In February, at the end of the 10th series, I’ll be hanging up my cork-adorned hat and handing Wanted over to a new team. And it’s fair to say my three and a half years on the show have been as much of a roller-coaster ride as the emotional journeys our families experience on the show.

Sending 20 families and four producers every year to the other side of the world for an intensive period of filming certainly comes with its own unique set of challenges – from dealing with kids falling off airport trolleys to losing expensive kit at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Here’s how I personally managed to (mostly) avoid disaster during my time on the show.

1. Plan, plan, plan

With just two days between each of our families departing Australia and the next one arriving, ensuring everything sticks to schedule is key. 

Even just getting our families down under can cause problems. One year we had a frantic phone call from parents to say our travel company had helpfully booked their two young children on a separate flight from their mum and dad. And this year, a producer turned up to film a family arriving in Adelaide only to discover their flight had been delayed by eight hours in Malaysia. With no room for slippage, that meant they were filming well into the night – not ideal after an exhausting long haul flight!

2. Always have a back-up

Once we’ve chosen our families and organised their trip, experience has taught us that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll end up appearing on the show. 

Over my time on the show we’ve lost families due to illnesses, bosses refusing to grant time off, cold feet about appearing on TV, and even unfortunately couples separating (not once, but twice).

It means a mad scramble to cancel flights, find a family to jet off to Australia at almost impossibly short notice, and research, set up and complete all their filming in the UK before the producer leaves for down under. Back-up families are a requirement when casting now!

3. Having a good team is everything…

I’ve been very lucky on Wanted to work with some really talented producers. The show requires not only good technical skills (all our producers film the shows themselves, apart from in New Zealand where we use a cameraman) but also being on call for families day or night. 

Like the producer one year – who on a rare day off – got a call from a distraught mum in floods of tears. Her family had become lost on their way to the airport and spent two hours driving round Auckland in circles. After jumping in her own car and eventually tracking them down, our producer led them out to the airport and merrily waved them on their way as they caught their flight in the nick of time.

4. …but remember they’re only human!

Possibly the biggest challenge we faced making this year’s series was when one of our producers in Australia was taken ill. We had no choice but to get him home quickly, but with only three days before the next family was due to arrive, we suddenly faced having no one to make the show.

Getting someone to Australia in time wasn’t an option. So thus began a weekend of more frantic phone calls, desperately trying to track down a producer in Australia who’d be in the right city at the right time and be able to get up to speed in the show over the course of a weekend.

Amazingly, thanks to the efforts of our production manager, we managed to pull it off. Copies of the show were sent via email, and I had telephone conversations to explain the format. The producer we hired did a cracking job, and come January when those episodes air on BBC One, hopefully they won’t look any different for viewers!

5. Don’t put your phone on 'do not disturb' at night

Unfortunately four teams shooting on the other side of the world simultaneously means a good night’s sleep isn’t guaranteed. Previous Wanted series producers swap tales of how many times they’ve been woken when something’s gone awry in Australia.

I got off pretty lightly – with only three mid-slumber calls. One was from an alarmed producer who on bringing a family to their accommodation for the week found it flea-ridden and filthy. Mum was in tears – understandably after their flight all they wanted to do was sleep in clean surroundings. Managing somehow to be coherent at 3.30am, we thankfully got them re-accommodated quickly.

My most recent early AM call? A producer whose phone developed a habit of calling me randomly from his pocket. We soon put a stop to that!

While I am looking forward to having my phone on silent while I sleep, and not checking my emails bleary-eyed before I’m even out of bed in the morning, I will miss being a part of the show. Out of the 70 families that have made the trip down under since I started on the series, almost 30 have either made the move or are in the throes of doing it. As we say in the office it really is a show that changes lives.

Simon Miller is series producer on Wanted Down Under.

Wanted Down Under, series 10, continues on Tuesday, 5 January at 11am on BBC One. Each episode will be available to watch in BBC iPlayer for 30 days after broadcast on TV.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

When is the last time you went on holiday together? 

Romesh: Last time I went on holiday with my mum was when we went to Canada to see some family.

Shanthi: When we arrived at the airport, my relations came to pick us up, and the first thing they said was: ‘Romesh looks exactly like his father’, which brought me to tears. But just spending time with Romesh in Canada was such a wonderful experience. And the way he looked after me when I was there was fantastic.

Romesh: I’m a really good son.

Shanthi: He’s a really good boy. He has got so much love in him, but he doesn’t know how to express it. But when I went to Canada and when we went to Sri Lanka, I was thinking what a lovely boy he is. 

Romesh: You can’t put any of this in by the way. I’m going to look like a right idiot.

Shanthi: No I’m telling the truth! It’s how I felt as a mother.

Romesh: Yeah but it makes me look like a…

Shanthi: No it doesn’t make you look like a mummy’s boy. It’s an inspiration for everybody because your mother is important to you.

Romesh: Yeah I’m a great guy.

Shanthi: Maybe. I’m very comfortable talking to Romesh about anything. Since my husband passed away we’ll have long chats, and he’s such a wonderful, kind person and I can ask him anything. I don’t feel sad, because when I think about Romesh he’s there for me. All the time. It’s such a nice feeling.

What’s your funniest memory of each other?

Romesh: When we were coming back from Canada, mum’s got a Sri Lankan passport, and the guy at customs looked at it and said: ‘You don’t have permission to return to the UK’. So I told him: ‘Well she does, she lives there’. And he said: ‘Not according to this passport. She’s not allowed to go back to the UK.’ And mum just started freaking out!

It was not funny at the time, but it was hilarious afterwards because then he just turned the page and went: ‘Oh wait, yes you do’.

Shanthi: Yeah it was shocking!

Romesh: It’s like, read the whole document! And mum was just freaking out. She’s like (adopts his mum’s Sri Lankan accent): ‘I’m going to kick him in his face! Read the whole bloody passport!’

Shanthi: Yes that worried me so much, I’m frightened to go to Canada again because of that experience. But the thing is in that moment we couldn’t say anything, because he could say: ‘No, you have to be investigated’ or something. So I kept my mouth shut.

Romesh: Yeah but then afterwards… (in mum’s accent): ‘I hope that man loses his job!’

Shanthi: I didn’t say that!

How did it feel to be part of a show together?

Shanthi: To work together with Romesh I found it very comfortable. He’d tell me: ‘This is what we are going to do mum.’ So I just carried on. I didn’t feel nervous or anything at all.

Romesh: The thing is that the whole point of the show is that we’re just like…

Shanthi: Shouting at each other.

Romesh: No not shouting at each other, I mean that just happened to happen, but basically it’s not a lot like doing a TV show because you’re just having these experiences, and we were chatting about them, and we were just filming it. So it was easy in that regard. 

But mum was very good, she just got into it and she wasn’t nervous around the cameras and stuff, she was just herself which is exactly what we wanted.

Shanthi: What a compliment Romesh, thank you! I was surprised with myself that I wasn’t nervous at all.

Romesh: Let’s be absolutely honest mum, you do see yourself having a TV career. The crew told her that she was very good, she started quietly going to me: ‘I do believe they think I’m very good Rommy’. 

I think for her, in an ideal world, series two would not involve me. It would be a spin-off show where mum’s like: ‘So we got rid of Romesh and now we can really get into the show.’ 

Shanthi: No, no, no (laughing) that’s what Romesh thinks! But I really enjoyed working with him. It was a fantastic, lovely experience. Sometimes I became emotional, thinking, ‘My god, I’m with my son, and they are filming me’, and then I have to control myself and get back to reality.

And the other thing is that he went and did all the spiritual things like going to the temple. He’s a religious boy. I never forced him to believe in anything. We are Hindu and Romesh always prays before he leaves the home. So I bless him with all my heart. It makes me cry sometimes, he’s such a wonderful son to have.

Romesh: I mean, mum, this is way over the top now. I’m supposed to be a comedian!

Shanthi: I’m telling you the truth Romesh, I don’t want to hide it. You know sometimes when you are facing each other it’s very difficult to express your feelings. You feel embarrassed. But I can’t see you now so I can say how I feel about you and the things I wanted to say. It’s a good opportunity for me.

Romesh: I think this interview was a mistake, I’m beginning to realise.

Shanthi: Is it? OK. Do you want me to keep my mouth shut?

Romesh: No! I’m joking, I’m joking.

Romesh, your mum describes you as a coconut in the first episode (white on the inside). What fruit would you say you are?

Romesh: I think I’m a mango. Just very sweet and lovely.

Shanthi: How can you call yourself a mango?! Darling you’re a coconut I tell you.

Romesh: And I would describe my mum as a pomegranate. No, a passion fruit, like, quite sour.

Shanthi: Oh! Thank you so much.

Romesh: She’s a lemon, my mum’s a lemon! Put that down.

Shanthi: Well when you do something wrong, I’m the only person who can correct you. Sometimes you take it in the wrong way and you don’t like it. But who else is going to tell you?

Romesh: Yeah, alright, thanks mum. You’re a lovely lemon.

Romesh Ranganathan is a comedian. He and his mum Shanthi appear in Asian Provocateur. 

Asian Provocateur continues on Wednesday, 7 October at 10pm on BBC Three. Each episode will be available in BBC iPlayer for 30 days after broadcast on TV.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

It sometimes felt like a scene from the Humphrey Bogart film the African Queen: we were on this boat, living in this strange place between land and sea.We had a local cook on board making Bangladeshi dishes, so we really got a flavour of the place.

We met the hero of the story – Jalal - and his family, and needed a little bit of time with them without the cameras, to build a relationship and explain how filming would work. It’s a very remote part of Bangladesh, so they’ve had very little contact with westerners. 

When tigers attack

Before we left for the mangroves we went to a few people’s huts and houses to meet tiger attack victims and film their stories.

In episode two, you see one of the men who had been attacked by a tiger: he was down by the water when a tiger jumped out, grabbed his head and tried to pull him in. He fought him off and was left with a very nasty scar and his ear had been ripped off. 

There was another man who had lost his entire face. You don’t really see it in the programme because it’s so shocking. When we met him, he had a tea towel over his face. He was so brave, and had never shown anybody, not even his mother, his injury. He was from a nearby village and had travelled to explain the dangers of the mangroves.

Meeting him really brought home how common these attacks were, and reminded methat we had to be very well prepared and think about our and safety when venturing into the forest.

The morning that the honey collectors left, they said a movingprayer for safe passage, and all the women and children gathered to watch. It was strangely sombre. There’s a lot of anxiety about the dangers. Every one of the eight persons in the boat we were following knew a friend or a relative who had been killed by a tiger. You could see the fear in the eyes of the wives and family as they waved goodbye on the shore.

Entering the mangroves

It was extremely challenging when the boats headed off, as they go at quite a pace. They are rowing by hand but we found it hard to keep up – and we had an old motor!

Over the next week we travelled with the honey collectors as they ventured further and further into this mysterious lost world of the mangroves: here you feel completely isolated and alone.

As soon as you jump off the boat onto land, your heart starts to go, as you just don’t know where the tigers are. While we were there, I saw many freshtiger prints which is an indication that they were close. They could have been just metres away. It makes you nervous.

 

Finding the honey

The moment when we actually found a hive was fantastic. The honey collectors had been looking so long without success. To collect the honey, they use palms from the mangroves to create smoking torches to make it seem like the forest is on fire so the bees scatter.

The Giant Asian Honey Bee is seriously dangerous, and if they get spooked before you’ve smoked them, they can attack. To get close enough I had to wear a full bee suit with a mesh across the face. You can’t see very well, so trying to hold a camera and film people collecting honey with swarming bees everywhere - it’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to document.

 

Returning home

When we got back safely, Jalal’s family were absolutely delighted. His young wife was so relieved just to have him back alive because she had a newborn baby, and there are many tiger widows in the village.

The people of the Sundarbans  were so patient and so warm towards us. I’ve filmed all over the world and without a shadow of a doubt my favourite time was filming in the mangroves of Bangladesh because they were such beautiful people, totally unspoiled by the madness of the western world. It’s a place I’ll never forget.

Nick Shoolingin-Jordan is the director and producer of Earth's Natural Wonders: Living on the Edge.

Earth's Natural Wonders: Living on the Edge continues on Wednesday, 12 August at 9pm on BBC One. Each episode will be available in BBC iPlayer for 30 days after broadcast on TV.

All photographs are reproduced with kind permission from Nick Shoolingin-Jordan.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

No doubt some of our intrepid ancestors would been just as excited by the thought of the adventure as well. Although we've got it easy today compared with them.

Pilgrims of the past had to travel by foot, on horseback or by boat on perilous sea crossings. All the while they had to avoid robbers, disease, hunger and exhaustion.

Health and safety guidelines wouldn't allow us to give Simon a taste of all these things but as a traveller himself he had always wanted to retrace the footsteps of our pilgrim ancestors.

Working with Simon was great fun. He's happy to throw himself into any situation and has that adventurer spirit which is shared by pilgrims of the past and present.

Neither of us are religious and I think when we set off on this journey, across the mud flats to Lindisfarne, we weren't sure what to expect or what we'd find.

It's raw nature out in the North Sea and we experienced some of the harshest filming conditions on the entire shoot, strong winds being the biggest factor and especially challenging for a sound recordist.

We had hoped to catch a lift with some local fishermen back to the mainland but the conditions made it too dangerous. Mind you looking through a camera while bobbing around isn't much fun.

The stunning beauty of Lindisfarne and that entire stretch of coastline more than makes up for its harsh climate.

No wonder our ancestors chose this spot to be closer to God.

Making a travel documentary means that you're constantly on the move. Just when you're settling in to one place, you're off to the next.

With long car, train and plane journeys the crew gets to know each other pretty well. For me that's one of the best things about being on the road but I draw the line at playing 'I spy'.

My colleague Damian O'Mahony took over directing the next leg of the journey to Rome but I joined up with Simon in Istanbul to film the final leg to Jerusalem.

I would recommend this journey to anyone, religious or not. So much of our own history and culture comes from this part of the world.

A particular highlight for me was meeting a group of Greek Orthodox monks at the Mar Saba monastery in the West Bank.

Very few film crews are allowed inside and although we managed to get beyond the front gates we were unable to show you the extraordinary 1500-year-old chapel adorned with hundreds of skulls of monks, martyred in holy wars.

Behind a thick curtain we were shown another dark room packed with bones on which was placed more skulls.

We were then taken to the main chapel where we saw the partially preserved body of St Sabbas, a devout Christian who founded the monastery in the middle of the desert.

Although macabre it was actually very moving and although I would have loved to have shown you these sights, perhaps in hindsight some places are better left as sacred.

And so we finally made it to Jerusalem, but not with the blisters that have accompanied so many pilgrims who made it this far over the centuries.

It's an amazing place to film and a dream for directors. Lots of atmospheric, narrow streets with pilgrims from the major Abrahamic faiths all making their way to their sacred sites.

If like me you're a bit of a people watcher, then Jerusalem is a great place to be.

Our final destination here was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

On arrival priests scurried us into the sepulchre itself, allowing us just a few precious minutes to get the shots we needed while other visitors waited for their turn.

It suddenly dawned on me that I was standing on the spot where Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead.

If the camera is a bit wobbly at this point it's because it's hard not to feel an enormous sense of awe at the significance of this spot. Fortunately Simon held his nerve better than me.

Chris Mitchell produced and directed episode one and episode three of Pilgrimage With Simon Reeve.

Pilgrimage With Simon Reeve is on Tuesday, 3 December at 9pm on BBC Two and BBC Two HD, and 11.20pm on BBC Two Scotland. For further programme times please see the episode guide.

More on Pilgrimage With Simon Reeve
BBC: Watch an interview with Simon Reeve 
BBC News: The man who carries a 25kg cross everywhere
The Telegraph: Simon Reeve: A pilgrim's progress
The Daily Mail: Simon Reeve reveals how he was moved to tears making a series on ancient pilgrims

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC. 

Director Ben Whalley was always adamant that this wouldn’t be a programme full of stars on stages, he wanted housewives and children and family parties.

But would anybody allow us to come and film them in their homes and would our cameras somehow interfere with the genuineness of the event?

There is something of a Catch-22 situation for the foreign flamenco aficionado who pays to see flamenco on a stage and thus allows flamenco artists to live off their art and for the flamenco way of life to survive.

But at the same time he secretly suspects that he is seeing the sanitised version and the real stuff happens when the foreigners clear off and the real party gets going.

Luckily people were incredibly willing to invite us to enjoy their performances at their homes and their parties on our journey around Andalusia from Malaga, to Granada, Seville, Jerez and Cadiz.

They were incredibly generous and hospitable and they seemed to be keen to show us this lesser known side of flamenco by fostering a real party atmosphere.

I don’t believe that any of the flamenco we saw was in any way tame: every artist seemed to pour their heart and soul into their performances to the point where some of the most emotionally susceptible members of the team, ie presenter Elizabeth Kinder and myself, were moved to tears from the sheer intensity of the singing.

The first time I saw a real flamenco party was in the blacksmith’s forge in Cabra. The owner of the forge had invited all his friends over. The wine was flowing.

It was here that I realised how much fun flamenco could be and witnessed the sense of camaraderie amongst the men as they shouted encouragement at each other.

The five of us, the cameraman Ric Clark, sound man Ariel Sultan, Ben, Elizabeth and I were blown away by their renditions of the Bulerías – a more festive, humorous style of flamenco so different to the more emotionally charged and serious songs we had heard up to that point on the trip.

At dusk when we had packed up the cameras the men were lighting a bonfire to cook their steaks on and they broke into a song.

There was a part of us that wished we could quickly grab the cameras and preserve yet another incredible moment but none of us moved, we knew that this was just for us to see and it felt like a gift.

What we had filmed was already so special and perhaps we had to be resigned to not being able to capture every moment.

We left thrilled with what we had done but reluctantly all the same; as we packed up the van we could still hear them and we knew they would be there singing and dancing long into the night.

Laura Kaye is the assistant producer of Flamenco: Gypsy Soul.

Flamenco: Gypsy Soul is on Sunday, 25 August at 9pm on BBC Four.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Back in our normal English life I’ve got four kids and I also work part time. So I don’t have the time, or the will, to devote such an abundance of time to cleaning.

I was surprised at how few German mums work. On average two-thirds of mums with children under three don’t work compared to a third in the UK. Why?

It seems a combination of financial incentives, short school days and cultural expectation is what keeps German mothers out of the workplace and this might make sense of the extremely low numbers of women in top jobs.

The UK hadn’t previously struck me as an especially easy place to be a working mum but at least I generally don’t feel frowned upon. It’s hard enough to balance work and family, without feeling guilty about it.

And I believe that keeping a foot in the door by working part time can make it easier for women to get a career back on track later on.

Although I was a failure at the hausfrau gig our other adventures in Germanising were a resounding success.

We learnt to save more money (on average Germans save 10% of their monthly wage, the British only manage 1%) and to relax more together as a family.

Both of these are skills I’d love to bring back into our British lives. Plus the six-year-old loved her Waldkindergarten. This is a forest nursery where children play, eat, sing and run wild outdoors whatever the weather, all year round.

Germany exports more than all its neighbours, indeed it’s the third largest exporter in the world, but they still manage to have shorter average working days. They also have less household debt.

Discovering how they pull all this off was a great adventure and our German neighbours helped us along with kindness and good humour.

And while I may not have cut it on the housework front I’m happy to report that I did score full marks on pork and beer consumption!

Bee Rowlatt is the co-presenter of Make Me A German.

Make Me A German is on Tuesday, 6 August at 9pm on BBC Two and BBC Two HD.  

More on Make Me A German
The Telegraph: The reluctant hausfrau: being a German mother
The Telegraph: What we can learn from the Germans

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

You either talk to Robin, the head of communications or his assistant Michele. There’s nobody else. But, amazingly, I found they were almost always at their desks and answering their phones.

In the age of email, when it’s often impossible to actually talk to someone, it was a refreshing change.

Direct communication is in Ryanair’s DNA. Chief executive Michael O’Leary, has an aversion to anything which interrupts what he calls “a culture of action” – including such new-fangled technology as voicemail.

I once called Howard Millar, the deputy chief executive and got this blunt message: “You have been forwarded to a voicemail system. The person you are calling does not subscribe to this service. Goodbye.”

In other words, try again later and waste your time not mine.

And although Ryanair staff do use email, they are strongly discouraged from sending emails instead of walking down the office and talking to the person they’re dealing with.

The founder of Ryanair’s biggest low cost rival in the UK, easyJet, shares O’Leary’s desire to keep things simple.

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou says he had the advantage of not knowing much about the airline business when he launched easyJet.

That’s why he didn’t take no for an answer when he asked his staff to sell the drinks and refreshments on board.

“It sounds trivial but when I went to the catering company and said I wanted to sell coffee on the aeroplane, they said we don’t have a way of selling coffee. Nobody has done it before... So I said, 'Let’s find a way of selling coffee.'"

Stelios and O’Leary were both larger than life characters, always ready with a soundbite and happy to play the role of underdog in relation to the established airlines.

The media lapped up the competition between these new pioneers of low cost travel and the established airlines.

Stelios stopped chairing easyJet more than 10 years ago, so we met in his London townhouse.

My colleague Erica Gornall and I were ushered into the front room, and told by Stelios’ head of communications where he liked to be filmed (in front of the marble fireplace).

In fact, he’s not keen on interviews these days, and it took us five months of gentle persuasion before we were allowed to bring our camera along.

Stelios now runs easyGroup, which is a collection of businesses spun off from the original easyJet idea. But easyJet is still the giant.

As its biggest shareholder with more than a billion pounds worth of equity, Stelios says, with a smile, he still keeps an eye on the business.

At easyJet headquarters in a converted hanger at Luton Airport, there’s still a palpable no frills culture.

Chief executive Carolyn MacCall shares a desk with her PA at the edge of acres of other staff, underneath live screens running tickers of the latest numbers of seats sold.

O’Leary does have his own office, or rather, he works in the conference room, from where he can survey his colleagues through a window. But he’s not grand.

There’s a shed behind the Ryanair office which sells pre-packed sandwiches and soft drinks.

I stopped there for a snack while we were filming, and the woman behind the counter told me that O’Leary was in most days to buy his lunch to take back to the office.

Stelios and O’Leary have a mutual respect. O’Leary told us that Stelios should be given credit for not living off the fortune he would have inherited from his shipping tycoon father.

And Stelios told us that O’Leary had done well to improve his financial position at Ryanair.

“I think Michael is undoubtedly a very clever man. It’s amazing how he managed to get the founder of Ryanair, the late Tony Ryan... to gift him such a big part of the company.”

He adds with a chuckle, “but timing is everything, and he was in the right place at the right time.”

It hasn’t always been like that between them. There was a legal dispute which O’Leary, characteristically, offered to settle with a race round Trafalgar Square - why waste the chance for some free publicity?

When Stelios said he might find himself at a disadvantage in such a contest, O’Leary refused to spare Stelios’ blushes and suggested he’d be happy to try sumo wrestling instead.

If most businessmen were as outspoken and colourful as Stelios and O’Leary, business journalism would be a much livelier, and easier, trade.

Charles Miller is the director and producer of Flights And Fights: Inside The Low Cost Airlines.

Flights And Fights: Inside The Low Cost Airlines is on at 9pm on Thursday, 20 June on BBC Two and BBC Two HD.

More on Flights And Fights: Inside The Low Cost Airlines
BBC News: Ryanair and Easyjet: The history of the peanut airlines

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Bill first heard about Wallace 15 years ago when he was birdwatching in Indonesia and he's been fascinated by his story ever since.

Wallace was a bug collector who spent eight years travelling through Borneo and Indonesia in the 1850s, seeing orangutans, flying frogs and birds of paradise.

And in a malarial fever he came up with one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time – the theory of evolution by natural selection (independently of Charles Darwin). Bill's determined to get Wallace recognised alongside Darwin.

Filming for the series took us from the deep jungles of Borneo to the remote and exotic Spice Islands.

As one of the producers, I was keen to get a sense of what life was like for the Victorian explorer.

And it was on the volcanic island of Ternate – Wallace's base for three years – that I believe we got our best insight.

Wallace had to get permission to explore from the sultan of the islands and now, 160 years on, Bill had to obtain his permission for us to film.

We weren't quite sure what to expect from our meeting with the sultan of Ternate, organised through our location fixer.

We'd been told he was a somewhat eccentric character and a great fan of Wallace but other than that we had few details.

"Arrive at the palace at 9am", we'd been informed, "and look smart" (not the easiest thing for a film crew recently emerged from the jungle!).

As we approached the gates it was clear the sultan had organised quite a welcoming party.

Guards with golden shields and spears were there to greet us. Courtiers in ceremonial tunics lined the route. There was a great sense of occasion – and a very real connection with Wallace's journey.

This was the same palace he visited when he first arrived in Ternate in 1858 – and apart from the bright pink steps, little had changed.

Although I knew visiting the sultan was an important part of our story, I was concerned that a formal interview might feel stuffy – out of character with the rest of the film.

My fears were allayed as soon as we stepped inside the palace.

Seated on a vast throne, and flanked by his courtiers, the sultan first enquired whether Bill was from the government.

When Bill explained he was in fact a comedian, the sultan insisted he tell some jokes after the meeting. At this point even the courtiers cracked a smile.

The sultan was passionate about Wallace and genuinely proud of the naturalist's links with Ternate.

He was outraged that Wallace wasn't better known in England. And he was happy to give us his approval to go in search of birds of paradise on a neighbouring island he controlled.

The meeting had been a success. But there was one last surprise. As we were about to leave, the sultan asked if we’d like to see his crown – or mahkota.

I had heard that it held magical powers but was somewhat taken aback when the sultan told us it was covered in tiny hairs – that grow!

From a few feet away I couldn't see any evidence, but the sultan insisted the hairs grow so rapidly the crown needs a haircut once a year!

It was a surreal ending to my first audience with a sultan – and a genuine insight in to the extraordinary world Wallace experienced more than 150 years ago.

Sam Hodgson produced episode two of Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero.

Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero starts with Wallace In Borneo on Sunday at 8pm on BBC Two and BBC Two HD. For further programme times please see the episode guide.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Justin Rowlatt gives the bread van a go at Ordos International Race Track in China

As the assistant producer on China On Four Wheels one of my tasks was to find the cars for our two road trips.

With bread vans so common I wasn't expecting it to be hard to find one for our presenter Justin Rowlatt.

Justin was to drive the bread van through the dusty back roads through the remote, poor west to explore life for those left behind by the boom.

In contrast our co-presenter Anita Rani was to drive a luxury Chinese-made Great Wall 4x4, or SUV on the high road through the industrialised east looking at how the economic boom was changing lives for China's 'haves'.

SUVs are the car of choice for status-conscious Chinese urbanites.

Great Wall is China's biggest manufacturer of SUVs. It started selling in the UK this year although it only made its first car 10 years ago.

But days into my search I had got nowhere.

Due to the bewildering idiosyncrasies of the Chinese bureaucracy we were obliged to find rental cars for our presenters: their temporary driving licences wouldn't allow them to drive privately owned cars.

So I was looking for Beijing rental companies stocking these cars and more importantly, willing to rent them to foreigners on a filming trip across a country the size of a continent.

Rental companies are new to China but they've grown rapidly. The biggest players have fleets of thousands - but they laughed at us.

"Why would you want a Chinese car? Why not a Buick or a Toyota? They're much better quality than the Chinese makes."

In a country where the car you drive is a badge of status, the majority of cars bought in China are foreign brands.

Anita Rani meets members of the China Supercar Club in Beijing

Just days before the filming was due to start we found a small SUV club on the outskirts of Beijing.

The club organises 'self-driving' tours, helping a new breed of Chinese holiday-makers to shun the coach tour for a more independent experience.

To our relief among their plethora of imported Jeeps and Mitsubishis was a Great Wall.

But the bread van? The search got more obscure and the response increasingly scornful.

"It's the car of the people", we pleaded. But not the car of status-conscious Beijingers it turns out.

Luckily we then found Xu Shiqiang, 'Boss Xu', who you'll see in episode one, and his company Dongfang.

Mr Xu agreed to buy a bread van for us, register it as a rental car, and then rent it back to us.

Convoluted and bureaucratic certainly, but a solution. After weeks of searching we breathed another sigh of relief.

And did the bread van make it around China? It's not the car of the people for nothing! Small, idiosyncratic and slightly tin-pot, our loaf-shaped van quietly got the job done.

Justin gets stuck in a traffic jam, China style

Across China we'd met people from all walks of life wanting big gas-guzzlers - flashy and foreign if possible - despite all this entails for China's already congested and polluted cities.

Of course we in the West aren't immune to the allure of showy cars - so it was a surprise then, and a salutary one, that Justin's bread van became the star of the show.

Jane McMullen is the assistant producer on China On Four Wheels.

China On Four Wheels is on Sunday, 9 September at 8pm on BBC Two and BBC HD. For further programme times, please see the episode guide.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Hannibal's Carthage was fighting Rome for the domination of the Mediterranean. They had lost the first great war to the Romans and Hannibal planned to restore Carthaginian pride and prestige with this audacious march.

Sam's plan wasn't so audacious but it was slightly ambitious. He suggested we film it and we hadn't made a "film" together since I was 12 and Sam starred as Chuck Norris (it's very embarrassing - you can watch it on YouTube).

Luckily our other brother, Danny, came to the rescue. He was working as a journalist in Madrid and his contacts at the BBC loved Sam's idea.

So, after an involved commissioning process and an exhausting yet exhilarating two and a half month film shoot/cycle ride, we are now on the brink of transmission and thrilled that the plan came together. Thanks mostly to the fantastic crew we worked with.

Before we left to start our epic cycle though, I was a little worried about what I had gotten myself into. The cycling wasn't so much of a concern - I had done similar trips to this before - but the TV presenting was an unknown quantity.

I've worked as a software developer most of my life so I'm more comfortable joking with computer nerds about how to set the laser printer to stun than talking to a camera about an ancient Carthaginian general.

I love riding and I love cycle touring - I can't get enough of the freedom and the satisfaction you get at the end of a hard day of riding - but I was very nervous about talking to the camera. At the same time I was very curious about how you go about making a documentary.

I tried as best I could to prepare myself mentally and physically for the journey. My brothers and I were living in different parts of the world at this time so we spent endless hours on Skype discussing everything from which pass Hannibal may have used to cross the Alps to what sort of brakes we should have on our bikes.

I was in Sydney, in our native Australia, and in between work and reading everything I could about Hannibal, I followed a strengthening programme in the hope it would stave off injury during filming. I also cycled absolutely everywhere and went for long training rides a few times a week.

Before I knew it we were arriving in Murcia airport where we were met by our location manager Jason. He had illegally, but conveniently, parked our support vehicle which doubled as the crew's living quarters right outside the front door of the airport.

I initially thought this is what happens when you are on a film shoot - you do whatever you like - ignore all the rules for the sake of art. I started to get a little carried away, thinking innocent bystanders and local laws had to bend to accommodate artists and the cultural vanguard we represented.

But just as I was about to demand a nearby civilian carry my bike box for me (and get me a mineral water) I noticed Jason was busy fending off a few different sorts of Spanish parking police. It turned out the camper van was just too big to get into the car park. So we packed it up as quickly as we could and headed off to Cartagena without a parking ticket.

This was one of the most enjoyable parts of the trip. Everything was new. I was excited about starting the journey.

The local Spanish were so welcoming and friendly. We hung out with the crew who were all so engaging and entertaining - they would all make way better TV presenters, I thought.

We quickly came to appreciate the effort it takes to put together a TV documentary. Filming requires patience, imagination and expertise - qualities the crew had in abundance. And what I had imagined was going to be a physically strenuous but mentally soothing touring bike holiday quickly became an intense film shoot plus demanding cycle ride.

We had 10 weeks to cover 2,500 miles and film three hours of documentary. So a full day of filming followed by 60 miles on a fully laden touring bike meant we would arrive at our campsite completely and utterly exhausted.

One of the lowest points on the trip was after just such a day. We pitched our tents in a hungry and frazzled silence and realised all too late we had chosen the local dog poo park for a campsite!

There were so many more high moments on the trip than lows though and hopefully that will be obvious in the programme. I hope you enjoy it. All comments are very welcome!

Ben Wood is the co-presenter of On Hannibal's Trail.

On Hannibal's Trail starts at 8.30pm on Monday, 19 June on BBC Four. To find out tranmission times for all episodes, please visit the upcoming episodes page.

On Hannibal's Trail is part of The Call Of The Wild, a season of programmes on BBC Four.