To me it's always interesting. No matter what you think of China, you're never going to be bored. The Russian nightclub in Beijing, Chocolate, where the doorman is a dwarf, which has these huge reproductions of European masters on the ceiling. How can you not take advantage of that? I mean, I can't make this stuff up.

I was really p***ed off about Iraq and the war on terror. [I was inspired] by Jessica Lynch who joined the National Guard because she couldn't get a job at Wal-Mart and accidentally found herself in combat. Also by Lynndie England who was complicit in this [Abu Ghraib] torture and abuse and, as it turned out, was also from a poor family, from a trailer park.

She's raised by a single mum; is smart but not academic. Being a medic is one thing she is very good at. She is in this situation which is above her pay grade and doesn't know how to handle it.

Ellie was more like me when I was younger. I think she's braver than I am and probably more stubborn than I am.

I'm profoundly annoyed by the intrusion of religion into political and private life. During the Bush years, this fervent religiosity that got injected into the public debate was disturbing. "God bless our fighting planes" or whatever. The complicity of a certain kind of Christianity in war, that doesn't really fit my conception of Jesus or his message.

I wanted to and I just kind of chickened out. They really do not take kindly to visiting people who might be journalists.

With Guiyu we can't let ourselves off the hook because the pollution comes primarily from electronics from the US and the industrialised world.

It's going to take place right after the second. [It's going to look at] the billionaire art collector and his three kids, one of whom has fallen in with a shady expat American.