Is Craig Ferreira South Africa's Steve Irwin?

Every family has its black sheep — in ours it’s my brother Darryl. While I was studying, getting degrees and following a healthy lifestyle, this lunatic went out and became the family success story!

I mean, what is the point of killing yourself following traditional Western recipes for success if your own brother turns on you by starting a property company and becoming an instant hit?

It’s turned family functions into a nightmare — “Oh, so you’re Darryl’s brother. Dot’s very nice, do you also sell houses?”

“Um … no, Auntie Mona, I’ve just been released from prison for armed robbery.”

“It’s a living, as long as the kids are happy.”

So you’ll understand when I say I have great empathy with Craig Ferreira’s father.

Here’s a kid who goes swimming with great white sharks in order to show people that these monsters are … er … misunderstood, that they are not the mindless killing machines we all thought they were.

I’m sure many future victims, while being devoured, will pause to reflect on how nice it is to be the latest meal of these clever homicidal fish!

Anyhow!

The point is that Craig cannot hope to become another Steve Irwin unless he introduces two important features to his “show”.

Firstly, like Irwin, who was a fair-dinkum Aussie, he must become a true South African stereotype — and speak in Afrikaans-English.

For example: “Dyer Island’s Shark Valley are well known for great white sharks … because why? Because why they are preffallent and it are wifout a doubt a plek waarin they can swem unmulested by cirrizens of the island.”

If anyone could understand Irwin or Jacques Cousteau, do you think they would have been the great hits they were? Of course not.

Sounding foreign is romantic even if locals from your own country believe you are making a total prat of yourself: “Ja, we wore a blue pant wif a open-necked crimpelene trousers to accept the award.”

Secondly, Craig needs to do something bizarre. Here he needs to take a doll that looks human and fill it with blood. When the film crew go diving, they film the following: “Hier sien ons a group of great whites just after feeding … this enables us to swem unharmed, next to them …”

Then he releases blood from the doll, which results in a whole team of great whites tearing the doll, which viewers believe is a diver, into a million pieces … blood everywhere! “Of course, I’ve been wrong before …”

It’s either that or swimming underwater wearing khakis and mouthing “Croikey” in an Aussie accent.