“Getting old sucks,” says Steve-O, his voice a barely audible rasp. “Middle age is a tough one for anybody – but when you’re Steve-O, it’s particularly tough.” The Jackass star begins assessing his body from the top down, listing everything wrong with it. “The worst thing going on is degenerative disc disease,” he explains. “The space between vertebrae in my neck is becoming smaller and smaller.” His vision has gone bad: “I don’t know if that’s from all the hot sauce and lemon juice I’ve squeezed into my eyes”. He has a “big hole” in his septum from years of cocaine use: “I’ve been able to thread it with a shoelace”. He also lives with Barrett’s oesophagus, a cellular disfiguration in the food pipe that can lead to cancer and requires regular endoscopies. And his collarbone is “all messed up”. He takes a breath. We haven’t even got as far as his torso.
The man born Stephen Gilchrist Glover – but known widely and mononymously as Steve-O – sits on a sofa across from me in the bar of a London hotel, jaded from jetlag, his bare feet up by his side. Anyone familiar with his work (three seasons of the scatological stunt series Jackass, four Jackass movies, and numerous other body-punishing ventures) will likely find his medley of medical ailments no surprise. Over the years he’s pierced a fish hook through his cheek, attached a leech to his eyeball and ensconced his genitals in a swarm of angry bees, making the 49-year-old one of our foremost professional masochists. Think of him as the Lionel Messi of getting splattered by faeces and snapped at by alligators.
