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Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin
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Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin's final programme is ready to go to air, but the show about the sea's deadliest creatures will not include any footage from the day he was killed by a stingray, his manager said today.
Irwin died on September 4, minutes after a poisonous barb from a stingray's tail pierced his chest while he was snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef in northern Australia, shooting footage for two projects, including one titled Ocean's Deadliest.
Irwin's final moments were caught on video tape, and were used in a police investigation and coroner's examination of the death.
The original tape was returned to Irwin's widow, Terri, and all copies were destroyed, Queensland state coroner Michael Barnes said earlier this week.
Terri Irwin and John Stainton, a close family friend and Irwin's manager, one of the few to have seen the footage, have both said it will never be shown publicly.
Stainton said Ocean's Deadliest had been completed in line with Irwin's contract with the Discovery Channel, and would be screened for the first time in the US on January 21.
The show includes footage taken "in the week and days before" Irwin's death.
"Anything to do with the day that he died, that film is not available," Stainton said.
Stainton said putting the programme together was especially difficult emotionally because of Irwin's death.
"The documentary was commissioned, we finished it and it's going to air," Stainton said. "It's been a long and arduous saga ... an emotionally charged time to do an edit on a documentary that did have a deadline, and we did have to honour the deadline."
The footage of the death of Irwin, host of the hugely popular Crocodile Hunter series, has been the subject of much media interest because of the possibility that an unauthorised copy could turn up on Internet video sharing networks such as YouTube.
Irwin was not shooting Ocean's Deadliest at the time he was killed, but footage intended for a programme to be hosted by his daughter, Bindi.
Copyright Press Association 2007
