He’s hand-fed hyenas, been gnawed by piranhas and now Steve Backshall is bringing his Deadly Live! Tour to Brighton – a city with only one serious predator, the hungry seagull.
Hopefully, our chip-thieving foes will keep to the beach when Steve brings this extension of his BAFTA-winning, much-loved show, Deadly 60, to the Brighton Centre this half term.
Steve is an experienced naturalist, explorer and presenter, but he says he still gets the fear when it comes to facing an audience of several thousand children.
He said: “Doing this big grand arena tour is an uplifting, exciting, challenging and frankly terrifying thing.
“It’s such a weird thing to bounce from being out in the field, living in the jungle or sleeping under a bit of leaky
tarpaulin to standing on a stage in front of thousands of people and having to entertain them, but I can’t wait.”
This year’s live tour is going back in time and looking at the deadliest creatures throughout history and seeing how they’d fare against each other.
Audiences can expect to see ice age mammoths squaring up to sabre toothed cats and giant dinosaurs going toe-to-toe, all thanks to some clever animatronics.
Steve warns not to expect Disneyfied-depictions of these long extinct beasts.
“They’re not based on Jurassic Park models of what a dinosaur would look like, but on the absolute cutting-edge of modern science tools.”
Full of thrills and surprises, the show is, as anyone familiar with his TV programme will know, be educational too. This mix of adventure, peril and fascinating facts have made Deadly 60 a favourite with children and adults alike for almost two decades.
Talking about the live show, Steve explained: “My concept is that we go from the genesis of life on Earth all the way to the present day, and we introduce deadly animals as they crop up in evolutionary history and analyse them.
“It’s a rollercoaster ride of science and nonsense and ludicrousness all rolled into one.
“It’s tremendous fun. It rattles along at an insane pace, but manages to have some very factual content within it. I’m really proud of it.”
Along with the mammoths and dinosaurs, Steve will also be looking at the creepy crawlies which may be small but have the potential to do a lot of damage.
He said: “We’ll be breaking down the way that small stuff works as well – down to the ants, the wasps, the spiders and the scorpions, putting it all into its context and talking about when they were first found.”
The young audience also get a chance to take part in the show, with a few lucky children being handed the microphone to ask questions and impart their own knowledge of the natural world.
“Anyone who works with kids will know this: if you just stand and talk to them – even if what you’re saying is thrilling and interesting – you’re eventually going to lose them. The best thing to do is to make it a dialogue by asking them a question,” Steve explained.
He continued: “Often very young kids will know the most obscure details about dinosaurs or birds of prey, for example, and you can see the adults sat next to them going, ‘How the hell did you know that? That’s absolutely insane.’”
Deadly Live! promises to be full of surprises, explosions, circus tricks and even some dinosaur poo. As exciting as the show promises to be, it will be a lot safer than some of Steve’s previous assignments which have seen him bitten by a crocodile and endure three separate shark bites.
But the worst pain was, he explained, wearing a pair of gloves made from bullet ants.
“It was completely overwhelming. There was nothing in my world apart from pain. It was hands down the most painful thing that has ever happened to me. The really intense bit lasted for maybe three hours, but it still hurt for a couple of days after that.”
He’s been face to face with the most dangerous creatures on the planet and, as such, is full of survival tips.
He said: “The thing that is most likely to lead to a negative interaction with an animal is it being frightened, running away or panicking.
“Any of those signs set you apart as being a potential target and that can trigger predatory impulses. And the flip side of that is that if you can be calm and confident, then you are not prey, and animals will just ignore you or avoid you.”
Very sound advice – but does it work for seagulls too?
Details
Deadly Live! At the Brighton Centre
Dates: October 29, 2026 2pm
Venue: Brighton Centre, Kings Road, Brighton
Tickets: Ticketmaster
Accessibility: Information available here
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