Over a cup of frothy coffee in a swish Ballsbridge hotel, Ross Kemp recalls the diciest moment he has endured to date while filming his documentary series Extreme World, which returns to Sky 1 tonight.
“One guy’s got his weapon pointed at me, yeah?” he says, acting out the incident. “I’m thinking, right, is there a round in that gun? Now his mate pulls a shotgun at me. So I’m pushing it away, going: ‘Are you going to shoot me? Are you going to shoot me?’ ”
The incident occurred in Papua New Guinea (which Kemp confusingly refers as “PNG”, so that I’m initially picturing the offices of some high-rolling firm of financial consultants). The gunmen ordered Kemp and his crew down on their hands and knees. Kemp refused. “We could get raped,” he says, “our camera could get stolen. Or maybe they just want to have a laugh at us. I don’t know. But if either of these guys pulls the trigger, I’ve got a hole in my back.”
Thankfully, the situation was defused and the former soap star has once again lived to yell the tale.
The new series of Extreme World finds Kemp prowling the streets and slums of Mumbai, Kolkata, Rio, Beirut and Belfast, often without security. What provision have the producers made for the possibility of their star getting kidnapped?"
“We get daily intelligence updates wherever we go,” he says. “I can’t really go into that side of things, but yeah, we’re fully trained. The insurance companies wouldn’t let us out there if we weren’t.”
If the worst came to the worst, presumably Sky would fork out a few quid for him? There is a Sky representative seated at the other side of the room. Kemp glances around at her.
“That’s what I like to think,” he grins.
Not given to introspection
In person, the TV hard man is very much as he comes across on screen: polite, confident, forceful in his opinions, prone to overusing military-style acronyms and jargon without warning or explanation, and – you would have to say – not especially given to introspection.
Kemp shot to fame playing Falklands war veteran Grant Mitchell in the BBC's EastEnders from 1990 to 1999. He has returned a couple of time since then and he refuses to rule out the possibility of yet another return. "Never say never," he shrugs.
Subsequent acting roles included a string of mostly turgid ITV dramas, in which he played security specialists, police detectives and a staff sergeant in the SAS.
In a 2005 episode of Ricky Gervais's comedy Extras, Kemp gamely sent himself up as a deluded TV tough guy convinced he was a martial arts expert with SAS training in real life. At the time, some might have felt that characterisation cut a little close to the bone.
But the macho actor’s subsequent career reinvention, fronting documentaries about gang violence, as well as the drugs, sex and arms traffickers in some of the world’s most troubled corners, has earned him a grudging respect from some former detractors.
In 2007, he embedded himself with the Royal Anglicans (his father’s old unit) on the front line of the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The TV series that resulted surprised even his military handlers for how close Kemp and his crew got to the thick of the action.
"They gave us unprecedented access," he says, "because they trusted us. They wouldn't have trusted you, no disrespect. They wouldn't have trusted someone from the Guardian or The Irish Times, but they trusted us.
“Of course, they had control over the edit,” he adds, “so I suppose they could trust us.”
Yet the plaudits that series enjoyed didn’t come solely from the coalition side. On a later visit to Afghanistan, Kemp spoke to Taliban prisoners at Bagram Airfield. “They told me they’d watched the first series,” he recalls. “They laughed at me for being scared. They said I didn’t have trust in God.”
Was he concerned this fame might make him a scalp for Taliban fighters? “F*** off,” he laughs. “I’m not Prince ’Arry.”
In 2008, Ross Kemp on Gangs won a Bafta for best factual series. A string of successful similar projects for Sky TV have ensued. His strength as a documentary maker, he says, is his ability to reach an audience not normally interested in current affairs. "I'm not trying to inform an audience that's already informed. I'm about getting people who wouldn't normally care to take an interest in what's going on around the world."
In truth, curiosity about the wider world is not a prerequisite for an appreciation of Kemp’s oeuvre. Indeed, an interest in understanding the social conditions that produce the dysfunction and violence his documentaries depict is practically a disqualification.
One of the grimmest moments in the new series is an interview with an Indian sex trafficker who claimed to have personally murdered more than 400 young girls. Kemp insists the confession was genuine. “I wanted to kill him on the spot,” he says. “I said to the director ‘Get him out of my sight because I am going to kill him’.”
The trip to Belfast
Of particular interest to Irish viewers will be the much-publicised visit Kemp made to Belfast during the 2013 marching season.
“There are people who actually thought that I would take sides in Northern Ireland. People were tweeting that I would light [loyalist] bonfires. That’s ridiculous. I was born . . . never to have a view, never to have an agenda.”
Having seen the segment of that episode dealing with a contested Orange Order march through Ardoyne, however, it does appear legitimate to question whether Kemp is as neutral as he thinks. He bristles at that suggestion.
The Parades Commission in 2013 had allowed an Orange Order parade to pass through a contentious route in Ardoyne but not to return the same route.
“I said to the Protestant guy: ‘you’re allowed to walk this way, but not to walk back.’ That’s 50-50. That’s how it should be. That’s certainly not sympathising.”
Be that as it may, the Ardoyne segment comprises a one-minute interview with a Catholic resident, in which she discusses her frustration at being shut inside her house involuntarily.
There follows an uninterrupted 25 minutes in which it is repeatedly emphasised that the Orange Order feels its British identity is being eroded, that the decision by the Parades Commission is unprecedented, that the PSNI has no choice but to implement it, and that the stand-off that ensues is very costly for the British exchequer.
Arguing with Kemp, however, is like arguing with a steamroller – and his heart does appear to be in the right place. So I let it go. (I’m later told the screener I was given might not have been the final cut of that episode.) Instead we talk about Belfast and Northern Ireland.
“Yes, I could put a camera out there for 365 days of the year,” he says. “And, yes, we’d see cats, you know, delivering milk bottles or whatever. But the stuff that happens around marching season is what makes headlines, you know that.”
"The show is called Extreme World and that's what's extreme about Belfast."
It is tempting, at this point, to suggest that cats delivering milk bottles might also have some curiosity value for his viewers. But this is Grant Mitchell sitting across from me. You need a flak jacket before you venture into that war zone.
Extreme World is on Sky1 at 9pm on Tuesdays. The Belfast episode airs on February 4
