to emote. I don't like seeing it on documentaries - it seems a bit unprofessional. I also need to be human being and be a kind of sympathetic presence for the contributors I'm with, so there' a line you have to walk.

I never thought I would really like to be on television, and the story of me getting into it was quite lucky, really, just a series of chance encounters. So I am not exactly putting myself across as a celebrity, although people might perceive me that way.

I think he could win, absolutely. I think he could win because there's Trump supporters out there who aren't even revealing themselves as such. For me, that's a scary prospect because I think he'd be a disastrous president.

Celebrity is quite a fraught word. It is not something I aspire to, but I can certainly see why it could be.

People say I'm deceptively unassuming, but that's the way I go through life. I'm not flash. You can make it sound calculated, but it's pretty much just me.

When you're in your 40s, you become more conscious of life being of limited duration and that you need to create memories and go on little adventures from time to time.

I am genuinely a bit confused about the world, a little bit bumbling.

I don't like watching things where I think the people onscreen are ahead of me or assuming I know something that I don't know.

One of the things I have always enjoyed about Scientology is their proactive approach to journalists who are covering them.

Meeting forensic patients for the first time could occasionally be an unnerving experience. They often came across as mild and gentle people, but the details of the crimes were harrowing in the extreme.

There is no religion that has a monopoly on bigotry.

I don't feel that as human beings we have an obligation to dislike someone based on their beliefs, and it's OK to have a human reaction to someone even if you feel what they do is hideous and objectionable. You can still enjoy their company and find them interesting to be around.

There is no shame is being ambivalent about almost everything in your life.

For publicity purposes, everything gets simplified, and the fact that I wear glasses and am somewhat bookish makes me a geek. That's fine; there needs to be a shorthand, but there are important geek traits that I don't really share.

Some things should remain private.

In west London where I live, white people are a minority. In the area I am in, which is the borough of Brent, whites are less than 50%.

I tell people I live in Harlesden in north-west London, and I can see them thinking, 'Why do you live there?'

It's difficult to describe the weirdness of speaking to a man who appears to be perfectly in control of his faculties, who can deliver off-the-cuff repartee, and yet who is actually utterly disconnected from who he is.

I've always slightly harboured a dream of making a film, a documentary feature. Somehow, I just got into a way of working a routine of making TV docs.

I have been to a few A-list parties, but not massively. It's not my life, but it's fun dipping into it.

Prisons and jails, I tend to feel that you're actually safer as a journalist than you might think, certainly more than it appears.

Sometimes you shoot for 40 or 50 hours for a one-hour show, and you have to make some very hard choices.

I both admired my father and his writing, and I saw how much he valued it.

There's obviously a lot of controversy around the issue of hunting as there is around gambling, and I like these stories where there is a moral dimension, stories that force you to think about your prejudices about a subject and explore the extent to which they are justified.

I am always drawn to things that feel different to what I would experience at home: things that offer a combination of unfamiliarity and a sort of bleak glamour. I think the outback has that.

I'm not trying to acquire a reputation as serious documentary maker for its own sake.

I think people are so immersed in the anti-Scientology mindset by consuming tabloid media and stories about space aliens. It's baffling. When I say I want to see a more positive side of the church, all I'm saying is I want to get past these headlines that talk about aliens and Tom Cruise jumping on a sofa.

I'm following my interests, and there's something about investigating the world and creating a watchable, entertaining programme out of it that is deeply satisfying.

I think everybody carries a slight sense of being different, and I know that it comes very naturally to me.

I've got an interest in Zimbabwe. I spent a few months there before uni, so I'd like to get back to that.

After studying the subject for years, watching countless YouTube videos of Scientology handlers filming critics and journalists, it felt amazing to be on the receiving end myself: I felt like I'd been blooded.

I've always seen TV as... it didn't occupy the same rarefied space as literature, but it's art you can use day to day. I've never been hung up on where it figures in the hierarchy of learning.

There are fear mongers who talk about Islam as somehow it is an incubator of hate... remember Christians, like the Westboro Baptist Church, are just as capable of promoting intolerance.

You can talk to someone relatively famous, and they say, 'What do you do? What do you do for a job?' and I say, 'I make documentaries for the BBC,' and you see their eyes just glaze over.

L.A. is the opposite of Britain in a lot of respects, and that's what draws so many British people here.

You can say, 'I am a poet, rock-climbing shaman, and my name is Hiawatha Moonbeam,' and people in America will say, 'Hey, that's great. All power to you, man'.

I'm not that comfortable doing polemic or being strident.

I think what I'm good at is getting to know people and trying to build a relationship over a few weeks and trying to get to the truth.

I don't like that feeling of holding back difficult questions. I feel like the more I can be transparent in the way I approach a story, the more it makes a satisfying programme.

I never misrepresent my position - you've got to be strong enough to make the argument and marshal the case.

Sometimes I feel a bit socially disconnected in terms of being a little bit gullible about how people interrelate emotionally.

Arguably, there's an emotional side of life that I'm not always completely plugged into.

Clearly I'm able to read emotions. But I do feel... What is it? Awkwardness. I'm not a slick dude. That's what it comes down to. The nakedness, the guilelessness... that's quite real.

Most people feel that they are the heroes of their own lives and that they're good people. So if they're in a crisis, they feel an understandable urge to set out their own version of events.