LOS ANGELES - American comedian Bill Maher has angrily refused to apologise for wearing a bloody Steve Irwin Halloween costume.
Maher, speaking on his US TV talk show, suggested Irwin may have been "doing something" to the stingray that killed him that he "shouldn't have been".
Photographs of
Maher in his Crocodile Hunter costume, complete with a bloody stingray barb hanging out of his chest, appeared on the internet last week.
"Stop hassling me about my Halloween costume," Maher, speaking on his TV show, Real Time with Bill Maher, said.
"Yes, you've seen it on the internet. I went as the Crocodile Hunter with a bloody stinger in my chest."
Maher joked that he wouldn't apologise the way former Democrat US presidential candidate John Kerry this week apologised for a joke that backfired about US soldiers in Iraq.
"People who really love animals understand if you get killed by one, chances are you were doing something to it you shouldn't have been," Maher said.
"You want me to apologise for making a joke?
"Who do you think I am, John Kerry?"
The bad taste Crocodile Hunter costumes were popular in the US this Halloween.
Irwin was killed by a stingray barb while filming on the Great Barrier Reef on September 4.
- AAP
