For a man who has smelled the breath of the planet's deadliest predators and lived to tell the tale, Steve Backshall cuts a remarkably disarming figure. Anyone familiar with CBBC's resident adventurer and naturalist through his show Deadly 60 may be surprised to hear that in the flesh he is boyishly enthusiastic, softly spoken and miraculously unscarred by a lifetime of death-defying confrontations with nature's fiercest creatures.
What he lacks in Crocodile Dundee machismo the Buckinghamshire-based explorer, presenter and now novelist, more than compensates for with his infectious zeal and encyclopaedic ecological knowledge. And where lesser mortals might capitulate when faced with a venomous tarantula or a snarling snow leopard, Backshall positively bristles with prospective excitement.
"It's going to sound terribly glib and cliched but the more I learn about animals, the more convinced I am that almost all the fears we have about them are unfounded.
"The statistic that I reel out more than any other is that an average of four people are killed worldwide by sharks every year – and you are more likely to be killed by a falling soft-drinks machine than you are by a shark.
"And having been in the water hundreds of times now with sharks, I genuinely don't ever feel frightened – fascinated and excited, but not scared."
It's this compelling combination of statistical understanding and zoological empathy that has propelled Backshall, 39, to the higher branches of the BBC's revered natural history department, where he presents CBBC's phenomenally popular flagship wildlife programme, Deadly 60. Before that he fronted a string of high-octane nature documentary shows including Lost Land of the Volcano, Expedition Alaska (and Borneo), The Really Wild Show and the EarthPulse series for the National Geographic Channel where he held the illustrious position of adventurer in residence, following an apprenticeship spent writing for the Indonesian editions of the Rough Guide travel books.
It has been a heady ascent, but considering Backshall's almost Dr Doolittle-esque upbringing, hardly surprising. "I am very, very lucky in that my parents both completely inspired me. We grew up on a small farm, a small-holding in Surrey with a massive menagerie of weird pets," he explains from the un-jungle like confines of the Covent Garden Hotel library.
"I was lucky enough to be surrounded by all sorts of animals from a very young age. My sister Jo was much more into the domestic animals – horses and things. I was absolutely fixated on the blackbirds, and the grass snakes in the manure heap and everything that surrounded us.
"I was always really into the facts and figures and the statistics about nature and I always loved learning about it and having a new fact on hand. For me it was non-stop dirt, climbing trees and catching lizards and beetles. That was my thing as soon as I could crawl."
Backshall's parents both worked for an airline and while their colleagues used their discounted travel vouchers to escape to far-flung beach resorts, the Backshall family headed to India or Africa on walking safaris.
"They gave us a wonderful introduction to travelling. By the time I was eight I was very used to staying in real grimy hell holes but seeing the absolute best of the world and things that nobody else – none of my contemporaries – ever had a chance to see.
"It meant that when I became an independent traveller myself; I just knew what I was doing. Nothing fazed me. Nothing scared me."
He did have the self-awareness, however, not to broadcast his interest in nature at his Surrey comprehensive school. "I didn't really share it with them much. Like most kids, I wanted to be accepted so I wouldn't have wanted to appear like a total geek. Everyone knew me at school as Manure Boy, as there was a big sign outside our house saying, 'Manure, 10p a bag, bring your own bags.'
"We were the odd family that lived in a place where I had to milk all the goats and collect all the chicken eggs before school in the morning, and I certainly didn't go into school and say, 'Hey, wow, did you know that the Black mamba is the fastest snake on earth,' You'd have been crucified at my school for doing that."
Throughout his presenting career, in which he's been bitten by crocodiles, stung by bullet ants and endured a 60-mile overnight run to gain an Israeli special forces red beret, Backshall has been a prolific writer, producing several nature books to accompany his various TV shows. His first foray into fiction is Tiger Wars, set in India and the first instalment of The Falcon Chronicles, a four-part series of natural adventure thrillers.
"I don't care if 80% of the people who read the book don't come away with anything whatsoever about tiger conservation, that's fine. The 20% who do will, hopefully, want to make a difference.
He wants to inspire people who wouldn't normally watch a wildlife show. "The essential thing is to catch the people who would never in a million years read a book about conservation, to have enough of a thrill in purely watching or reading the material in front of them. Hopefully that way they will take on board the message much more subtly."
It's a message that echoes the National Trust's recent study on nature deficit disorder, which highlights 21st-century children's increasing disconnection from the natural world.
"I appreciate that I'm in the privileged situation of getting to spend my entire life outdoors with wildlife, and I know first hand how good it makes you feel, and it's a message that I have to try to get across to kids because as an adult, I can see the dangers that normal modern life exacts upon children.
"The problem is that you've got to be very, very careful how you package it. You can't say to kids, 'computer games are bad, television's bad, junk food is bad,' because they know it's good. They know it feels good. They know it's exciting, they know it's fun. It's all about trying to find ways of really selling the stuff that I know will make them feel better and give them a happier, healthier life.
"I'm very keen with both books and in television programmes not to hammer a message of hardcore conservation but to wrap it up like a sweetie in a parcel of thrill and adventure and make it as cool as possible, and try to make kids aspire to the kind of things I get to do all the time because I know that, when they try it, they'll love it."
Role models don't come much more impassioned and Backshall is clearly well positioned to persuade today's young people to swap their consoles for conservation but suggestions by television critics that he's the next David Attenborough are gently rebuffed.
"That's a tremendous compliment, but absolute nonsense. There will never be another David Attenborough. There will never be a time when someone can be as influential in setting up wildlife television. In setting up the whole industry, as Attenborough has. He will never be replaced.
"Television is very, very different now. There are many channels that do wildlife TV, many different types of wildlife television. There will never again be one figurehead of wildlife. There will always be 20 or 30 or 40 of us and if I can be considered as one of those, that's all right by me."
• Tiger Wars will be published by Orion Children's Books on 24 May. A Wild Life – An Audience with Steve Backshall is touring throughout the UK in June and July, visit stevebackshall.com for details
