As Anthony Bourdain took the first foul, unwashed bite of warthog anus, his producer Chris Collins gave him a look that said: “Man, you’re going to get so sick.”
Normally Collins would have been right behind him. “I can confidently say, whatever s - - t he’s put in his mouth, I put in mine, with the exception of the warthog anus,” Collins says. But a man’s got to draw a line somewhere. “They had just squeezed a turd out of it.”
Collins was right to hold back. One week later he got a call from Bourdain, who was back in LA after their trip to Namibia and he was on antibiotics. He had contracted a parasite from the hog.
Bourdain and his crew have, as he tells The Post, “been through a lot of s - - t together.” It was Collins and his then-fiancée, Lydia Tenaglia, who convinced the New Yorker bad-boy chef to make his first TV show, the Food Network’s “A Cook’s Tour” 13 years ago. They went on to work together on the hit Travel Channel shows “No Reservations” (of which there were nine seasons) and “The Layover.” And this year Bourdain brought Collins and Tenaglia and their production company, Zero Point Zero, to CNN for his new show, “Parts Unknown,” the first episode of which aired last Sunday.
“Other than my family, there’s nobody I spend more time with. We’re very, very close,” says Bourdain, who is still chef-at-large at New York’s Brasserie Les Halles.
Collins and Tenaglia were working as freelance producers when they heard Bourdain, who’d just penned the controversial cook’s tell-all “Kitchen Confidential,” planned to travel the world to write a follow-up book. They proposed making a show out of the trip.
The Food Network ate it up and signed them for a full season of shows. Collins and Tenaglia got married right after making the deal, and a week after the wedding they jetted off to Japan to film the first episode with their star chef.
“We joke that Tony came with us on our honeymoon and has been a part of our marriage ever since,” Tenaglia says.
Unfortunately, that first episode wasn’t a great success.
“Tony was totally green,” Collins says. “We came back from our first day of shooting in Japan, and were like, ‘We’re totally f - - ked.’ This guy’s like a deer caught in headlights, he’s not saying anything.”
But by their next stop, Vietnam, Bourdain had found his groove, and the rest is history.
These days, Collins and Tenaglia tend to hang back in New York while Bourdain travels with producers and cameramen from their now much expanded company.
Diane Schutz is one such producer who says that unexpected brawls and detours make for the best shows. When they were filming “No Reservations” in 2010, their local fixer in Panama (they have a native to guide them in each country) told them that the head of national security was a fan and wanted to meet Bourdain.
They were chatting over a fruit plate and coffee when the government official invited the crew to see 6 tons of raw, uncut cocaine burned on the outskirts of town. Their eyes lit up — the episode had just got interesting.
They followed him and watched truck-fulls of the drug unloaded onto giant tarps and then set aflame.
“[We left] a lot of [our] clothing in Panama because going back through Customs would have been a problem,” Schutz says. “Tony insisted on keeping his boots. But we landed back at JFK and were going through security and the sniffer dog came right up to him and the security guy was like, ‘Hey man, love your show!’ ”
Executive producer Sandra Zweig says the crew has to go through hazardous environment training before they venture out to some locations.
“We do checkpoint exercises and hostage-situation training. You know, your regular, run-of-the-mill day at the office,” Zweig laughs.
No amount of training could have prepared them for what happened in Beirut in 2006, though.
They were filming an episode of “No Reservations” when the Israel-Lebanon conflict broke out. That night, as they tried to sleep, they heard fighter planes overhead. Bourdain took a call from Collins back in New York.
“I told him, ‘Tony it looks like it’s going badly. We really should get you and the crew out of there,’ ” Collins recalls. “The conversation got pretty heated, because he felt strong about staying.”
Bourdain wouldn’t budge. He insisted on staying long enough to get a proper show out of the trip.
The next morning, they saw the Beirut airport bombed from their hotel balcony. They were unable to leave the country for nearly two weeks and were finally escorted out of the country by US Marines.
The episode they put together during that trip won an Emmy.
Sometimes taking a chance pays off, but some of Bourdain’s crew have their limits.
“Tony [had been] talking about the Congo for years, and that’s just one place I never really felt comfortable with,” says cameraman Todd Liebler. “I’ve been to Beirut, Libya, Kurdistan. I’m going to Israel. But there was just something that was just too remote and crazy about the Congo. We have four or five security people, what’s that going to do against a small militia of 50 who are armed to the teeth with automatic rifles and grenade launchers?”
When CNN greenlighted the Congo trip, Liebler decided not to go. But producer Tom Vitale didn’t want to miss out on the once-in-a-lifetime trip and has just returned.
“Congo was the most intense and bizarre place we’ve ever been. Everything was set in these ruins from the 1950s and ’60s,” he says. “There’s just complete chaos there, but it’s amazing how kind the people are when they’re dealing with so much awful stuff.”
But Liebler has no regrets — not about the Congo, or about the warthog meal, which he also refused.
“I knew that anus was a bad idea,” he laughs. “And I’ll catch the Congo on TV.”
It’s a good job he’s still laughing, warthog, bombs and all. As Bourdain says, “You better have a sense of humor in this crew or you’re screwed.”