Donal MacIntyre: In his element

By GREG DIXON

An Englishman, it's been said, thinks while seated. The Frenchman does it standing and the American while pacing. But the Irishman, well he's another story. He, goes the tart suggestion, does it afterwards.

It's an impression not helped by Donal MacIntyre, you'd have to say. Over the past two weeks, the Irish TV presenter has been seen on our screens behaving like he's saving all contemplation for afters.

We have seen him braving a hurricane-force gale in a wind tunnel, pulling giant G-forces in a fighter plane in the troposphere and canoeing over what looked like the edge of the Earth.

In the weeks to come, we will see him jump out of a perfectly good helicopter over the Arctic, dive under the icecap and paraglide into a monsoon, And all this for the sake of Wild Weather, a top-rating BBC series about, well, the boring old weather.

You'd have to wonder whether the 36-year-old reporter -- who made his name doing dangerous undercover stories -- isn't, you know, a touch soft in the head.

But being a well-mannered sort, I ask him instead whether he actually enjoys this sort of carry-on. He knows what I'm getting at.

"You could think, "God, the guy is psychotically mad, that he's kind of got that missing gene'," he says, sounding quite calm and rational on the phone from London.

"It might appear to be haphazard and madly careering out of control towards the adrenaline rush, but I usually have one foot on the accelerator and another firmly hovering over the brake."

A sensible fellow, then? Well, sort of.

MacIntyre is famous -- in some quarters, infamous -- in Britain as the reporter who will do just about anything to get a story, whatever the weather.

In MacIntyre Undercover this included insinuating his way in the worlds of Nigerian swindlers and a care home that maltreated its patients. He found abuse of models in the fashion industry, and spent time among the head-kicking ringleaders of the Chelsea Headhunters soccer gang.

This last story included him getting a Chelsea Football Club tattoo which caused a fainting spell. Well you had to, to blend in.

As you might expect, the story rather annoyed said football hooligans, so it also meant he had to spend a year living in a safe house after a number of death threats.

The care home story caused problems of a different kind: it lead to a two-and-half-year, $3 million libel battle with the Kent police. They accused him of a misleading story. Early last month the case won him an apology, $1.8 million in costs and $45,000 in damages (this went to charity).

He is too famous for the troublesome undercover work these days but it's long since made him a love-him-or-hate-him type in Blighty, especially among the print media.

Some critics have accused him of sensationalism and infotainment, others that he's a limelight-hogging pretty boy with about as much substance as the wind.

One pundit, alluding no doubt to his stories on model abuse and soccer hooliganism, suggested that during the following week's episode of MacIntyre Undercover he would uncover that the Pope is a Catholic.

All this flak seems to have made MacIntyre a touch sensitive in interview. He is more than happy to talk about what he has been up to -- he namedrops countries like a smug, 20-something backpacker -- but he's less forthcoming on what drives him, what motivates him.

He does admit he got into journalism for excitement, ego and career opportunities, although it is his sense of supporting the underdog -- a trait among Irish people apparently -- which is the main focus.

But ask whether all this infiltrating soccer gangs and leaping out of helicopters might suggest that he's a Class-A adrenaline junkie and he comes on like a Just Do It ad, only vaguer.

"Oddly enough it doesn't give me -- I'm trying to think of how I can explain it -- the adrenaline, that's not what drives me. What drives me is that I get a chance to live all these experiences and kind of taste portions of people's lives and be in remarkable places.

"And I am also interested in how I react on that edge. I think we are all interested in how we react on the edge, on that cusp between, 'Mmmm, should I go or should I go back?'

This of course is a sportsman thing. MacIntyre, before he was a dead-famous journalist, was a representative canoeist at world championship level. He is also a keen mountain climber and runner.

So he's fit as an orchestra of fiddles and doesn't scare easily. Hence the BBC's offer to do Wild Weather, a two-year, $9 million project that was really a bit of holiday from his crop of stories like Brixton muggings and drugs in Burma.

He claims there are things he won't do, but can't or won't tell me what they might be. But he does get scared.

He admits the canoeing stunt over what looked like the edge of the Earth, but was in fact the 64m Ula Falls in Norway, did frighten the bejabbers out of him.

"I brought my younger brother along as my safety man -- he's one of the top white-water paddlers in the world.

"I said to him, "In all your years of paddling have you ever done anything like this?' "Nope,' he replied. "Have you ever seen anybody do something like this?' "Nope,' he replied again. I said, "Is this way beyond me?' "Yeah, but, I think it is within my ability to rescue you.'

"It was absolutely way the most dangerous thing I've ever done. But my brother, in all my terror, said, "I will rescue you, give me your fear'. All I knew was that it would be over quickly, whatever it was. And it was.

"The danger was taken away from me because he took over the responsibility of looking after me, but I was within two seconds of going over the next waterfall backwards, which would inevitably meant a broken back.

"But he rescued me. I was a physical wreck for the rest of the day, I can tell you."

An Englishman, Frenchman or American would probably have thought of that beforehand.