Jeremy Wells says he finds it difficult watching himself on television. Photo / Martin Sykes

Jeremy Wells says he finds it difficult watching himself on television. Photo / Martin Sykes

I'd started to think that the kid formerly known as Newsboy/News on mad TV shows such as Havoc and Eating Media Lunch had finally grown into his adult self - Jeremy Wells - on his latest series, Birdland.

In it, the 32-year-old has been travelling around the country talking to people who love birds, displaying quite a lot of knowledge about birds himself, and in general playing it straight and hardly cussing at all.

It's been rather clean and refreshing, in contrast with Wells' past decade of politely enunciated, deadpan televisual shockers. Or, as he might put it, in his trademark alliterative style, he has been the picture of relatively refined rhetoric.

But in last week's episode, when he was scraping through a narrow cave system near Karamea, accompanied by a nice Department of Conservation man named Chippy, the Newsboy genie popped out of his mouth and asked Chippy if he'd ever wandered through the caves ... nude.

Chippy took it well and told him, of course not. It was far too cold.

In another episode, filmed on Tiritiri Matangi, Wells quietly murmured to another DoC ranger about the irony of sending takahe down to Southland to become "less inbred", a reference to earlier onscreen remarks which got him into so much trouble with the good folk of Gore.

But Wells has generally been restrained, only swearing profusely, but perfectly understandably, when he volunteered to take an electric shock as part of a programme to teach dogs not to attack kiwi.

When we meet and I put it to him that Birdland, which screens on TV One in a family-friendly slot (Saturdays at 7pm), has been good for him, a new direction, including my clumsily put "in terms of swearing", he looks a bit astounded and shouts, with a laugh, "In terms of swearing?"

Er, a more mature vehicle? "Yes", he agrees, affably.

"I had 12 years of thinking what's the worst possible thing I could say in an interview. It took me a while to learn how to do that and then for this show, I had to unlearn myself again. But it's still the first thing you think. I just think the most appalling things so all of a sudden you have to go, 'No, put that one to the side'."

But he clearly hasn't put all that to the side, because Birdland still contains evidence of Wells' long-standing interest in bodily functions. Just one example: Chippy did sound surprised to be quizzed about his underground toiletries in last week's episode. "Well, there was no swearing involved there," Wells points out.

Wells had actually met Chippy years before, when he and his mate Mikey Havoc were filming their Sellout Tour TV series.