Morgan Spurlock, the man who ate nothing but McDonald's food for a month in Super Size Me, is back with a new prank: a search for Osama Bin Laden. He tells Donald Clarkewhat he found on his hunt

MORGAN Spurlock, director of Super Size Me and, now, Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? has become part of the American political landscape. The first film, a huge hit, followed Spurlock as he spent a month eating nothing but McDonald's food. His new picture finds the amiable prankster listening to complaints about American foreign policy in various inhospitable corners of the Middle East.

Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? is certainly entertaining, but it is hampered by a strange vagueness throughout. Let's start with the central premise. The film purports to detail our hero's attempts to track down the supposed founder of al-Qaeda. To that end, after undergoing martial-arts training and honing his geography, he journeys to Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia to shout down caves and interrogate the (mostly) amiable locals. We all know the US made mistakes in its search for Bin Laden, but Morgan can't really have believed one bloke and a cameraman could actually locate the fugitive.

"Yeah. People ask that a lot," he says. "Look, if you buy a lottery ticket the odds may be 10 million to one, but you always think you can win. You wouldn't buy the ticket otherwise. That's how we thought here. I mean who really knows what might happen."

In truth, the enterprise has less to do with locating Bin Laden than with documenting the common values that bind people of all faiths. The news that his wife was about to deliver a new Spurlock into the world helped inspire this optimistic project. Mind you, I can't imagine that the long-suffering Alexandra was all that happy to hear her husband would be pottering about the Middle East during the gestation period.

"To be honest, she didn't like it at first," he concedes. "But we talked it through and I explained that I wanted to investigate the kind of world we were bringing a child into. I think all parents struggle with that. They have those moments of reflection. The more she and I talked about it, the more we realised we might be able to do something good here."

Only an utter misanthrope would deny that Spurlock's interactions with various Middle Eastern families have their touching moments, but his surprise at encountering such hospitality does seem a little disingenuous. If Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? does have a moral, then it is the same as that of Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder's Ebony and Ivory: people are the same wherever you go. That's fair enough. But he can't really have been surprised to discover that the average Muslim is as human as you or me. Even modestly well-educated people knows that.

"Do they? A lot of critics in the US said just that: 'Oh, everyone knows people are like that.' I disagree. I think there are a lot of people who think Muslim countries all want their children to die blowing us up - who think all they want is jihad. We don't hear from the silent majority in these places. The American media is often dominated by one view of overseas. It's all flag-burning and ranting about America. You just don't see the other side."

The one country where Spurlock does encounter genuine hostility is Israel. One scene in the picture finds a group of Orthodox Jews yelling at Spurlock and his crew as they canvass opinion in a traditional quarter. What, exactly, got the men in hats so riled up?

"We came in and started asking political questions," he says "What do they think about the conflict, that sort of thing. Then, all of a sudden, we get water balloons thrown at us. Then people were coming up to us and shouting at us and eventually we became a little frightened. Our producer went and got the police to escort us out of there. But the beautiful part of it was that this guy eventually came up and said: 'Look, the majority of us don't think like this'."

It is, of course, possible that the hostile citizens recognised Morgan Spurlock. He is, after all, something of a celebrity. Raised in West Virginia, Morgan, now 37, made a number of failed attempts to secure a place in film school before embarking on a career as a stand-up comic. He wrote plays, devised I Bet You Will, a disreputable reality show for MTV, and generally pinballed around the media world before happening upon the idea for Super Size Me.

Even those who admired the film had questions (would you really throw up after just a day eating McDonald's food?), but it undoubtedly had a positive effect on the company and its consumers. It also transformed Morgan's life. "I was in a tremendous amount of debt when I started on that film. And that alleviated most of that. I don't owe anyone money any more. The first deal you make as a film-maker is always the worst, of course, and I didn't become a millionaire. I am a hundredaire. I literally have hundreds of dollars now. But I don't owe anybody any money and that's a great thing."

Hollywood being what it is, Morgan was suddenly deluged with offers to direct "terrible broad comedies". But he understood that his talents were those of the sociopolitical prankster and, casting aside the Adam Sandler romps and Police Academy sequels, he embarked on a modestly successful reality TV show called 30 Days. The series, made for the FX channel, invites a group of people to adopt a particular lifestyle for a month - living on the minimum wage, spending time in prison - and then draws conclusions from their experiences.

Still, it is Super Size Me that people think of first when they see his handlebar moustache.

"The last time I was in London, I was stopped on the street by this guy. 'Oi, oi! I promised myself if ever I saw you I would thank you,' he says. Then he pulls out this photo of himself. 'Look at that. That's me seven stone ago. And that's all because of you. You changed my life.' Now that sort of thing makes it all worthwhile."

Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? opens today. Morgan Spurlock will appear in a public Q&A session tomorrow at 3.10pm in Cineworld, Parnell St, Dublin

Spurlock's politics

A FEW years back, certain conservatives became sufficiently alarmed at Spurlock's activities to establish the website Spurlock Watch. It is, thus, reasonable to ask this apparently politicised individual about the US presidential election.

"I am a registered independent," he says. "I am sort of in the middle of the road."

Pardon? Morgan lives with a vegan chef in New York's bohemian East Village. He makes films about the ghastliness of McDonald's and the futility of the war on terror. Of course he's a lefty.

"Am I? Hey, I grew up in the South with a closet full of guns. So, you never know what I might do. I like to think that I am a lefty with right-wing tendencies."

Despite his protestations, he has found himself lumped in with Michael Moore whenever the attack dogs of the right draw up their lists of Anti-Americans. It is hard to avoid the suspicion that his claim to occupy the political middle ground springs from his desire to pacify the right?

Spurlock squirms. "Well, you say that. But somebody once said that I was the red-state Michael Moore."

Michael Moore for Republicans? That can't have been his intention when he started out. "No, that wasn't what I was going for. But, hey, you take what you can get."