Steve Irwin got a present of a scrub python when he was six and he's been bitten by the wildlife bug ever since. 'I've nearly been killed by a huge python, twice . . . see that purple patch on my leg? A croc bit me during filming'. Ian Kilroy goes face-to-face with The Crocodile Hunter
Wildlife adventurer and conservationist Steve Irwin - aka The Crocodile Hunter - looks out of place on a plush and spotless couch in an upper room of The Clarence Hotel, in Dublin. Usually, you see him splattered with mud in one of his Discovery channel documentaries, wrestling a "fair dinkum croc" in the Australian bush with his "mate" - i.e. wife - Terri Irwin.
"I'm golden," he says, when I inquire after his well-being - and he is. Kited out in safari-style shorts and shirt, with his blond hair and tanned skin, he looks like he should be surfing a wave off some Australian beach, rather than doing the publicity circuit in overcast Ireland, promoting his first feature film, The Crocodile Hunter: collision course.
The film, which he's made with director and old friend John Stainton, is conceived purely as a vehicle for his talents as a wildlife presenter. In fact, the core of it is simply a wildlife documentary, with Irwin doing exactly what he does so well on television: handling deadly animals as if they were bunny rabbits and essentially playing himself. Pitched at a young audience, the kind that would have appreciated Disney films in the past, Irwin's film is a long way from Aussie films such as Babe or the more off-beat Proof. The Crocodile Hunter is more in the genre of Paul Hogan's Crocodile Dundee, which offered a pre-packed version of Oz to the US market, than part of the serious Australian movie industry.
Tacked on to the documentary part of the film is a frankly ludicrous plot - the film part - where a crocodile in the Australian bush swallows a US spy satellite. As Irwin pursues the croc to save its life and a cattle rancher tries to kill it for eating one of her cows, Irwin is pursued by the CIA, which thinks he's a spy. You know, it's the kind of situation wildlife TV presenters find themselves in everyday.
But it's not all down to Steve alone, the Irwins are a real double act. However, it is the hyper, quick-talking Steve that dominates the duo; Terri rarely gets a word in. All you have to do is ask him one short question and he's off. Are all crocodiles the same, for example?
"No, mate. You've got short crocs, fat crocs, long crocs, thin crocs, skinny, round, tall, blond, brunette, dark-haired, freckles, no freckles crocs - whatever. The American alligator is very placid and shy. The Australian croc will hit you, bite your leg off before you even blink. The Nile croc will size you up for a while, decide if you're edible, then strike. They're all different mate. Different nationalities, which we call species. What I mean by species is . . ."
Whew! Hold on there! Irwin exudes so much adrenaline it intoxicates. Luckily Terri keeps him sedated when he gets carried away. "We hate people with crocodile skin belts, bags and boots, mate," says Steve, now particularly agitated. "No Steve," says the calming Terri, "not the person, but what they've done." "Oh, yeah. Sorry," says Steve apologetically, like a chastised schoolboy who's done something wrong.
When I ask Terri if she owns a pair of crocodile skin shoes, he's off again: "Do you want us to start punching you mate?"
The thing about Steve Irwin, though, is that he's too good-humoured to mean the threat. And with the success he's had, who wouldn't be good-humoured. His viewers worldwide number hundreds of millions. Surely no other wildlife documentary series has been as successful as The Crocodile Hunter. Strewth! In the US, they're even selling Steve and Terri dolls.
"It all started," explains Steve, "with Australia Zoo, which is a zoo my Mum and Dad started back in the 1970s." The exact year was 1973, and the place, the small town of Beerwah, on the Sunshine Coast, in Queensland, an hour north of Brisbane, in eastern Australia. Steve's Dad, Bob Irwin, caught wild animals and set up the zoo informed by a philosophy of conservation.
In 1991, Steve, who had been given a present of a scrub python for his sixth birthday, took over the zoo, and made his first documentary a year later. "I owe everything to my Mum and Dad," says Steve. "My Dad taught me everything I know."
The skills he learned from his father include the ability to handle poisonous snakes and scorpions, and the skill of capturing crocodiles with his bare hands. In fact, all the crocodile wrestling scenes in the new film are "real" - and he has the scars to prove it.
"See that purple patch on my leg there? A croc bit me during filming. There was a lot of blood we had to cut out to keep the PG cert. My skin got busted up, and my ribs. My cartilage tore. I had to have a cartilage operation in the middle of shooting. I got hit across the face by the female croc - which meant another week out of action. It cost hundreds of thousands of dollars because I couldn't film. Imagine?"
The miracle about Steve Irwin is that he's alive. Handling deadly animals for a living is bound to catch up, but, despite the hundreds of deadly snakes he's dealt with, Irwin says he's never been bitten. "I've nearly been killed by a huge python, twice. But I've never been bitten by a venomous snake. I take a lot of pride in not getting bitten."
The dangers of what he does meant that it was next to impossible to get insurance cover for the shoot. As Terri explains, there was only one insurance company in Australia that would cover them.
"Even though most of the croc footage was filmed, MGM don't flaunt the fact that they were scared to death," she says. Steve adds that "they wouldn't even let me cross the road without someone bloody holding my hand". As Steve explains, they anticipated the problem and filmed the most dangerous sequences themselves, before getting involved with any big production company. They then set about building up a film around the footage they had already shot. "It was only after that we went to MGM who went 'Yeah!'" says Steve. "We built up a story around the crocodile capture we'd already filmed, which became the movie," he says. "But the documentary part of the film was real life, real time, real crocs, real blood - the whole bloody nine yards!" says Steve, growing increasingly exuberant. Terri reaches out her hand and squeezes his knee, and he becomes calm again: "You know what I mean mate?" he whispers.
As Steve explains that crocodile tears are called so because they involve the crocs off-loading excess salt through their tear ducts, with no emotional spur at all, it is clear that this man loves talking. Soon, he's on to the method for capturing crocodiles, by grabbing their top jaw. But the PR woman co-ordinating the interview intervenes, saying that time is up. Steve protests, getting excited, saying he doesn't want to stop at all: "I'll grab the top jaw open, I'll top jaw her, man!" But he has to wrap up.
In frustration at not being able to talk until the crocs come home, he vows to return. "We'll be back to Ireland mate. I hear you've got great surfing beaches out west".
Golden, mate. Golden.