Mike Rowe knows the question everyone wants to ask about his show Dirty Jobs Down Under.
“So tell me, Mike,” says the American television host in a passably good Australian accent, “what’s the dirtiest job”
Rowe filmed a series of his show Dirty Jobs in Australia where he wrangled snakes and was urinated on by cane toads.
But when it comes to choosing the dirtiest job he has done throughout his decade of making the reality show, there is no simple answer.
“I’ve done more than 300. By the second season I had a pretty snappy response, looking back at 30 or 40 of them. But now, you just can’t compare a lift pump in a sewerage facility that needs to be replaced with opal mining, although both are hideous in their own way.
“In the same way, you can’t compare bridge maintenance on the Golden Gate Bridge at 300 feet with tanning hides and yet both will make you throw up in your mouth a little bit.”
One of his scariest moments when filming involved running out of air during a shark dive while wearing a metal shark suit.
“I was breathing very quickly and suddenly I was out of air. I was with a reporter, thankfully, from TV Guide. He saw my gauge and realised what trouble I was in and he grabbed me…
“My last breath was an exhale and it took about 70 seconds to get to the surface. I lost my peripheral vision on the way up. It was horrible.”
Despite the distasteful tasks involved, Dirty Jobs holds a special place in Rowe’s heart. He created it as a tribute to his grandfather.
“He (Mike’s grandfather) was a tradesman but so much more than that. He only made it to the eighth grade but by the time he was 35, he was a master carpenter, a plumber, pipe fitter. He built the house I was born in without a blueprint.
“When he got into his 90s, I thought it would be nice to do something to pay tribute to the kinds of jobs he always had.”
Rowe had tried to emulate his grandfather and become a tradesman, but he didn’t have the skills needed.
“I wasn’t really interested in TV or performing, but I just couldn’t do anything else. I got out of school and decided to take this seriously and tried to approach it in the same way he would approach a trade. I was just looking for one job at a time. I didn’t care about the career.”
He wanted to join the actors’ union, the Screen Actors Guild, so he could work commercially but the only way he could buy his membership was by exploiting a loophole in the system and joining a singing union.
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“It was simply a matter of, will it be easier to fake my way into the opera or will it be easier to fake my way into television The answer was that I had a better shot at opera.
“I learned the shortest aria I could find and I memorised the Italian by walking around with a walkman on. I crashed an audition and got in.”
What was supposed to be a temporary job lasted six years when a young Rowe discovered he was a hit with the women of the opera company.
“There were 80 people in the company, 40 men and 40 women. Of the 40 men, 35 had zero interest in 100 per cent of the women and of the remaining five, three were married. The only other single guy had a mole on his eyelid the size of my thumb with thick black hair growing out of it. So I was it.”
He says although Dirty Jobs involves a lot of humour, the show has serious themes about the growing skills shortage which has become more pronounced since the economic crash of 2008.
“I started getting calls from reporters from all over the country asking me to comment on these things that I really have no direct experience or qualifications in. They wanted to know if I had a theory as to why it was harder for companies to find plumbers and builders even as unemployment was increasing.
“So I shared my theory, which was simply that these jobs were unappreciated and parents and guidance counsellors don’t encourage kids to seriously consider these careers… So society had maybe accidentally distanced itself from an important part of the workforce.”
WHEN: Dirty Jobs Down Under – Discovery Channel Thursday
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