It's going to be an absolute riot says Steve Backshall ahead of the North East Deadly Live show

Earlier this month, BAFTA award-winning wildlife presenter and adventurer Steve announced his first ever UK arena tour - Deadly Live.

This thrilling new live entertainment adventure comes to UK arenas this October half term, including a night at Newcastle Utilita Arena on October 25.

Ahead of his arrival in the North East, we sat down for an exclusive chat with Steve so see what he had to say below..

Why are you bringing Deadly Live to UK arenas for the first time now?

“I've been touring now for about 12 years. I've done tours in Asia and Australia, here in the UK. They've always gone really well and it seemed like it was time to step things up so time to make everything bigger, time to look at Deadly through time, all the way back through evolution, back to the time of the dinosaurs, even before the time of the dinosaurs, and see how animals have changed. To talk about all of their adaptations, to talk about how eyesight of different animals functions differently and may help a predator be able to focus on its prey, talk about bites and venom and hearing and super senses and super skills, and to be able to illustrate that with size.

“So you know, an awful lot of the stuff that I do, even in a big theater, being able to have a life sized whale on stage is really hard because they're massive, being able to have life sized dinosaurs on stage is really hard because they're enormous. Well, when you're in an arena, all of that becomes possible. So my idea is that we are going to create this cacophony of nature, that is going to be red in tooth and claw, that is going to be full of good science, you know, bits of it are going to be like a TED talk, and then the next second it's going to be like a Christmas panto and then the next second it's going to be circus skills and stunts and techniques and experiments and things going bang, and me getting hosed down from head to toe in poo and it's going to be all of the things that I think people have loved about deadly over the years and then some.”

So you have done this live before, this is just it on its biggest stage ever?

“No, no, no. So, there are elements of it that we will have don en the TV shows before but I don't think… I've done any of it before on stage. It's all new. So it's going to be a massive gamble. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in there that could go wrong, a lot of stuff in there that could make me look really, really silly, but I think you've got to own that, you've got to enjoy that, you've got to be prepared to roll with the punches. When you're doing live television, it's kind of the same thing, you know, you've got to be able to react at a second to what an animal does in front of you. So I think with our ambition, with the kind of creativity that we're bringing to this, it could be something really special.”

Will any real deadly animals be on stage with you?

“So what I'm thinking is that we could have mini beasts. So for example, we could have a tiny little praying mantis that I could have on my hand and you know, there's no ethical considerations to having an insect on stage, it's not like it's going to be stressed out or anything. But I could then, using modern technology, be able to get a macro camera to be able to zoom into its eyeball and to look at a compound eye live on stage on a massive screen that's twice the size of my house, and then be able to look at its raptorial forearms and see them in exquisite detail, and be able to figure out how they function. And to do that live on stage, how cool would that be?

“And be able to show the forcipules of a centipede that act as their fangs, to be able to bite into their prey, injecting venom into flying bats on the wing; to be able to look at the eyes of a spider and see how those functions; look at the telson and the aculeus of a scorpion, and see how they inject venom into their prey. I think all of those could be amazing in an arena environment, even though the things themselves are going to be tiny. They're going to be way too small for anyone in the audience to actually see but if you had a macro camera, then you could do it in mega, mega size on the screen. And then the next thing you know, there'll be an actual dinosaur on stage, running at full size for everybody in the audience to be able to see and appreciate at its real scale size. So I think the opportunities that are available to us in taking the entirety of evolutionary history are endless and infinite and actually it's going to be really hard figuring out how to cut it down and make it, you know, fit into an evening of fun.”

You start the tour in Newcastle so how are you feeling about bringing the show to the northeast?

“It's a really, really good thing for me to be starting somewhere that is always so welcoming. Every single time I've done a tour in Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, you go there and automatically, you walk in and there's like a ‘wahey! We're here for a great night, it's going to be fun.’ You know, everybody in the Northeast goes out looking to have a good time. People are not going out looking to tear you apart and so it's the perfect place for me to get started, I think.”

Will you have a chance to see any more of Newcastle whilst you're there?

“I very much doubt it. I think I am going to be so panicked. I am going to be so up against it because, you know, I'm writing the show myself, I'm producing and directing it myself, and all of the ideas that are in it are coming from me, some of which are going to fail spectacularly, and I'm not going to know how badly they're going to fail until we're in rehearsals. So yeah, I think that there's going to be bits that do far better than I'd expect, there are going to be bits that are an absolute catastrophe, and I am likely to be so stressed and so anxious that the last thing that's going to be on my mind is going out for a pint. Maybe after!”

What’s the deadliest thing you might find in Newcastle or off the North Sea?

“Oh, well, I mean crumbsh, the Farne Islands off Northumberland are one of the finest places for wildlife in the whole of not just our nation, but the whole of the continent. You know, going out there looking for seabirds, swimming with seals, is utterly spectacular and what a stretch of coastline that is. So, yeah, we've done quite a lot of filming in Northumberland, actually. I know it's not exactly Newcastle, Gateshead, but it is certainly somewhere in our nation that is replete with fabulous wildlife.”

The shows are all during the October half term, why is that?

“I am a dad myself, and I've got three kids who are getting to be around about Deadly age, and I know that if I was to do this on a school night, they'd just be too tired for it, they'd be exhausted. Whereas, if you do it in half term, then you can put a show on in the early evening, and they've still got fizzing, bubbling energy vut they don't have to be home early in time to be in bed, to get up the next morning. So it's very much thinking about the parents, thinking about the psych and the energy of the youngsters. I'm just absolutely relieved that we've managed to do this so that we've got all these arenas all over the country that are available during that time. And we're doing some monsters, you know, Manchester, Newcastle, the O2 in London, Cardiff, Glasgow. They're big, they're absolutely huge. So I have to come up with lots and lots of things that enable me to fill that space, to make it feel like everybody in that arena, even if there's 14,000 of them, are getting a little slice of deadly themselves. They feel like they can reach out and touch the animals, that they can smell them, they can feel them, they can be hosed down with their with their venomous spit. These are all things that I've written into the script, and I am right now figuring out how to make happen.”

It sounds very child friendly, but do you also have adult fans that would still very much enjoy the show?

“Yeah, so one of the big challenges that I've always faced with live shows is that it's not just the youngsters and their parents who are going to be coming along. I have at my live shows everything from three and four year olds up to professors in marine biology, and I have to make sure that every single one of them is getting something out of it. So there is a lot of really, really good science in this. You know, one of the things that we know from making programs that are applicable to families is that actually the level of factual content is way, way higher than you would expect to have in a so called adult program. Our factual hit rate is much higher than you would get in an equivalent grown up adult program, and that ability to be able to talk to anyone to make sure that there's going to be stuff in there about evolution and behavior and predation and physiology that my peers are going to appreciate and enjoy, while at the same time there's going to be slapstick and fun and comedy and circus skills and visual wonder that the three year olds, four year olds, five year olds are going to enjoy is is the central part of the challenge, but it's the bit I enjoy making work the most.

“And having done this now for a long time, and probably having spoken to, you know, half a million people around the world on live shows, I'm starting to get the hang of it. I'm starting to figure out what you can and can't talk about. And actually, what you tend to realize is that the youngsters will take on information that is way, way beyond what people expect. When I'm talking about sharks, for example, if I shout out to the audience ‘this organ that sharks have in their snout, which is electro sensitive and can pick up the beating heart of their animals, even if they're buried in the sand, who knows what that's called?’ There will be a hundred 5-year-olds who will scream out ‘it's the ampullae of Lorenzini’ and their parents are sat there going, how did you know that? Because, you know, youngsters, they're learning all the time, they're bringing in extraordinary amounts of information. You don't talk to them as if they're kids. You talk to them as if they are little scientists in the making.”

But why should people in the North East get tickets to come see you?

“I think that it's going to be an absolute riot. There is a lot in this that they will not have seen before. It's gonna dance from panto and slapstick and fun and silliness and, you know, absolute lunatic craziness, to real serious science. And I guarantee that no matter who you are, there is going to be some science in here about animals that you have not heard of before. Every time I've done one of these shows, there have been professors of biology in the audience who've gone ‘I never thought of it like that before’, or ‘I never heard that fact before, is that really true?’ And I promise that even if you're into wildlife, there's going to be something in this show that will make you think, there'll be something in there that you haven't heard before, and it will probably be followed by me getting hosed down in in gunge or poo, or it could be, you know, a life sized T Rex stampeding across the stage. It is going to be an absolute rollicking ride, and it's going to take in the entire evolution of life on our planet through to the present day. So if you like fun, if you like animals, if you like wildlife, and if you don't like any of that, but you just like seeing me get hosed down in dino poo. This is the show for you.”

Final question, for huge fans of Deadly, is this live show a last hurrah, or can you promise some more shows?

“Yeah, so the new series will be out, hopefully, for September. It's all finished filming and it is amazing. We will already have started filming the new new series by then, and the other new series only just came out at the end of last year so there's a shed loads of Deadly coming out and to anyone who is into it, we are only just getting started.”