THE WILD BUNCH
BRITAIN’S TIGER KINGS – ON THE TRAIL WITH ROSS KEMP ITV, 9pm
ROSS KEMP tries to hide his terror as a massive 12ft python wraps itself around his leg before its owner explains that if it was hungry it could kill him.
The tough-as-boots filmmaker is on the trail of the Tiger Kings of Britain who keep exotic and dangerous animals as pets.
From lions, tigers and bears in back gardens to snakes in boxes in a three-bed terraced house, it makes for jaw-dropping television.
On a tour of lorry driver Gary Smith’s reptilian home in Derby, Ross asks: “Why would you keep a venomous snake?”
“I like the adrenaline,” says Gary, who has been bitten 15 times.
“You have to be on your guard 24/7.”
Gary, who doesn’t even need a licence for the nearly 50 snakes in his home, adds: “Would you like to touch its teeth?”
“No, no, no, I’m fine thank you,” says Ross.
There’s more intense pet ownership going on in Chipping Norton, where Ross meets Jim Clubb, owner of five tigers and a pair of black leopards.
In Salcombe, Devon, Ross meets 47-year-old single mum Christine Courtney, who three years ago left a lucrative, highpressure job in the city and set up as a trader and breeder of dangerous wild cats.
And in Cambridgeshire, 50-year-old farmer Andy Johnson owns 300 deer, 150 cattle and several ostriches, plus a collection of crocodiles.
He says the crocs are an environmentally friendly alternative to incinerators for dealing with dead livestock – and even hopes to be fed to a crocodile when he dies.