The sequel did only slightly less well ($250 million worldwide), but then Hoges announced he was going to hang up his boots and his that’s-what-I-call-a-knife thereafter, take it easy on his substantial share of the proceeds, and make only the occasional return to the movie screen. It was a decision of which his most famous fictional creation would have approved. “The more the world speeds up,” notes Hogan, “the more Mick Dundee slows down.”

But it was on one of those occasional returns to the screen - the 1996 movie Flipper - that Hogan met a person every bit as persistent as a Walkabout Creek crocodile: Flipper’s executive producer, Lance Hool. “I kept on bugging him that he should do a third story,” says Hool, who started in the business as an actor in 1970’s Soldier Blue and has 21 movies to his credit as a producer. “People loved the character of Mick Dundee, and they missed him.”

This struck a chord with Hogan who, it turned out, had actually been missing Mick a bit as well. “I wondered what he was doing with himself,” he says, with that trademark grin. Hogan also admits that his resolution after ‘Crocodile’ Dundee II was beginning to waver. “For probably the last three years, I’ve been saying that if I woke up with a really good idea, then maybe I might do it,” he recalled on the set of the third ‘Crocodile’ Dundee film, which finally rolled this September. “This time, Mick thinks he’s a bit more cosmopolitan because he’s spent a month in New York” - a couple of weeks in ‘Crocodile’ Dundee and a couple in ‘Crocodile’ Dundee II - “but of course he’s really still exactly the same.”

The idea that brought it all into focus becomes clear as soon as you realise where Hogan is when he’s saying this: on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Hence the title: Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (purists may like to note that the quote marks round ‘Crocodile’ seem to have been dropped this time around).

Hogan himself has spent his fair share of time in Tinseltown and, like most people, developed a love-hate relationship with the city. “I lived in Los Angeles for a couple of years,” he says, “and I realised what a strange, unreal sort of place it was. Eventually, the penny dropped: this is the place to bring Mick Dundee - because he’s so grounded and, given the unreality of the city, he’s a perfect contrast to it. Also, Mick realises he’s a dying breed, you know? There aren’t crocodile hunters anymore: it’s illegal now. So he’s little more than a tourist guide and a crocodile wranger. And he’s thinking he might find something more interesting to do.”

So, while the new film starts out in the familiar setting of Walkabout Creek, it swiftly moves east (Los Angeles being east of Australia) when Mick’s partner, Sue Charlton, played by Hogan’s real-life partner, Linda Kozlowski (they met on the first film), is summoned by her newspaper-owning father to run the LA office. Mick follows her, hoping to introduce their son Mikey - played by newcomer Serge Cockburn - to the wonders of Southern California. Before long, however, Mick gets caught up, as only Mick can, in the investigation into the death of Sue’s predecessor. And Mikey, too, finds himself more involved in the Southern California dream than your average tourist.

“This film is a little different from the other two,” says veteran Aussie director Simon Wincer (Phar Lap, Free Willy). Wincer describes himself as “the new boy on the block”: even though he has been friends with the star for years, this is his first ‘Crocodile’ Dundee movie (he did, however, direct Hogan in Lightning Jack). “The first film was a romantic comedy,” he says, “and the second was kind of an action/adventure/romance. This one is very much a comedy.”

More so even than in the first two films, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles works by setting up the naïve but plain-spoken Mick - remember the scene in the first film where he finally figures out what a bidet does? - as an observer of American urban life. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the possibilities provided by the City of Angels are rather greater than those offered by the Big Apple. “The whole thing with Mick Dundee is that nothing has changed in his part of the world,” says Hogan. “He’s a mythical Australian that we hope is still out there somewhere and you want to run into him in the bush. After I’d taken him to New York, I decided to take him to a city that is a weird world all to itself: Los Angeles. It’s such a strange, hip town that it’s perfect for someone like Mick!”

Pet rescue: Mick and Mikey bring a busy freeway to a halt.