As the nation’s favourite adventurer, Steve Backshall has spent nearly two decades bringing nature’s most exotic, untouched – and often dangerous – wildlife to our screens. Now he is taking the audience behind the scenes.

The explorer and television presenter will bring his latest Wild World tour to theatres – including Dorking Halls, Bromley’s Churchill Theatre, Dartford’s Orchard Theatre and Richmond Theatre – this October and November.

The show will see the Surrey native sharing his experiences from his travels in the world’s wildest places and coming face-to-face with its most bizarre and deadly animals, including his self-confessed proudest moment.

He said: “It would probably be the first ever ascent of a mountain called Upuigma, which is in Venezuala.

“It was an extraordinary climb – incredible vertical rock faces. I spent five days living on it. I got to the top and found a lost world environment which was just entrancing.”

The finished documentary – 2008’s Lost Land of the Jaguar – bagged him a Bafta nomination, too.

For Steve, the enjoyment of the tour is meeting the people who watch his shows and finding out what they like.

He said: “Most of my year is spent out in the rainforest with just a couple of guys – just a cameraman and soundman.

“I don’t really have any contact with the audience so having this opportunity to have them asking question lets you know which bits they are enjoying and that is essential for us to take the programmes forward.”

And while Steve has handled deadly animals and risked his life in places some of us would never even dream of going, facing an audience can be scariest of all.

He said: “It can be very intimidating to walk on stage to a big audience of people who are wanting to be entertained.

“It is all down to experience. Animals and expeditions are what I do for a living and have done for a very long time.

“It is the thing I feel comfortable with. I probably get less of an adrenaline kick from catching some of the world’s most venomous snakes than I do walking on stage in front of 2,000 people.”

Being Steve Backshall, he’s talking about the tour as if he’ll be safely pottering about his garden before it starts. But by the time you are reading this, he will be in the midst of his latest expedition – his ‘next big thing’ - attempting to paddle down a remote river which has never been paddled down before. And he’s as characteristically fearless as ever.

“There are sections of the river that could be potentially sketchy but we won’t know until we get there,” he said. “It is a case of just throwing ourselves into it and seeing what happens.”

Amazingly for a man who wins Baftas, goes on expeditions and tours the country, Steve also finds the time to write fiction.

Shark Seas, the fourth book in his Falcon Chronicles series of children’s adventure novels will be released shortly before the tour.

Steve said: “I write while I on the road, so in the back of a car or in a plane. I sit down with my laptop and type away. I do manage to find time to write books. When it is going well, it’s great. When it is going badly, it is a nightmare.”

Steve Backshall embarks on his nationwide Wild World theatre tour from October 19 to  November 20. His new children's novel 'Shark Seas' will be published in October To book tickets, visit stevebackshall.com/tour

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