Jon Snow (2015)

My contract forbids me from discussing any of my appearances, but I am still basking in the glow of a red wedding and I love going north!

And I am certain... that winter is coming.

My estimate would be in excess of 100,000 times. And the funny thing is, lots of people still think they're the first person to do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGjH0FL-OoE

Covering the Iran/Iraq war in 1980 without flak jacket and with no security. It was like the First World War.

Although I knew it was massive, 9/11 created a far bigger social and political impact than I imagined at the time.

It cast negative shadows over many Muslim communities and we are all still struggling to reverse that.

I went to Antarctica to see what damage the Falkland War was doing to the place. Answer: None. But there were some fabulous penguins!

I found the atrocity in Paris very difficult. I interviewed a woman doctor who had tended some of the maimed and dying. She managed to contain her own emotions, but I found tears rolling down my face.

That was the way things were done, and there hadn't been a war like it since the First World War with gas, crude heavy artillery, trenches and waves of fifteen-year-olds being slaughtered in their thousands in front of you.

There is no such thing as a neutral human being. I am a man, you may be a woman... what is neutral between us in that regard?

Who you are, your life experience inform what you are, and I try to be balanced, but I can't pretend I am always neutral. I try to be objective, but I accept that sometimes when powerful emotions are in play, this can be very, very hard.

I don't think my political stance has changed since I became a reporter; it was profoundly changed by working as a volunteer teacher on the banks of the river Nile in remotest Uganda.

Well, I think Channel 4 News is holding its own, and I think we do a far better programme than when I began. It's an amazing team, it belongs to you, it costs you nothing. But yes, I think there has been a negative pull on the British media and I blame some of the proprietors for that. I still think the BBC is pretty good and I would defend it to the death, even though I have never worked for it.

Actually, those people who have the opportunity to go to the region and meet and talk with the people who live there, will find it very difficult not to form an affinity with them. They are bright, engaged and under any other circumstances, would be part of one of the most able societies on Earth. That's why I find it easy to report there.

I think 9/11 and the consequent wars have all infected the world we live in to a far greater extent than we even begin to understand.

Getting the job! (this job)

It's quite a depressing scene right now and I'd prefer to die broadcasting.

Well, inevitably, Nelson Mandela. But there are others, too: there was an amazing Norwegian foreign minister called Jonas Gahr Støre, who had a brilliant grasp of world affairs and I reckon could yet be a candidate for Secretary General of the United Nations.

I sure am, and I think this one could be the best one yet

Anywhere I can find them – particularly craft shows – but I have a favourite, who has made ties that I have bought for 30 years, and she's called Victoria Richards and operates out of Peckham – funny? Peckham Rye tie?

I listen to BBC News more than I watch it, and I think BBC radio news and the news-based programming is exceptional. In all honesty, I have television news on my desk from assorted channels, all day, so I have very little appetite to watch any more of it when I get home.

You've been reading my book! Shooting History; still available from Amazon. Yes to the wetsuit. Yes to Idi Amin.

As to the way I prepare, no two days are ever the same. You'd be amazed at the editorial process getting from the meeting at 9am to transmission at 7pm.

That's a wide field — I don't think she was evasive, it's just that Mrs Thatcher used to answer her own questions, so I just asked mine to the wall behind her.

How do you know I really did turn them down?! Maybe I was just conning you.

But seriously, I did turn them down. I have never regretted it, I couldn't possibly have been a journalist and a spook on the side, and nothing that has happened since has made me change my mind.

Most certainly it will be me. I am completely ruthless when it comes to competition. And although I pretend to have a degree of compassion and generosity, I'm out of here! Screw the others!

Well, the fundamental is that we must strive to protect free speech and that includes having to put up with people like Donald Trump. BUT there are laws that govern racism, homophobia and other grim conditions and those laws should be upheld at every turn.

I don't think of Donald Trump. I find it the easiest way to get over him, and I think if the rest of the world followed suit, we won't need to worry about him ever becoming President of the United States.

Raise your voice! Get a petition going! Tell your MP to do something about it! It's yours, it costs you nothing, and it's genuinely different from anything else on offer.

If they sold it off, they wouldn't give you the money, and whatever followed afterwards would not be able to afford Channel 4 News.

Endlessly! But then you try and cook yours up to look a bit different, and try to make it just as exclusive. But, I always think, the viewer and the reader can spot what's going on.

I am worried about the empire. Any moment now, somebody could come knocking on your door and invite you to receive the Order of the British Empire (OBE) even become a Member of the British Empire (MBE) or worse still a Commander of the Birth Empire (CBE).

It does seem to me time that we respected the idea of honouring achievers in our society without inflict them with this antediluvian word 'empire'.

Housing and the deep inequality between rich and poor. Particularly between very rich and very poor. I don't think there will be a revolution but it has all the characteristics of what has led to revolution in the past.

I have been impressed by all of them, for some moment in time. Some of those moments have been very short.

Work experience, internships — neither of these will make you any money at all, but they will introduce you to our world, and to people who may become useful contacts when you try to get a job.

In the meantime, wherever you are, try to blog or tweet or Facebook what you're seeing. Good luck!

I think it probably would be a good idea to agree what they're actually called, and I think the more we use the words Islamic and State we play into the prospect that, in some dastardly way, they will come to represent both.

I'd try to retrieve Katie Razzall from Newsnight. Because she's someone I have worked with and who's work I admire.

I choose them carefully every morning, and they are informed by how I feel, whether I am in love, who I'm going to meet today, what's happened in the news, and whether I have any oats left for my porridge.

Brighter colours seem to suggest for me a brighter day, and I hope to infect others with the same idea! Men in drab grey socks are a grim and distressing sight.

I think the housing crisis is as serious as it was in the aftermath of the Second World War, and that humanity demands that we should use the same effort and resource to resolve it.

I try to report exactly what I see. But of course, that often depends on who you are and how you see what you're seeing. Everybody has opinions, I try to ensure that I offset my own in so much as is possible.

I think in some ways it creates a bit of absurdity, but then you could argue that in a capitalist system, somebody's got to put the money up and make a profit. I'm glad I don't.

US news, with notable exceptions (NY Times), is incredible parochial and myopic and despite its sensationalism and absurdity the diversity of the British press does serve to ensure that there is some brilliant reporting across the board.

I think charm is a very important element of good interviewing, there is absolutely no point being rude - very occasionally I have been and I have always regretted it.

Only the police call me Mr Snow. We live in a free society so we can decide amongst ourselves by our buying and reading habits as to whether any of these organs should exist.

I'm not wild about press regulation. Free speech is the overwhelming guardian.

I sense that some people who write about Mr Corbyn are experiencing some kind of fear. I think they may need to see a psychiatrist.

No, it was a light whiff of hash

Never! Never. Indeed quite the reverse. Every single day I find myself saying 'Thank God I have the privilege of being a journalist and allowed to report what I'm seeing'.

I would like to have interviewed Boadicea, she must have been quite a goer!

I think there's an event every single day that didn't quite make it on to the show but that I wish had sone so. The refugee crisis is still a crisis even when we don't show it and that is true of so much else - Gaza, Boko Haram's activities in northern Nigeria, I could go on more.

Absolutely never - and that's why it needs to be preserved! It costs you nothing!

I like doing watercolours, playing tennis and standing on my head.

I hope that they're merely ensuring that we are in good shape. We are. We cost you nothing!