Published: | Updated:
On a special live episode of the Daily Mail's Tales From The Celebrity Trenches, brought to you by SkyVegas, Jamie East sits down with EastEnders hardman turned Bafta winning documentary maker Ross Kemp.
During the wide ranging interview, in which the pair reminisced over TV's golden era and the actor's unlikely leap into journalism after nearly ten years on the hit soap, Kemp, 62, discussed a clip from his 2014 show Ross Kemp: Extreme World that has enjoyed a viral afterlife on social media.
The clip sees Kemp suddenly accosted by an armed gang in the bush of Papua New Guinea, who order him to sit down and hand over money. Unfazed, the presenter squares up to one of the gunmen, repeatedly asking, 'You gonna kill me?' before the standoff eventually ends.
Kemp said the gang were notorious in the area for attacking and raping local men and women. Not long before his visit, he claimed, they had tied two tourists to a tree and sexually assaulted them.
'We couldn't even get a female insured to come with us,' Kemp recounted.
'No insurance company would, because they'd just take the girls. This is an incredibly lawless country, and it still is. Why did I behave like that? It's totally against what you're trained to do in a hostile environment. You're supposed to get down on the ground.
The clip sees Kemp suddenly accosted by an armed gang in the bush of Papua New Guinea. Unfazed, the presenter squares up to one of the gunmen, repeatedly asking, 'You gonna kill me?'
'You can't see in the video, but there were guys with spears as well, and I thought I'd rather take a shotgun wound or a rifle wound than the alternative. Although I'd probably have got both.
'I'll be really honest with you. I felt like I'd been burgled, like someone had invaded my territory. I was quite angry, more so after the event than during.'
After the standoff, the gang's leader can be seen congratulating the EastEnders star on his bravery and calling him a 'warrior'.
Elsewhere in the interview, the Celebrity Traitors star revealed his move into journalism was never part of a grand plan. The idea for his Bafta winning series Ross Kemp on Gangs came after a chance meeting in Compton, Los Angeles, with a man who claimed to have been shot 26 times.
'I met a guy who'd been shot 26 times. I didn't believe it was true,' he said.
'I had to ask him, and he lifted up his shirt and he had about six 9mm holes across his chest. He'd been cranked open twice. He'd had seven shots across his groin, one of which hit his testicles.
'We had a few drinks and got on really, really well. I couldn't help thinking that this young guy had been through so much already, but what he had to offer had never been utilised or recognised.
'Had he been born 12 blocks in another direction, he could have been a schoolteacher. He could have been anything. He was incredibly intelligent, and that's how he stayed alive on the streets.
'When I got back to my apartment, I rang my then girlfriend, who happened to be on a boat with the then head of Sky, and I pitched it. That's how you got commissioned in those days.'
Listen to the full episode by searching for Tales From The Celebrity Trenches wherever you get your podcasts.