Bindi takes show to US

2007-01-09 11:31

Sydney - The eight-year-old daughter of late "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin will star in a high-profile promotional US tour this week, but she will not be forced to perform, her manager said on Tuesday.

Bindi Irwin, whose wildlife television star father was killed by a stingray barb last September, will visit Los Angeles and New York as part of Tourism Australia's G'Day USA week to promote the country.

She is set to perform her song and dance stage show Bindi and The Crocmen and feature on TV talk shows including The Ellen Degeneres Show and The Late Show with David Letterman.

Bindi has shown remarkable resilience in the wake of her father's death, delivering a spirited eulogy during the worldwide broadcast of his funeral, but some critics have objected to her exposure to the spotlight at such an early age.

Irwin family manager and friend John Stainton said critics did not realise she had been "brought up in a different world" at the family's Australia Zoo.

"She is used to cameras and performing. Her dad taught her so much about wildlife and working to cameras," he said. "It's a part of her life, it's like ballet is to another girl."

He said Bindi would be given the chance to pull out of any engagements on the US trip.

"My criteria is if Bindi doesn't want to do it that day, if she wants to go to the zoo or the beach, then that's what we're doing," he told national radio.

"If she decides she doesn't want to do the Letterman Show, which tapes at five o'clock in the afternoon, if she's tired or she doesn't want to do it, there's no pressure on her to do anything at all."

Bindi had been set only to accompany her father on the promotional tour but will now be the star herself, with the support of her American-born mother Terri.

Steve Irwin, who won a worldwide following with his Crocodile Hunter TV series, was killed while filming a documentary off the Australian coast.

Six weeks later, Bindi resumed filming her own wildlife series, Bindi the Jungle Girl, for the American Discovery Channel.

- AFP