We’ve just watched a Telegraph TV video: journalist Charles Starmer Smith getting mauled by a lion in Limpopo Province, South Africa – after entering its enclosure.

Perhaps his comment that ‘the lion just obeys what he [Arrie, the handler] does and plays (…) but stops up to a point’ was a little premature. He doesn’t look so relaxed when the animal’s teeth are firmly stuck into his leg.

Nonetheless, he is smiling when he steps out of the enclosure: he can’t wait to get home and ‘show off’ his scars he says. Then he goes off to get some stitches.

Starmer Smith’s account here.

Video at this link.

(Hat-tip: Fred Hatman)