Norway's answer to David Beckham slouches into a sofa in a hotel in Oslo, almost horizontal, and grins. Andreas Thorkildsen has a lot to grin about. He is the world, Olympic and European champion, the first javelin thrower to hold all three titles, a feat not even managed by the great Jan Zelezny.
There may be less than a week to go until the World Cup starts in South Africa, but, in Oslo, it is Thorkildsen's face that adorns the city's billboards, not footballers'. "It's going to be business as usual," says the 28-year-old casually when asked whether the Norwegians will get excited about the football.
Norway have not qualified for the tournament since 1998 and so all eyes will instead be on their own sporting superstar, competing in the Diamond League and European Championships this summer. The national obsession is whether he will ever break Zelezny's world record of 98.48m, a question Thorkildsen is asked almost every day.
A Norwegian pin-up and a one-time model – who has an athlete girlfriend, hurdler Christina Vukicevic – Thorkildsen is a kind of Usain Bolt of the throws. He even likes junk food, as his coach of 11 years, Asmund Martinsen, explains.
"As he gets older he is concentrating more on nutrition, but he just really loves cheeseburgers. In 2006 we were in Doha and, before the competition, we were sitting having lunch with one of the Estonian discus throwers, who looks like a bodybuilder; you know, really healthy. He had a seafood salad because he didn't want to feel heavy before the competition and Andreas ordered two cheeseburgers. The Estonian guy said 'you can't eat that'. But Andreas just said 'yeah I can' – and he did, and that was the first time he threw over 90m."
The Norwegian media adore Thorkildsen, but the double Olympic champion says he has no interest in posing for the paparazzi. He made that clear enough in 2006, when he gave a photographer the finger and it made front-page news.
"This one photographer, he just wouldn't stop. He was going on so much longer than everyone else. I was like, 'don't point the camera at me for like 30 minutes in a row'. What can I say? He got the perfect picture. He was happy with it and he probably got to sell it for a lot more than his other pictures.
"You live and learn. I know I shouldn't have done it. But if they bother you enough they'll get a reaction and that was my reaction."
Thorkildsen says he's grown up since then, but the fame and celebrity has taken some getting used to. "No matter where you go in Norway a lot of people will know who you are. You know you're being watched." That sounds creepy. "Yeah it is," says Thorkildsen. "Luckily, the people in Norway are not like that, they leave you alone – unless they're drunk."
The Nordic obsession with javelin throwers is hard to understand for those outside of the culture. But Martinsen has his own theory: "It comes with the people who live here in the Nordic countries," he says simply. "We are tall and strong. When you're tall and strong you want to throw things." He shrugs.
But Thorkildsen says the intensity of interest from the public goes up even to another level in Finland, home of his biggest rival, former world champion Tero Pitkamaki. "Honestly, I think I'm as famous over in Finland as I am here," he says, "which is quite weird. But they are crazy about javelin.
"Last year I did a competition in Finland that was live on TV — 90 minutes of only javelin – and they had maybe 700,000 viewers in the middle of a Saturday! That just blows my mind. I don't think there's any other country in the world except Finland that could do that.
"One of the first times I went to compete in Finland it was a Scandinavian meet — Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. They put the javelin on at the end when everything else was finished, and I don't think even one spectator left before it finished. The javelin is special for them. They really understand the sport too.
"I remember one meet – I was 19 and throwing like 75m, and the crowd just did that little golf clap, you know?" he says, reproducing a half-hearted effort. "But once I went over 80m they really went crazy. They really know the standard of the sport, they cheer appropriate to what you do. Of course that's quite hard if you're young and you realise that if you don't throw over 80m the crowd is not going to cheer for you!" He laughs. "But it's also kinda cool. And if you go close to 90m they go off the roof."
Despite Finland's long and illustrious history in javelin throwing, it is Thorkildsen who is currently dominating the sport. At the World Championships last summer, he was the only Norwegian in the final, among four Finns.
So far he has managed to scoop all of the major titles from under the nose of Pitkamaki, but the two are so competitive that observers compare everything, from number of competitions won to the number of times each has thrown over 90m (in the former, Pitkamaki is just ahead, with 26 wins to Thorkildsen's 25, in the latter it is the Norwegian who is leading, with nine throws over the hallowed 90m mark).
The pair form a double act in press conferences as the media try to hype up their rivalry. "How would you describe each other in three words?" asks one local journalist. Pitkamaki concentrates hard, before answering. "Fast. Consistently powerful," he says. Thorkildsen's own answer comes quick as a flash with a cheeky grin: "Tall, handsome and Finnish," he says.
Thorkildsen giggles when reminded of Pitkamaki's one moment of global fame – beyond the world of javelin – when the Finn inadvertently speared another competitor at a Golden League meet in Rome in 2007. French long-jumper Salim Sdiri was rushed to hospital, but has since recovered to continue his career. The incident got more than a million hits on YouTube.
"Yeah I think the long-jumpers are scared of us now," jokes Thorkildsen. "They know if they say anything bad to us they are on the side we can hit them. They try to stay clear of us these days.
"What happened did freak me out a little bit. I was sitting just to the left of the run-up and I could see immediately when he released the javelin that his arm was going the wrong way. I was looking and thinking 'damn, it's going to go really close to the guys on the left here'.
"Luckily he didn't get too banged up, it could have been much worse. But it kinda put a damper on the whole competition really. It's something that shouldn't have happened, but it was just a freak accident. I've never seen anybody throw off the left-side sector that much."
When asked about his heroes in the sport Thorkildsen replies, matter-of-factly, "Jan Zelezny and Steve Backley". The inclusion of the Briton's name might surprise British fans who remember Backley as the great javelin thrower who never managed to win a world or Olympic title, but Thorkildsen shakes his head at this logic.
"He won four European golds, which in our sport is the same thing. Of course everybody wants to win the Olympics, but it's the same performance to win the Europeans. He had a great career, it's nothing for him to be sad about."
Thorkildsen says he will be happy if he can beat Backley's championship medal count of 10 and Zelezny's of 11. Tipped to take the European crown again this summer, he is certainly on his way.