He also produced The Purifiers with Jobson in 2004, a martial arts film set in the future, which was acquired by Working Title and released in the US by New Line Cinema.

While making Taking Liberties, Atkins was held under anti-terror laws when he tried to speak with the Home Secretary John Reid at the 2006 Labour Party conference.

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw gave the film 4 stars, saying "there's something exhilarating about this thoroughly enjoyable and worthwhile docu-blast against Tony Blair's insidious diminution of native British liberties.

[10] In 2009, Atkins directed his second feature documentary, Starsuckers,[11] which heavily criticised the media for the negative effects of celebrity culture.

The Guardian newspaper published two front page stories about Starsuckers in October 2009, and the News Of The World quickly contacted the filmmakers to threaten legal action for secretly filming their journalist but this was not pursued.

[12] Atkins also secretly filmed the celebrity publicist Max Clifford boasting about how he kept embarrassing stories about his clients out of the media.

[13] The film was set in an imagined future where UKIP won the 2015 general election, and mixed real news reports with fly on the wall style footage of a fictional MP, Deepa Kaur.

[17] He also produced and directed the Dispatches special "Celebs, Brands and Fake Fans", which attempted to show how social media popularity can be bought and sold.

The investigation was run on the front of The Sun and The Mirror newspapers, and ITV threatened to sue Channel 4 if the film was broadcast.

[18] In 2013, he produced and directed the Panorama episode "All in a Good Cause", which looked into unethical investments made by charities such as Comic Relief,[19] the aftermath of which resulted in Atkins claiming he had, "turned into the comedy establishment's most hated man".

[25] KLF members Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond refused to appear in the film and at one point filed a copyright claim against Atkins to prevent usage of the band's music.

[16] Atkins was also a credited writer on the BBC3 show The Revolution Will Be Televised, which featured political stunts by Heydon Prowse and Joylon Rubenstein.

He had been arrested in 2012 by HMRC's Fraud Investigation Service as part of an enquiry into tax evasion schemes within the British film industry.