Nobody ever forgets their first night in the bush. It's among the precious, meagre handful of life firsts that remain indelible.

Television gives us the gift to see ourselves as we'd like to be seen.

Nobody ever forgets their first night in the bush. It's among the precious, meagre handful of life firsts that remain indelible.

It's a great historical joke that when the Spanish met the Aztecs, it was a blind date made in serve-you-right heaven. At the time, they were the two most unpleasant cultures in the entire world, and richly deserved each other. Still, the story of how stout Cortes blustered, bullied and bludgeoned his way to collapsing an entire empire with a handful of contagious hoodlums is astonishing.

Making a programme that appears to condone a positive stereotype actually enforces all the negative ones as well. It says that they all have a valid point. To assert that Americans are naive, Germans humourless and the French arrogant is one thing: they're big enough to take it. But to say that there's a conspiracy of Jewish bankers, that gypsies are thieves, Pakistanis are dirty and refugees are muggers is something quite else.

The truth and the facts aren't necessarily the same thing. Telling the truth is the object of all art; facts are what the unimaginative have instead of ideas.

Sport is how poor kids from poor countries pass through the eye of the needle to riches and recognition.