A Day in the dirt with Mike Rowe

In 2021, Mike (now 10 years older since he last did this) hit the road with his camera crew to spend a day on the job with people tackling the filthiest, sweatiest, weirdest (but most essential) tasks he could find… with a touch of humour.

“It's embarrassing and it's humbling,” says Mike of his attempts to do the work these people do. “I'm an apprentice. I'm not trained to do any of these jobs. It's my first day on the job, every day. Typically I don't do a great job at whatever the job is. That's important for the show, because aside from the fact that sometimes it's amusing to see somebody struggle, it's an honest way to pay tribute to the people who actually are great at doing the work. The viewer gets a chance to see how difficult it is for somebody who's just getting started and compare my efforts to people who actually know what they're doing.”

And since Mike is a pro at the dirty and difficult job of making fascinating reality TV, we had some questions.

Making Dirty Jobs

How involved were you in production on this season of Dirty Jobs?

“The ideas for Dirty Jobs have always come from the viewers. I went on to Facebook and I let people know that the show was coming back. I invited them to send in their ideas and we chose a dozen from the thousands that we got. The way we ended was the same way we always do. I got to look at all of the footage we collected, and we cut it together into what I think is a really good show.”

Your camera crew has a pretty dirty job themselves!

“Typically, they need to travel to extremely high places. This year we cleaned the inside of a water tower, for instance, and that was about 300 feet (91 metres) in the air and an incredibly old ladder is the only way to get to the top. Under perfect conditions, it's kind of challenging. But when you put 30 pounds (13,5kg) of audio gear on a guy or a camera on his shoulder, you've got to find a way to get up there safely. It was slow going. Typically our crew on Dirty Jobs needs to be willing to go to very high places, very low places, very dark places, very cramped places, and very smelly places. If you have claustrophobia or agoraphobia or vertigo, this is probably not the job for you.”

How many days do you get on the job site to get your footage?

“1 day. We do everything from sun-up until sundown and typically, no matter what happens, that's the footage we have to deal with. It's different from other TV shows. We don't do second takes. We don't have a script. We don't have a shot list. We're not dealing with actors or directors or producers or anything like that. The cameras simply follow me, and I follow the action. And when the job is done, we go home.”

Which dirty job did you find the most gruelling this season ?

“I would say just for sheer physical punishment, the first 1 (episode 1). It's a construction job called rod busting. These guys build the skeletons for bridges and overpasses and roads. It's backbreaking work. The rebar is heavy, long round bars of iron, that has to be bent, tied, and fabricated. What these guys do is really very beautiful. They build these elaborate, massive iron skeletons and then the concrete guys come in and just cover it all up, so no one ever sees their work. We wouldn't have buildings or roads or bridges without them. But I'm still sore… and that was shot nearly a year ago!”

Have you kept some souvenirs from this season of Dirty Jobs?

“A couple. We shot a segment on a device called a Cut Suit, which is basically like a fat suit. It's a medical teaching aid that you fill with life-like organs as well as the circulatory system. And people put this on like a vest with latex skin. If you're teaching a doctor or teaching someone how to become a doctor, this is a new teaching aid. They let me remove the fake spleen from someone. That's an amazing episode, and I kept the spleen along with a few other things just because who doesn't want a spleen?”

Watch Dirty Jobs Season 9 Tuesdays at 20:55 on Discovery Channel (DStv Channel 121)

 

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