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.

I feel like, if there's an elephant in the room, I'd really like to start off by introducing the elephant in the room. And sometimes it's funny.

When interviews are too cosy, I don't enjoy them.

I just follow the subjects I'm interested in.

I like eating food after it's gone off.

I'm not necessarily scanning for clues when I make documentaries.

As a BBC broadcaster, I really do hope that the new incarnation of 'Top Gear' with Chris Evans does well.

All religions are, in some basic sense, irrational.

I think I have a slight fear of intimacy.

I was always attracted and repelled by the idea of being a writer.

Sometimes people think I'm sort of a Machiavelli who is thinking, 'How can I disarm people? I know: I'll create a persona; I'll get some spectacles, and when I meet you, I'll say, 'How are you doing?' And I will be very unassuming and polite and never get angry.'

I am genuinely slightly vague and chaotic in my habits. For good or ill, you know.

My guilty fear is that what I'm doing, probably anyone could do. And that I just got a lot of lucky breaks.

In the past, I've tried to show the human side of people involved in stigmatised or misunderstood lifestyles. I've tried to resist easy judgments and not pander to prejudices.

I try not to be too judgmental.

If I actually invited someone to make a documentary about me, and I said, 'Anything goes', and then I refused to answer any questions, that would be inconsistent.

I don't think I'm afraid of anything.

I think there's a feeling of - a grassroots feeling of being betrayed by the elites in some way: that the system is working for itself and not for the people at the bottom.

The documentary genre, shows like 'Making a Murderer' and 'The Jinx' on HBO, there's been a whole raft of long-form docs.

When you don't have access to a subject, and all you have is ex-members and critics, there is this gravitational pull toward telling a certain version of events. Scientology would say this, and they have a point, that it's like doing a portrait of a marriage in which you're only hearing from the ex-wife and not the ex-husband.

Funnily enough, the most danger I felt was when I did a story about exotic animals kept as pets in America.

When it was time to meet a chimpanzee, I got very, very anxious because they have the strength of ten men, so I hear.

It's in the DNA of all the shows that I have done that are about people that are dealing with very stressful situations that are giving them a lot of angst.

The trouble is, I just don't know if I'm too human or not human enough.

I've always enjoyed painting, but I went to teach in schools in Zimbabwe instead.

A lot of money could be saved if we ate urban wildlife.