Morgan Spurlock's Diary

London is my favourite city after New York. One of the highlights of being here this time was appearing on Soccer AM, the best show ever. I'm a big fan of Stoke City but it's hard to keep up with their matches in the States. My son Laken came with me on this trip and it's great how many five-year-old-friendly things there are to do here. Although, at that age, give him a park and a pirate ship and he's in heaven.

I haven't set foot inside a McDonald's since 2 March 2003. Laken passes it and goes, 'Daddy, that is a terrible place.' Plenty of people were upset with me when McDonald's got rid of its supersize options after my film Super Size Me, but these are people who shouldn't be eating those portions anyway, so I say it was a blessing. When the film came out, I was getting stopped constantly by people, but now it only happens once a month or so. People see me, reach into their wallet and show me a picture of themselves and say, 'That was me 60lbs ago. After your film I can't tell you how much weight I lost and it was all because of you.' People taking control of their minds and habits, that's what it's all about.

That McDonald's is one of the official sponsors of the London Olympics doesn't bother me much but the organisers ought to point out that these athletes run a marathon a day, swim 5,000m, run 10km. Just because McDonald's is sponsoring the Games, it doesn't mean that the athletes eat its food - and if they do, they are actually exercising as well, so it's not such a big deal.

Product placement has just been made legal in the UK by Ofcom. It's the theme of my latest film, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. It came about because I was annoyed by an episode of Heroes. I loved season one, but season two was terrible, and one of the things that had changed was product placement. In the first episode of the new season, Hayden Panettiere's character moved to a new town. She was unhappy because she had no friends and then her dad came to pick her up from high school. He put his arm around her and said: 'We were going to save this for your birthday but here you go.' The camera flashed to the front of a Nissan car, then to the Nissan keys in his hand and Hayden said, 'Oh my God, Dad, the Rogue! I can't believe you're getting me the Nissan Rogue!' It was like a commercial happening right there in the middle of the show. And later on in the series, once she had friends, she was leaving a party and said, 'To the Rogue!' Nobody says that. I wanted to make a movie pulling back the curtain on advertising and product placement, showing the influence they have on shows and the power they wield - and then actually get brands to pay for it. It steamrolled from there and I ended up with sponsorship from 22 major brands, from POM Wonderful fruit juice to Mini Cooper. But not everyone was so keen to take part. When I spoke to a woman from Abercrombie & Fitch, she started ranting, 'Do you want me to tell you why you're not Abercrombie material? You're not very attractive, in fact you're kinda funny looking, you're not a handsome man at all. You're losing your hair, you're going bald. We would never put a bald person in one of our ads. And that moustache we sell clothing not pornography.'

While making the film I got to meet Noam Chomsky, X-Men producer Brett Ratner and Quentin Tarantino. I met Quentin through a mutual director friend at his house in LA. It's basically the house that Kill Bill built because it looks like it's straight out of the film.

I've just been at the Toronto Film Festival for the premiere of my next documentary, about Comic-Con. I had Stormtroopers, Batman, Wolverine and Darth Vader at the premiere, which was a pretty good sign. We interviewed lots of celeb-rities for the movie, from Seth Rogen to Kenneth Branagh. I asked Kenneth what Shakespeare would think of Comic-Con and he started describing what it would have been like going to the Globe in Elizabethan times, then said, 'I tell you right now, if Shakespeare were alive today he would be at Comic-Con.' I still get chills about him telling me that.

I'd be interested to see how London's Comic-Con compares. I think the main similarity between New Yorkers and Londoners is that we both have places to go - and fast. But when you get in a black cab in London, at least all the drivers know where you need to get to. I wish someone would force ours to do The Knowledge.
The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is in cinemas now