 You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live. First night on the run we did 70 kilometers about 50 miles and we were carrying our bell kits which was about 50 pound. I burned my feet because we were really hammering it so the blisters then got infected. I was losing weight rapidly every day. You're lying there just friggin freezing and no sleep and then at night I could start moving and two guys marched me out into a car. They didn't tell me where they were taking me or anything and they took me out to the middle of the desert and there was a pre-arranged RV with a secret police and that's when this guy put the gun to my head. I ended up in a hospital in London and because I drank some chemicals and they think the chemicals have done something to me because I get this patch and it used to come up on my forehead but it travels around my body and the people that did the tests on me, the typical of the army, they said we didn't find anything and as I was leaving they said do you have any family? I went yeah I've got a daughter and he said are you thinking about having any other children? I went yeah he went I wouldn't and then I was like why not? He went we don't know what you've got. My daughter was targeted, she had two policemen on her doorstep for two years. There was a team of guys that were going to come along you know on video and probably take her head off and that was Scotland Yard Anti-Terror Branch that that cracked it got it in I was in America in my house in America and I got a phone call and I thought they're going to tell me that there's another you know following me and it wasn't it said your daughter's being green lit. Boomer on and today's guest we get SAS soldier and offer Chris Ryan. How are you doing? How's the boy? How are you? Not too bad. Happy to walk from the wrong station. First and foremost thanks for coming on the show. We'll promote your new book straight away but you're an offer of 74 books so I would be here all day for us to promote all day back. Chris Ryan manhunter this is a new one what's this about Chris? Well it's basically last year when I started to write it you know as you've said 74 books I wanted to do something that was different and I just felt you know I thought back to when I was a kid in the spaghetti movies and they you know the concept of that and I just thought right I'm going to write a book but it's going to have the best battle scene ever at the end where it's right down to the last bullet and some of my friends up in Newcastle you know they're high level organised crime so you know you see it you know that side of life and how they become legitimised and then come property dealers have businesses and stuff like that so it all starts off say modern day in London and then moves moves into Africa and as the story pans out the British government has an interest in a fictitious part of the continent and basically it's mineral rights and now this is very close to fact and at the end there's a massive fire fight and like I say I won awards through the writing world for that fire fight and it came down to a few firefights that actually happened one being in Torah Bora where the guys were like fixing bayonets I've been in quite a few firefights where you know you're down to your last magazine and you think I'm going to be fucked here and just something about the regiment that seemed to pull that like rabbit out the hat at the last minute and there is you know there's countless other actions that they they carried out probably the most famous one was in Merbat where there was a bunch of guys at a fort and they were fighting off 250 rebels there's only about eight of them one guy manned a 25 pounder which usually takes five guys to to operate he was doing it by himself he got his jaw shot off he wrapped it you know a rag around his face carried on firing it the other guys were getting shot and wounded and they overcame you know 250 50 guys so it it's in that spirit this this story working people buy your books possible and well obviously they can order it from any good independent or amazon any bookseller will hold it but amazon's the quickest way but I would say support your your independence every every every town village should have one and then yeah online good I've watched many of your videos some fucking fascinating stories in there like you're the you break the world record for it was not a world record it's just a mad record actually to you are the longest escaping history you walk nearly 200 miles seven days eight nights kind of thing yeah through the desert and you survive like that's a mad story but we'll touch on all that but first of all I was but firstly I always like to go back to the start of my guess where you grew up how it all began well my I was born in a place called concert which my parents they were in my father was in the building trade we we didn't have a pot pissing you know I would say we were we were in a loving environment but very poor you know no holidays or anything like that clothes were always like hand downs but back in them days you know it was before computers the internet or anything so you know I'd spend my time outside my father showed me how to catch say rabbits birds and stuff to eat and stuff so I spent a lot of time just running around the moors around the northeast I've got two brothers one he didn't want anything to do with the army he's got a garage he does his own thing another brother who's still in the parachute regiment he got commissioned and you know he's quite high up in in the rank side all I wanted to do was was travel and I squandered my school life I I was a a product of when schools went from grammar from secondary schools to grammar schools into comprehensive and it was a bad period of time because the grammar school teachers hated the second secondary modern teachers and the diss didn't didn't get on well I I used that discord so I could sit in a class of 30 keep me head down and nobody'd ask me a question and I was just happy and I'd be looking out thinking the best way for me to do anything or to fulfill my dreams was to join the army and in them days we had bases in you know Germany all around the world and I thought I'd get the seed places now I left joined the army and the first thing I realized is I'd squandered my education and within the army to get rank you have to you have to go through the educational process so again the difference being in the army you can't just fuck somebody off and if you if you don't work you're not going to get promoted and chances are being in the sas you're going to get kicked out now several things happened I'd been in there in the sas for um two or three years and um I was picked to be sent off to go to Germany to do the german alpine guides course which is it's a two-year course and you have to you have to be able to speak german write german read german you're going to wear a german uniform and everything is in german so they sent me down to beckinsfield which has a the british army language lab I was put into a class with kernels and other high-ranking officers who were getting ready to go out to Germany to take over their regiments and they'd spent loads of time in Germany so their german was really you know at a high level I got in there and I was like I can't keep up so I phoned my sergeant major up in herford and I said yeah listen you might be better if you um send somebody else up to do this course because um I um I'm finding this language really hard and he went if you don't pass don't come back and just put the phone down on me and I was like fuck you know so thankfully the educational officer he'd been an ex teacher I said what I'm having problems here he said yes because your english grammar isn't it's you know that of a three-year-old so he said if you want he said it's not going to be easy um you can after six o'clock after after work you can come to the house my wife and I will run you through english grammar um it'll be up to about 11 12 o'clock we'll set you will um you know homework so I was living in the block in beckinsfield and I think I was running on about two or three hours per day it was the hardest I've ever worked mentally but I passed that language course then I went on to go over to Germany and pass the the alpine guides course which again is is the it's the highest level of any mountaineering course because again you're you're a guide um you have to know the makeup of weather the makeup of snow prediction everything else that's before you even strap a set of skis on or you know a climbing harness it's rescues working with helicopters in the mountains everything so it was a very fulfilling course um but from a mental side I knew if I set my mind to something I could do it I just been a lazy bastard when I was at school and and the teachers didn't give a shit so this is something we can go on to later on I've got a passion about my children's books and whenever I go into a school and I meet a kid 14 to 16 I basically see myself when he when he says he's never read a book and he can't read and I you know I'm in a privileged position so I try to focus that promote reading within you know the age groups of say 12 to 16 um and push kids because when they come out now if they can't read I've got a cat in hell's chance you know unless they've got a silver spoon sticking out you know the mouth um so all of this this writing malarkey and my background in the ss changed my life and changed my thought process you know it wasn't just about you know bringing out best sellers that have been made into tv long-running tv series it's deeper than that you can actually help young kids from deprived areas and get them to focus because a lot of young kids when they're in the classroom and if they come from a really shitty area people are looking down at them you know they they know that yet you know you haven't got any money and in this in the stigmatized they know there's no books in the house and they can just cast them off and it's like no screw that you know every kid deserves a chance definitely so you joined down mate 16 I joined what happened was um I was going to join as a junior soldier and I got jaundice so my entry into the into the military was um halted for a year and once I got over that well during that period my cousin he was in the territorial sas and he said to me just come up there and he said you know you can um you can do selection when you're old enough um and and crack on now this is before the embassy anything nobody really knew we had an sas unless you were in the military so I joined that and it was probably a mistake I spent too long there I was there for four years and then what I had to do is apply to join the parachute regiment and then from the parachute regiment joined to sas and how long did they to join it well it's a six month process and I'm lucky because my last two years spent in the regiment after spending ten I was an instructor running um sas selection so I've seen selection from both sides of the fence like I say it's a six month process it's broken down into segments and it's nothing like that shite that's on tv I can tell you now during that six six months process you'll never get an instructor scream at you shout at you or try to motivate you um the first phase is what they call the hills phase this is where we take the soldiers up as individuals onto the breccan beacons and um they're they're set marches like walks they get longer the weight the carrying gets heavier but they're always by themselves and there's loads of different routes so they can't follow one another so after that period there's test week which is a set of set marches ending in a 65k march called long drag the successful guys after that have proven that they can push themselves under arduous conditions the next thing is we then take them to the jungle for five to six weeks but this time we put them into patrols and we're looking at them as are they a team player can they mix with five of the strangers and come to this unit and this as an instructor this is where you start seeing to guys souls because the jungle is actually harder than the hills phase because it's a hostile environment as soon as you get under the canopy it's a it's a uh a primary jungle it's hot you're either walking up uphill or downhill you're always soaking whether it's crossing rivers or just sweating um you're carrying heavy loads you're under a lot of pressure and everything in there wants to either bury its head into you bite you or scratch you so a lot of guys get in there and they become claustrophobic and they can't think about the tasks at hand they just see this green curtain in front of them so you could be here just looks exactly the same you walk all day and you get maybe four or five k's over there you're knackered and it looks exactly the same and everything is twice as hard in the jungle you have to be very careful with your own personal admin if you don't look at yourself look after yourself your body starts falling to pieces so during that period we've only probably gone into the jungle with 45 guys and we started on the hills with 200 you know half of these guys are going to stick their hand up and say it's not for me some of them that don't you know they're not going to pass so you know you're always making notes and I used to be fair as an instructor in under the trees if I had a certain individual and I wasn't sure what I would do is get him moved into another patrol so somebody else could look at him just to make sure it wasn't a personality um you know problem because we all have friends or we all know people but you don't like them and there's you you know for no reason and you just think I'll just double check on this kid the next phase after that is combat survival again we get the guys and we teach them all the things they need to know in terms of survival and how to conduct conduct themselves after capture that's resistance to interrogation various things next phase after that is um continuation training so this is where now we've got to teach soldiers who are used to carrying a weapon in a uniform how to carry a weapon in severe clothes and then say walk in your neighborhood or my neighborhood and not stand out how to blend in and to be a great man whilst you know they're on the radio they're following somebody and that came from say like a northern island type of scenario now they do other scenarios that are more fitting like lurk working in london maybe following a terrorist cell to know that they've got to get in close to you know put one into their head um other technical equipment now listening devices drones other various other various kit so at the end you know it's six months and uh you're usually left with anything from five to twelve guys and uh they're then sent off to one of the four squadrons and basically you're the new guy in the squadron but you have to be capable enough to fit in as in you know what the score is um a good friend of my brothers he passed into the regiment and b squadron was up in afghanistan but up country and this lad he was flown out um to join the squadron but he was at bazaar then he had a a two day road journey to get to the squadron and he had a bunch of afghan soldiers well on the first day he was ambushed and he was in an ambush for two days conducting like this operation where he's having to call in fast day to to drop audience ordinance bring in other troops to to orchestrate this whole attack so the guys have to be top notch once they pass selection do you know also even you're giving them the course and putting them through their paces do you know from day one who's got a good chance of passing in the jungle i know within i would say a week of how they conduct themselves and there's a couple of little tests i would do with them that i wouldn't you know it's not rocket science there's an exercise the hardest thing in the jungle is navigating to know where you are because you can't see nothing so everything's done by pacing and it's ridgelines and river junctions and things like that so there's a certain skill to it so what i would do is take the guys out and we do it tactically so we're moving slowly you know everybody getting into fire position stuff like that get into a lying up position and they run through all the drills and then i would say right fellas tomorrow we're going to just do some semi-tax stuff and i will give you start giving you tips and stuff like that but i but i want you up at three o'clock in the morning on the track now when you're in the jungle in the in the in the light goes down it's like being locked in a room without any windows and somebody puts a blanket over your head now the guys have to then put the hammock up they have to put the poncho up they have to sort the food out and everything else so that means they're emptying out their rucksack and various other things so get them up at three o'clock pitch black pack the kit get them on the track i would walk them for about 200 meters then just stop them and say right use lots sit down get yourself a brew on get something to eat and then i'd walk down to the basher site so this used to crack me up you get to see one basher site so you find a pair of socks get over here you find some paper you find something else you'll find a bit of equipment you'll find maybe a mat like a rifle magazine so then i go back and i'm like who's is this you know that's him so there's a lot of bollockings and then it's like you then get to see how a guy takes a bollocking because nobody likes being told you know that they're an idiot and that their their shit's not together and it's how they affect them and whether they can get over it but then you look at their attitude the way they start looking at you and then the other thing that i've forgotten to say as well what i do is when i get them in to that l up point i will just say i'm going back to base for an hour and i'll be back now that patrol are supposed to work together and that means if you're the radio operator you've got to set up your radio get your antenna out and and then come like write a message out and stuff like that so what should be happening is your one of the lads and patrols should become to you asking you to give give you his hammock in his poncho so as you're working on the radio he's putting your bedding up another guy should be coming in saying give us your scoff and we'll eat together so he's cooking tea as you're sending that message so the patrol's working but you can all i guarantee you'll always get one guy who will slope off and he just gets his hammock up gets his scoff on and he thinks he's in bed now for an extra hour's kip because he's just looked after himself then as soon as i identify that person when you watch them as a patrol working he'll always stand out like a dog like a dog's bollock and you know he's not working with it the more you watch the more things you see and then at the end you know you're making notes and stuff like that and during the period of time they'll come up to you and they'll just say you know i'm going to wrap the funniest one was we went out on a three day it was actually a three day turnaround Navix so we walked for three days just directly out into the middle of the jungle and i could see this kid he was going to wrap and sure enough the end of the day came up and he went uh staff i've had enough and i want just sit over there and take five minutes i'll give you five minutes to think about it and uh came back you went no i want to wrap i went okay break your weapon unload your weapon and break it up because this fucking now he's got a live round up the spotlight you know and he could get pissed off with me so just say break your weapon down pack it up in your bag and then he said oh well what happens now i said you're off and he went well how am i getting back and i went the same way he got here mate you're going to walk and then he realized and it's happened a couple of times they realized then they'd walked out thinking they're going to wrap but never thinking i'll still have to walk back so if he kept his mouth shut and just walked back you'd have still been in you know so from a mental point of view you see guys make some really stupid decisions especially when they're exhausted and tired and the thing a spider's around the corner or snakes around the corner so the jungle is a great place to be i love it because as soon as i get in the jungle i know i can step two meters away from you and you wouldn't be able to see me and i can hide and and when you consider my escape in a version was on a flat fucking desert floor flat is this thing where there was no fucking hiding the jungle to me is heaven i don't give a shit if i've got trees i don't give a monkeys if i've got ticks on me bites leeches whatever they can chew away as much as they want i know i'm safe um whereas in the desert there's no way to hide is that what a lot of people break in the jungle yeah was that the main yeah when you consider these guys are the fittest from the course because they've passed the first phase they get in the jungle and they just wrap and they let themselves in a chose mental weakness that they're you know they're not focused and you know certain and they're all shapes and sizes you know you can't just say he's a big lad like yourself he's a big unit he'll be fine it's all shapes and sizes now another one and on my selection which was unusual during the resistance to interrogation now you've had a hard week on the run no food and living in just your clothes piss went through and sometimes it's all around scotland and further down to northumberland so yeah you're knackered and then you go into a resistance to interrogation for 30 36 hours and you get in you get it's it's very realistic you are you're subjected to sleep deprivation which really screws your mind up but you're interviewed by different people and you'll usually get a guy who looks decent he'll ask you nice questions and you'll say if you sign this piece of paper i'll give you this bar chocolate you'll get a right nasty looking guy who's going to threaten you you know he's going to knock your head in you'll get no guy who will just keep asking you the same question and he it's a false he puts you in a false sense of security because you think he's a dithering old guy and then you get a woman and i'll tell you what you go into a room as big as this table and behind you and the woman's there there's two guards behind you and there's cameras and what it is is all the other interrogators are watching your reaction and she's listening to them and they do an analysis on you so first thing she does is get your overalls off so you're freezing cold so your dicks disappeared and she laughs like that she's like that but you call at a clock you know is that what's that what you're gonna do with that well i mean to me i'm just like just blanket zone it out and you're there because you can't talk can't you you can only see your name rank and number that's it and i'm thinking they can punch the shit out of me because they can't kill me because it's an exercise but your head starts to get twisted and these guys are in foreign uniforms and stuff and you're thinking is this real and you start questioning yourself well these lads one lad he was a big old paratrooper being down south he launched himself over the table to knock this bird's head in and obviously the the guards pulled him down he was off selection and he'd done all the work on the hills done all the work in the jungle and then another guy did it and she had seven guys crack under an interrogation and it's it is it's a it's a mental state and it's it's hard to tell you i mean if you if you were doing some psychedelic you know there isn't like saying gnomes running around the floor but they're there that's like not being on drugs but it's like being on drugs because you haven't slept for maybe three or four days and then they when you're in the when you're in the bag in the pen you're in stress positions being subject to white noise and it really like screws your head in a big way and that's the easiest way to interrogate anybody is first of all keep them up for a week and then they'll start seeing things they'll hear voices and then you throw a bit of waterboard in and they'll be fucking singing like a budgie i don't know if this is true but i used to watch the i don't know what film it was but these i think they used to put the soldiers under the water but it used to just tap on the top of their head like that yeah it's just to make it easy to lose your shirt yeah you can it's making anybody uncomfortable because the white noise it's it's like non evasive in terms of it's not being hit with a stick because the good thing is somebody's hitting hitting you with a stick and i'm sure you've had a fair few beatings when they're hitting you you grit your teeth and say go on you bastard you know and it it gets your adrenaline up it gets everything up and you're getting ready to go back when nobody's touching you and your your back's breaking your arms are breaking or you're in a sitting position with your hands on your head and then somebody's pouring water over you just to make you cold and you're freezing in that it just it wears you away so that's the main torture not the physical yeah and it's it's you kept in a room under their control all i did was 36 hours you know i know it's 36 hours you don't know how far in you are how far you know you've got to go in fact yeah that's screwed before you go in on the exercise because it's a week on the run and being chased by say infantry units with dog teams so you might have had about three or four beatings during that period um they said you when you finish um it'll be the sergeant major of training when you have a white armband on and he'll he'll get you out the room and sure enough this guy don came and he went jordy uh that's it i didn't believe him i'm like this is a fucking trick and i sat outside on the floor and he said are you all right yet and i was like wouldn't speak to him and it took me about three hours until other guys were coming out of the pen and we're all sat together because you're that aware that this could be a setup but it wasn't you know but that's how much it screws your head yeah how important is that going through that training and those exercises for if you ever do get captured well it is important but um the guys that were captured when i was on the run another element came in and it was down to the telephone now what you've got to do is or what we know is you've got to hold out for a minimum of 12 hours and the information that you have will be rendered useless so it means you're going to take a beating you know for a good period of time the the wave soldiery now is has changed quite a lot because they have tracking devices on them so everybody knows or they're being captured you've got like clear comms you've got this and that but some of my friends the iraqis who were in interrogating them and like beating them had been to sandhurst and they had friends who were in the british army so one guy's in front of an iraqi interrogator and he said so what's your regiment and he went parachute regiment he knew he was at sas but he would just said you know parachute regiment and he went right okay who's your company commander and you remember you don't know if you're going to get around in the back of your head and stuff like that so it was you know it's tense uh for then the iraqi to turn around and go yeah your company commander said josh josh thomas i was in sandhurst with a manoma i know his wife julie and they've got two kids and it's nearly bringing in that relationship that he knows people that you know and you think where's this leaving me so the dynamics of interrogation have changed waterboarding is a very good tool because not many people will get through that so no it's just you've got to hold out for basically when you get caught you just got to remember i'll hold out for as long as i can and you know that back at base they're wiping the slate clean of anything that you were doing or any codes you may have any locations um because they're going to get they're going to get that information the geordies are the tough bastards the geordies kind of the geordies are the lover pudlins the fucking in the glass regions are quite i know a lot of the scottish pass a scs course why is that well i think my my best friend i was out with him the other day um he came from a tenement in in edinburgh and all he single parent just wanted to get out get out because it was in a really rough end of edinburgh he wanted to get out my mates one of the lads i mean he was verging on like a psycho he his dad ran a um an abattoir on glasgo and he wanted to you know just get away from the place um a lot of lads didn't have a pot to piss in you know they come from very similar backgrounds and this is why the army has a problem when lads were leaving the army over the last 20 years because of the stresses that they were under you know because we're in embedded in iraq and afghanistan and it went on for a hell of a long time a lot of them don't have any families and you know they're either some of them were orphans some of them single parents they can't go back or whatever and they end up on the on the streets homeless because they don't have that network plus the fact some of them were going home and their their mates didn't understand you know what they'd what they'd been through or what they'd seen i mean there's a lot of bluffing as well going on uh and bullshit but um on the whole yeah guys come from checkered backgrounds i mean i can remember and this is i swear to god this is true it was a guy i'll not say the village opened in scotland but he came from scotland sat round and somebody started on about why you know we joined and i said to travel one me mate he said he wanted to get out the tenement because it was shite somebody else said fucking um there was no prospects and one of the lads said my dad used to shag me and the conversation stopped and i was waiting for like the punchline like a joke and he went his next thing was he went and my mother knew and she didn't stop him so he said i left at 16 to join the marines and that was like that's the end of that conversation but we all probably know people who's been abused whether it's just physically or you know like the other side and and they want to get into an organization that's got a family and then all their mates are there but some of these young kids you know that were subjected that sort of thing they joined the army at a time where you were going to be in iraq or afghanistan you're going to see your mates getting slaughtered and all the rest of it and not all of them could you know endure that that type of pressure and then they're caught between you know the devil and the deep blue sea do they go back to that you know shite that drove them away there or or what do they do and and another thing with soldiers you're very you're very much protected being in that organization your wage is paid into the bank somebody gives you a uniform wednesday is like fizz day the doctor's there the dentist is there whenever you want you've got a bunk you've got a room you get help you get fed everything's done for you all of a sudden when you pushed out into syvie street it's not so easy as being in the military and you've got a fight you know and it's really hard to do anything and then they've left an organization excuse me they've left an organization where they think they're at the top of the game and all of a sudden they get out and they haven't got a they haven't got a job and they're not at the top of the game and it's it's difficult it's challenging for them because there's no structure involved yes the people slip back into old habits but do you tend to see a lot of people who pass the toughest courses are the ones who come from trauma and get nothing to lose yeah a lot of them um i would say all my mates came from um very similar backgrounds um in fact it was just the officers who had privileged backgrounds all the guys just came usually council houses um and you know certainly not wealthy or anything like that and and that shows um it shows a lot with the guys but them guys when you when you work in a team there's something and you'll you'll understand this it's being street wise a street savvy you can walk into a bar and if a fucking guy's looking at you you know it's either gonna kick off and you'll probably have a number of things you're gonna do is what's around there's either a bottle there there's a chair there or there's an escape route there like say an officer that's been to a privileged background he'll wander in there and he'll not recognize that this guy's clocked him for whatever reason or something's not right or that person shouldn't be in here for whatever reason it's like being on a street you walk down a street and you're making assumptions without you even knowing you're making assumptions you know uh when sadly when them attacks happened on london bridge people have got their heads down the walk and on the wrong side of the road first of all because the car's coming from behind them they're on they've got their earpugs in they're reading emails and then they get they get flattened or when the attacks were going on and people were stabbing and people's running towards them not knowing who the attackers are i think when you've come from a certain type of background you read the streets and you can read where could all go wrong and we used to do that you know across the water you can walk around and you just look at somebody the way he's dressed and i can't i can't say exactly what it is but you just know something's wrong i look at people and if they're looking at you and it could just be somebody like looks and then looks away but if you if he's still looking at you immediate look look at his hands and then how he's dressed and you know what what interest has he got with me now i went through a period of time where i was doing lots of tv work but i never felt you know i was i was known so i was in a bar with my brother in newcastle and two guys looking at you yeah and i felt eternally shamed the mother was in hospital she was going down with cancer so it wasn't the best it wasn't the best times for me that's the only thing and these two guys and i said to my brother Keith i went it's going to kick off in a minute mate and he's a handy fuck and he went who i said there's two across there um and um it's going to fucking go and i said here we go in the start we're walking over so i just went straight over i went what the fuck you looking at like that and me brother was there fucking these two guys they were they were lovely and they said oh we thought you were that guy chris ryan off tv we've been watching we've been we've just been thinking uh would it be all right to come over and talk yeah it's like fuck i said yeah listen i'm sorry and i'm like me mother's in the hospital then i'm talking to these guys about me mother in hospital and i didn't want to so there's that's that's all the thing but usually walking around you get that you get that skill set and all my mates i know they've all got it see when you pass the ss course did you see a a change in you straight away notice those changes yourself um no i mean because i was big into my fizz then um you think you know the world is at your feet um and probably do a few stupid things it probably wasn't until i had my daughter um i was you know i was i wasn't this carefree um in terms of looking after myself whether diving out of a helicopter you know free falling or fast roping um you would you would look at life slightly different but um i knew um i wouldn't be one of these old guys hanging on in there swinging the lamp in hanging on to dear life you've definitely got a shelf life to do that job and it's it's around 35 to 40 and you should be like you should be leaving yeah what was your first mission once you became a ss well we would do cover um when um there was an operation in northern island we went when we're on the anti-terrorist team we'd head over and to do that um we were mobilized to uh go there um mobilized to go to uh aid and then the gulf kicked off um to go out there and then after the gulf they sent me out to zaire to evacuate the british embassy and i think that's when i probably had some like say mental problems what were you um well obviously that thing in iraq it had taken its toll but there was no no no such thing as ptsd or you know anything like that and i just thought you know um i didn't really see see a problem because when you've got mental illness you're looking through the same set of eyes but it's your friends who say something's changed with you and usually it's it's down to violence i want the scrap just being a moody bastard um not having not tolerating fools and also being driven so pushing yourself to stupid limits so you know if we were doing anything physical i'd want to you know be the the guy at the top if it was something mental then i had to do that and it manifests itself in in different ways some guys used to get divorced straight away um some guys would be you know take the bottle drinking um and then others would just you know sit on it there was a lot of suicides went through a patch of quite a few suicides guy killing killing themselves um and then other guys get become like junkies and my mate from edinburgh he started after he left the regiment he started his own private military contracting company made made millions you know lots of money but again he was also on the ground he'd phone us up and that doesn't matter where i was in the world he's like he's laughing at the other end of the phone the ring say his last phone call was he was in a police station and he said that i were brassing these uh these guys up and you could hear the machine guns firing the firing fire orders coming out you know and i'm like that john you're going to be them you know the richest man in the graveyard you need to fucking get out of there but he was he was addicted to it the adrenaline that's the mad thing though that you're training these people to be the toughest people on the planet the fittest the strongest but yet the brain's a powerful thing that if it sees trauma it doesn't matter how hard you train like it once it goes it goes and you've seen that with like i say these guys who are the elite of the elite who are willing to go anywhere in the world to die for a cause to try and save lives but as soon as they see trauma because it's not a humane thing to see pain no you get well you get um you get over it um and you can get over it though or do you forget it forget it you put it in a box yeah desensitize from it and i suppose i was really desensitized to the point where if a guy my age when i was saying maybe 30 32 said oh i'm feeling like shit me mother died or my dad died you know and i'm like fucking oh well they're gonna die anyway and that's not that's but it's you and that's you know that's after seeing people dead i mean i was in zaire watching kids starve to death didn't give up monkeys you know it's that's it so you get that desensitization which isn't nice and it's it's it's not good um so you have that and like i went to 18 funerals in my 10 years in the sas 18 guys and uh like three of them i i was on selection with passed into the regiment with another bunch a bunch of them used to drink with them all the time you'd feel sad for the the day when you found out that the died you're like ah you know down out you have your funeral and then it's back to work and that's it but what happened with me the first guy i passed into the regiment was a lad called fergus renny and he was a very professional soldier he was the first sas soldier to be killed in bosnia and um i was sat in the house and uh the guard when it came through the guard room one of the lads phoned us up and said just to let you know fergus is um has been killed and that had a different effect it was nearly like losing a child not that i have but the only way i can explain it and it had a profound effect on me because i knew that kid inside out from being his instructor throughout selection and a couple of other things i could have sacked him he did a couple of things that if i'd been harsh i could have sacked him and he wouldn't have been in the sas and i was wrapped with guilt for many years thinking that kid would still be alive he wouldn't have been a happy one for not passing selection but yeah he had a different different effect on me and he was part of the reason i left the regiment um and then subsequently over the years five other guys died uh that i took through selection but i mean that's where you've got to grip yourself and think well wait a minute they were chasing their dreams you were just a conduit that you know facilitate them into the regiment you know their lives aren't on you know my responsibility but when you know them that well and you've seen them on their knees you know fucking breaking and then you realize that they're just you know they've been killed it's it's not a good feeling yeah how does that affect relationships and stuff then becoming cold or do you still have some emotion towards try to build a relationship with people or do you just become so cold that you don't sometimes it's like my mates you know when we get together we're fine um other like outside friendships if it's like you know with a you know like say a female or whatever it's it takes a long time before you start trusting them or trusting somebody and but the other thing as well with with the likes of me and it's the same as um some of the guys i know if somebody tries to screw you like as in you know rip you off or do anything first thing is i'm gonna fucking do them and you can't go through life like that um so you've got to tail back a bit i mean i was terrible for like say a road rage for a while now i'm like who gives a shit type of thing um but it's it's it's sometimes your reaction can cannot fit the the the your reaction cannot fit the action that's just say happened and you know sometimes that could be too quick to to bark i could probably be too uniform my daughter i mean she's got a master's in english literature she's got more more letters behind her name than than anything um and then she decided she wanted to be an artist i'm like well what's that about like you know um and we used to log heads because i was like no this is what you're gonna do you're leaving school you're going to university you're doing this you're getting that job and she's like yeah screw you this is what i'm doing and really you know it was her choice and i shouldn't i could have saved a lot of heartache if i just went yeah that's up to you do whatever you want was that the old sergeant came that came then yeah i think it is you know only because it's all right i guess it's it's easy enough for her but when you've been brought up you know with nothing and you've seen people with nothing you don't want to go back to like that but then it's as tough because as everybody's got their own choices but you're just used to seeing kids maybe not ruining her life but you've seen kids lose their life as well so you're just wanting to try to bring the best out for her even though you're probably pushing her away because you're being too strict yeah too strict in my mate john um he's done exactly the same to his son and we were just talking about it on sunday night and um you know it's nearly like the bank a mom and dad and he's like that no you've got your job you've you've beat because his son went he sent the son the fetis up there and then you know all the best schools um but then john expects him to be like him which he'll never will be like him you know my daughter will never be like me because it was the upbringing and maybe if i'd like said yeah right you're gonna live in this rough area to teach you a lesson you should be like say a bit like me but she's not so you can't it's very difficult the parenting first of all there ain't a novel sorry or a like a guideline to to read um but also you're usually giving the best you can to your children which is quite the opposite than say what we were probably getting as children so you create a different model can your daughter understand what you've been through and what you've seen as well you know what she would say i don't go shit really do you actually see a lot of yourself on your daughter then oh yeah i'll tell you what yeah because uh i want to watch her because when when we start having an argument i know there's a nut coming in somewhere along the length because she'll get uh she'll get physical or she'll she'll get a bit feisty but uh no it's yeah it's it's just life i mean you bring your family up the best you can and um you know you just hope for the best yeah see when you get the longest uh what was it longest escape escape escape history but 200 miles that was eight kids it was iraq use went yes it was in iraq um we went in to iraq um to look for scud missiles but we broke every standing operating procedure going now the sas have what they call sops and it's uh it's how we like um it's how we conduct operations well we our maps dated back to 1945 we didn't have the right clothing we didn't have the right radios um we didn't have the right intel and um we were going in to basically dig in underground um to an area that overlooked a main supply route and um when we got there we found that the main supply route wasn't like a tarmac road it was just a series of tracks well the the missile of the scud can't drive down them tracks it needs to be on like a proper road so we knew we were in the wrong place and the weather the weather was a big factor it was the worst winter iraq was having for 30 years and uh was within a short period of time we were compromised and um we tried to um establish communications back to base couldn't get through i eventually got through by tapping out morse code to some guy in cyprus who then relayed a message back but by that time it was too late so we ended up in a contact and then iraq is tracking us down over the period of say two or three days well the first day i was split up from the group with two of the lads sadly um in the early hours of the next well next day it started snowing and uh vince died of hypothermia right next to us and we had the same clothes so i watched i watched a man die uh freezing to death then the other lad he went off with a goat herder and then i was ended up by myself and um basically i had seven days eight nights to hit the syrian border um and the cold was the the hardest thing during the day i couldn't move um i would try and find a hollow somewhere to hide desert floor there's nothing there and this just this wind cutting through um had cold injuries and all the rest and then the first night on the run we did 70 kilometers about 50 miles and we were carrying our bell kits which was about 50 pound i burned my feet because we were really hammering it i saw the blisters then got infected um i was losing weight rapidly every day you're lying there just frigging freezing and no sleep um and then at night i could start moving and um you know you keep bumping into irakis and and various others then eventually got to the border and um when i got across the border i got to a syrian like they were like bedouin and they got me into a town but then there was a lynch mob tried to like get me back into irak uh then the police held a mock execution for me um where the blindfolded me put a pistol to my head and i eventually got back to Damascus um where i was handed over the secret police and during that that first handover i was allowed to use like a bathroom to clean myself up because obviously i hadn't washed or anything in shave um but i'd lost 36 pound in body weight in seven days or lost all my toenails all the blisters had turned septic there was pus coming out of them i had what nose bed sores on the sides of my leg my back arms elbow and then if i squeezed my fingernails there was pus coming out of them um if i sucked in my mouth blood i had a blood disorder damaged liver damaged kidneys um i drank some water that had come from a chemical plant and that was full of effluent that had burnt me mouth um and then it took three days to get out of out of Damascus got into riyadh and then a flight back to the base in saudi where my squadron was and then it transpired four the guys had been captured two had died of of hypothermia frozen death legs had tried to swim the euphrates and he died immediately on the other side and one guy was shot and killed so um two guys died of of cold which is criminal because we didn't have the right kit right um right radios and um and also we've been told that if we were contacted they would send in a helicopter to pick us up but when we did get contacted uh they changed the mind and um and said now let them let them write them off so say mission yeah that was it that you're gone i mean it's it's no big deal because that's what you've got the sas4 and what the other thing had to be fair when they send that if they sent a helicopter in to get us they would have probably had to send two or three and we only had two to the regiment and if the risks were if we'd been caught by the Iraqis it could have been a come on so when the helicopters came in they'd have been blown out the sky or you're risking having maybe 60 guys in that helicopter to come in rescue eight and if it went down got hit you've lost all of them guys and remember you know the sas are trained in escape and evasion um but i mean yeah that was it so yeah it was 200 miles um to the Syrian border uh it was the longest seven days of my life does that not make you angry though to is that just part of the part of the job you've got to accept it i mean i didn't have any food and very little water in fact at the end i was hallucinating because of the lack of water my brain had like shrunk um but you just got accepted it was just one of them things from the point when we were compromised everything was going to go downhill because again i can remember when i was getting on the helicopter to fly in um one of the lads was standing there and he was like this is not right i went i know i said it's a one-way ticket but we're still fucking going and um and that was it you know you i guess the regiment when i say the word gamblers they'll take risks you know to pull something off but you know if it goes wrong it's gonna go catastrophically wrong and it'll just the dominoes will fall um because again you know you're out there by yourself and so seeing you you're going through that for the seven days what's going through your mind then at any point did you think i'm a goner every did you keep believing to yourself every day there's one it's going to sound really pathetic but there was the first day i was by myself um i made the euphrates and i had to crawl into the euphrates to get to a depth to fill my water bottle because i didn't have any water and i left it was still dark and i started to push back into the what they call a wadi systems these dried riverbeds and i found one and it was on a north facing slope so i got into a hollow and lay there i was fucking freezing like because i was wet again and the temperatures are blows below zero and i'm like fucking i knew i was by myself now and i knew i probably had five or six days of walking and uh i don't know what it was but this thing popped up in my head and uh it was me mother talking to us going as a kid used to say things get on top of you just have a good cry just uh just cry and you'll get over it so i'm sat there and i can look around like and make sure nobody's looking and then i went i couldn't cry but what it did is i started laughing and i laugh i was just like laughing and it actually cleared my mind and i was like right yeah you are by yourself you've got five days walking you've got no food you've got water everything's okay at the minute and it was just boom and then i could plan but having said all of that every night after that there'd be times where i was walking and i was that knackered i would get like you know i'd end up on my knees feeling sorry for myself and then you start shivering and then you're like come on you to get moving and there was there was it got to the point where my feet were that bad with it when when they were infected that the pain was too much to i would sit down and then the pain would like move from my feet and i'd be like that but when it came to move which was which was in probably a couple of minutes because it was freezing cold and i happened to stand on them i had to shuffle like just shuffle a couple of steps and it must look fucking pathetic really until my feet were numb again and then i could start walking and then it got to the point where i would rest on my rifle and i would keep the pressure on my feet and then carry on moving and then at the seven day point it was more through the lack of water i started collapsing but i was hallucinating and one day one night my daughter came in front of us and i was trying to grab a hold of her hand and like i could see her feet moving rocks moving and i was just following it i don't know what i passed on the left or right of me and then what would happen is the first time it happened it was like a static when when you hear like electricity going like that and then i got punched in the back of the head it was this big bang and it was that realistic when i went i went down on my knees i turned around to see who'd punched me and obviously there was nobody there so i got myself up it happened again and when i came to i was flat out on the desert floor shaking i'm like that that's a stupid place to to fall asleep then it did it again i was i was across the border it did happen again and i'd fallen against a small like wall broke my nose and then at first light i could see a house and that was the syrians that gave me the water and tea but i was fucked now a human body a human usually can go 10 days without food but water you'll get three days maximum maximum before you go and what what them bangs were that was my my brain shorting it out it was my brain was shrinking and the messages that go around your brain were just fucking delighting and it was like you just your body's closing down but it's your brain that's closing your body down and i knew i was knackered and when i came to i could see the small house with smoke coming coming from it and i thought you know what if it's if it's a rack i'm taking water and i'll kill them i don't give a shit now if it's syria then they should help me and i got there there was a a young lass um with like a look up turned walk making a bread on a fire an old boy was leaving the like mud hut with some goats and then this young lad came out and uh i just had water water and then i was saying iraq iraq and he didn't i said syria syria and he went ah syria syria and then he was like yaki yaki and then i could see the border so i knew i was in syria and then he went straight in give us this bowl of water drank it and then in in the room um he gave us a small glass of sweet tea and it was like being on chemicals it was just like boom and that was just a bit of sugar and it was like and i said right i need to get to a police station um i packed my rifle up my bell kid will be give us a bag i wanted to see what my feet were in what state they were in pull them off he he then quest he pulled he requested his sister i think she then disappeared with my socks and i mean they were minging there was pus and everything in them so like washed the clean mash like feet off she brought the socks back put them on and then i drew her like a diagram on a piece of paper like newspaper with a crayon and said i need a policeman so as we were walking into town there was this syrian coming out and he'd been buying um stuff for us camels here and he could speak a bit of english and uh he said what do you want and i was like i need to get to a police station and to him i was in on pilot uh crashed me aircraft and went in through a series of things that happened he got to a garage and pulled into the garage and he'd been saying to me i should take you back to iraq because my cousins are from iraq and i'm like no i ain't come back to iraq and i need to see the police kept touching the bag to see if i had a weapon in there well there was two guys filling diesel up in a pump like that the vehicle came straight up the window didn't look at me looked down at the bag and then ran off to the back of the the garage so i was like it's kicking off so i grabbed my bag and as i was like getting out of the vehicle he grabbed my arm so i dragged the fucker over the chairs and like started slamming his head on the door then i was running down the street and i would have said i was i was sprinting and i turned around there's about two 70 year old guys just like this behind me but them young lads had come out and they had like you know their sticks and stuff and i just just kept on running and came around this corner and there was a guy with an ak-47 and he just had wait it was a police station he grabbed me otherwise they would have had me and there would have been i would have been over the thing he grabbed me took me into a courtyard and then held the crowd outside and then over a few a few hours um of like sending a couple of code words hoping that they would get to the coalition give me this dish dash to put on and a shamag over my face and two guys marched me out into a car they didn't tell me where they were taking me or anything and they took me out to the middle of the desert and there was a pre-arranged rv with a secret police and that's when this guy put the put the gun to my head and then the next minute i was in damascus handed over i mean the gun thing they were just pulling the piss they were just having a laugh but i'd lost my sense of humor at that point so but anyway i got into syria they couldn't have done enough for me they sent me out they sent a young lad out took my measurements like got me a suit shirt socks under pants and shoes but my feet were in that bad a state i couldn't get the shoes on and then they got me around to the british embassy where i was there for two days and i had to wait to get a passport made and then then the syrians wouldn't let me leave the country because i didn't have the incoming visa so i had to go back to the secret police and they got the visa stamped and then i got back to the regiment um but i was i was in a bad way for for a good six weeks um it took about probably six weeks for all the scarring to heal up my feet to heal up um and like i was just like an old man walking um my fingernails came back um my gums had receded so i was getting terrible toothache my gums had shrunk both up and below um and like i say the weight it took about three months for the weight to get back on but your body's got that muscle memory so it came on but then i ended up in a hospital in london and because i drank some chemicals and they think um the chemicals have done something to me because i get this patch it used to come up on my forehead but it travels around my body and um the people that did the tests on me the typical of the army they said we didn't find anything and as i was leaving they said uh do you have any family i went yeah i've got a daughter and he said are you thinking about having any other children and i went yeah he went i wouldn't and then i was like why not he went we don't know what you've got but the that's that chemical plant was where sedamus in was trying to make yellow cake and um it was bombed by the americans and then delta guys from delta force whom i know they flew in right into this compound where i had been because when i got out i had to i had to brief them of of the layout of this place and then one of their lads got compromised and he was shot and killed killed in action he got took a direct round in his head right right where i where i've been sitting but yeah you don't glow up in the dark or anything do you okay now i'll tell you what the the lumen city on my watch is always all right see even so why do you think you survived that what does that come down to just mental toughness i read something that there was a man who got locked himself in the freezer and he said i'm going to die he kept repeating himself that he was going to die he wrote actual down that he was going to die there was it was cold air but it wasn't the the the freezer was actually broke yeah and then when i came in he got his body he was he did freeze to death but the the freezer wasn't even working yeah he killed himself by putting that in existence you know it's i've got to be careful on here because guy this is real and as in guys did die but it's definitely mental mental strength and i would say first of all i'd been through ss selection i'd been trained on escape and evasion for like so p's in terms of the procedures where how i you know like always a north facing slope so the sun's not on you it's always in shadow to hide and things like that and keep away from the population you don't you don't go and try and hire a vehicle or get a vehicle or try anything funny because obviously i didn't have any food you don't try and break into houses like that because it's you're signalling yourself you're flagging yourself and again i think it's that northern northern thought process you get down but you're like well fucking i'm going to get back up and i'm going to push what's the you know my choices were and i either hand myself over to them or i die so it's like i thought i ain't handing them over to like get killed and and just push yourself on and you do wasn't like a big streak of glory because there was them times where i sat down thought i can't do go on you get over it and you just keep pushing on see the three kids that gets they get captured why did they kill one um they well what happened was um they were in a firefight and uh there was four of them there was five of them sorry five and um a lad called bog consiglio he was in my troop he's the bravest man that i know of and this guy should have had a vc where they got contacted and the iraqis were coming at them bob went down because he had the minimi machine gun and when you fire a minimi you do it uniformly it's like bursts of did it did it did it not like like that it's aimed shots so he's getting three bursts out now when they split up the group split up bob went down these two guys thought bob was with these two these two thought bob was with them so these these four were captured and when they came out they thought they basically said exactly what had gone on so the conclusion was bob got down on his gun to give these guys enough time to escape and it was 40 minutes he he kept firing his weapon for 40 minutes and then his weapon ceased firing and he was his body was returned back to the uk he'd been shot through the head but the angle of the round entering and and exiting meant he was behind the gun firing when the round went through and also around it hit his hip which had detonated a phosphorous grenade and that's how he was killed one of them lads was shot in in the ankle and the other two managed to escape and swim the euphrates but then one of them died swimming the euphrates um so no i mean bob he uh he gave his life um to save them four guys um and that that's how he was killed how far they've had to have swam to make sure all the euphrates is like um it's like a big city river you know it's probably about because i looked at it i i looked at getting across and i was like not a chance you know when you see it um you know you're like a hundred meters type of thing and it was the middle of winter and i was like not a chance i don't think they had winter and you know we're snowed um on on the day i was laid up with thins and uh stan i was lying there waiting for the light to come up and um i was like lying in a ditch in a in a where it was at what they call a tank berm it has earth on three sides and the tracks had um subsided and uh we're lying there and i got pins and needles in my face i woke up covered in snow and i'm like that and we didn't have any kit and we lay there the next thing we saw because the light came up it was an iraqi position right next to us and uh we couldn't move so we had to lie there that ditch filled with water it rained snowed rained snowed it was like being thought well it's like being on say the scottish mountains you know when you get that snow mixed with rain sleep yeah and it's it's gonna soak you and you're lying in mud and the wind is sucking the life out of you it was the longest day of my life and i mean as i said in the beginning i'm an alpine guide i've been in Siberia i've been in some of the coldest places on earth that was the coldest day i've ever spent because you've got the the killer elements of being wet the wind and then more rain and snow coming down so what happens when you get home then do you get discharged or do you get treatment and straight back in for another mission oh no well they wouldn't let me go home when i got out and got back to uh Saudi they went right there nobody knows that the guys are missing because nobody knew what had happened to them said you've got to stay here for another two months and the boss said we'll get you back over the border you know you can get back on ops i'm like i can't even walk a hundred meters like you know i'm out of breath um so i just hung around i got back to herford about two months after the event um then i ended up being on the standby squadron and then there was a big problem in Zaire where a team of guys had to go in and it was going to get sporty um so i was the first person they picked because i'm a communicator in terms of like sat sats and the in the other type of radios i'm also a trained medic patrol medic um and um so and then i was the right rank to take on that job so when they picked me i'm up and i had to put an indent in for kits so i'm like yeah jimpy machine guns grenades 66 rockets claim all mines this foreign office came back and said no you can take an mp5 and a pistol and then this is probably un unbeknown to me this is where the ptsd started coming out because i thought this is another fucking operation that's going to go wrong and you're going to be under-equipped then they upped the team to four so it's going to be four men and then they upped it to eight men but still mp5s and maybe um a couple of um m16s or 203s and i got across there and then the job kept going on and on and on and we saw some awful things of like kids starving not a murders like infighting within the their community because the country was being run by president mabudu and he was he the country was in shit state and the economy was through the floor so he was allowing um the his army officers to loot houses and then the soldiers could go in have the pickings and then the civilian people could go in and pick over that so then you can imagine how much fighting was going on there was a bit of like machete and uh you know i saw quite a few young young black lads with the old machete marks on them and then having to sew them up giving them a bit of like you know hearts and minds and that so you were going straight in do you have a question that like fuck me like i'm just a number here they're just throwing me in and saying you know what leave them not i was fucked mentally i was fucked could you quit though i interviewed a sniper a couple of weeks Craig Harrison yeah unbelievable story he's on the edge he was a train killer sniper done what he had to do but he just struggles now to get by and did you ever think that okay i'm going to he was 23 years before he was discharged well i'll tell i'll what had happened what had happened was um it i didn't go that way i was like going the other way getting really fucking dark you know this story i i am eternally um ashamed of it i was having to recce a route for the ambassador he was going to the to see the portuguese ambassador and me and another lad another chocolate um decided he dunked and would drive for us so we're driving the route and as we're driving the route we're carrying weapons overtly like as in on show and all the rest of it and we're coming into the town and people are starving but there was a stall like a stall and people are just trying to get money and for some reason i went yeah just stop here started walking up the stalls and there was this carving and it looks like a guy sitting on a trunk or on a toilet with a spear fuck knows what it was but as soon as i saw it i was like i want that i need it i've got to have it so make magical about that and i still don't get it today had to have it so as i said the guy how much and it was like ten dollars and i i'm being ten dollars ended up five dollars and i said right i'll be back because i didn't have my wallet i said i'll be back here don't go this young lad said no no please he said uh the money will feed my family i come with you and i went well i'm not driving you back from the embassy back here and he went no no i'll walk walk it was about 15 miles so anyway dives in the back of the car dunks driving i'm sat here he's over there and we're going up the at the time the river's the river congo and it was when mabudu took over was called the river zaire it's the fastest flowing river in africa and there's a bank side running down to it you've got um you've got crocodiles and all sorts in it and uh as i'm driving oh i'm like i'm looking at this guy and i'm like fuck this that said the Duncan and i'm unclipping my pistol said i'm just gonna fuck and shoot this fuck i'm not gonna give him the money and then i had the pistol ready to turn around and shoot him and Duncan said if you shoot him you're gonna have to clean the mess up because he said i know i'm not cleaning that stuff up well at the time i was that mad i was seeing people with bullet holes in their heads in their arms like visions and i thought it was a gift from god and he was showing me how people were gonna die so as i looked around at him again i could see his brains up the side of the car and i looked i went nah fuck that i said uh i'm gonna clean that shite up and i thought that was normal so anyway pulled into the embassy got the five dollars walked out there's the black lads standing there and went over to him giving the five dollars and he just fucking ran like mad the poor kid obviously knew english he knew he knew exactly what i'd been saying and i thought that was normal it was fucking crazy and i was off the charts another thing that happened was um i'd i'd i ended up getting some broken ribs and the lads had um gone out on the piss and i was upstairs and this is in the compound of the embassy and i could hear like women's voices i'm like that fucking hell don't tell me brought birds back well i had two girls in there they're trying to get them to do the act on the floor and i went right fuck this i'm like i lost the plot because it wasn't professional and this is a secure unit i went get these fuckers out and the guys are all like fucked up and i said right and these girls then started saying we want a thousand dollars each and the embassy staff are over there so i'm trying to cry and everything down i went just wait to wait i'll get the money well i had the i had the wedge so i went upstairs got a couple of thousand dollars each i handed the two girls i said right getting the car we're off and then they tottered into the car really quietly got outside of the embassy it was a lad there driving i went just stop the car so he stopped the car my nine nine milli out straight into the mouth for the other one i went give me thousand dollars she gives the thousand dollars back stuck in the other one got the thousand dollars back get out the car you're walking not a shit this guy's going oh that's not very nice like johnny that's not a nice thing to do i put the pistol to women i said if you fucking mention that i've got the money i'll fucking do you which is out of character so gets back in next morning set the guys right get round said we're two thousand dollars short from them who is that you had in here so it's all gonna cost you four hundred each and our lads just coughed up put it me fucking i went my fucking cheers and that's not me just losing your shirt taking money right well and they kill people yeah and it just that wasn't me though and then when i think back i'm like what the hell was i on and and that is you know that's just damage from that one week being on the run and i always think of what about these kids or these guys who have done like you know long long tours under fire in afghanistan being attacked every day what are they doing now what's all about them brother i don't know but i mean having said that i did have an exceedingly good time do you know i mean i understand it and i says this to craig's podcast that um the world would be a great place if there was no conflict or there was no greed or whatever it is but there is something needs to do it like but everybody who i speak to there's the same patterns of that kind of when you start on you look kit you look brand new you like you look sane other people i speak to you can tell they're borderline you can tell they're fucking good people and if i was to get into battle these are the guys i want standing with me like you look i mean you i was very fortunate when i left the regiment i set up um two big bodyguard teams so i was actually walking uh working um with excess guys but in a civilian job so my trajectory into becoming a civilian was tapered because we still had the black humor although we're dressed like this or in suits we still had the black humor and then come in and then i started writing so it wasn't as if i didn't have a job i was being well paid as a bodyguard traveling all over the world same crack as it was when i was in the regiment and then that tapered off and then i went to the books so what i wasn't like it wasn't a big jolt for me to back to earth so i was very very fortunate um there was no worries you know i didn't have any worries um and then i moved into there that and that come that brings its own its own problems the the the writing why in terms of like stories and things that come out and it makes you think of things um i never find it like a cathartic um process it's if i'm talking about a firefight it's like i know what them what it's like them rounds coming over your your head and it ain't funny um so putting that down on paper you can bring it out but also it's alien now i'm not a big one for like celebrityism or like hitting the red carpet or anything like that i'd rather just be like a grey man um but at book signings when i'm sat there my heads down i'm writing a name i can't see who's the left and right of me and that's alien to me i like to be the guy standing in the corner who's got the nine milli that you don't even look at and it's it's quite different being on a stage doing a talk it's all right because you can control say the audience but the book signings never being comfortable with them and you know from the start are you still always on guard you still always wary of well my dog well yeah yeah i am my daughter was targeted she had two policemen on a doorstep for two years why there was a team of guys that were going to come along you know on video and probably take her head off and that was that was that was um scotland yard anti terror branch that that cracked it got it in i was in america in my house in america and i got a phone call and i thought they're going to tell me that there's another you know following me and it wasn't it said yeah your daughter's being green lit how do you feel when you get that phone call it's the most frightening thing i've ever experienced because my ass went through the floor when i was on the phone to that guy and he he he said you know what they're gonna do you know who they are he said i can't tell you anything he said but it's it's on and he said we've got policemen going to our house now and then i'm on the house phone phoning her on my mobile phone she's looking it's dad she's just going to speak to that fucker later and i'm trying to get through so i left some choice of voicemails with her and uh yeah so she ended up in that position so you can't you've just got it and the thing is you're always going to get nutcases everywhere but when you know you get the wrong type of nutcase because i mean i've had my stalkers and stuff like that which you know touch wood they you know they didn't do much but you've just got to be aware because you can never underestimate how how many nutcases there are out there you know and it's when they come after your family or want to do something to your family that's what got my bolder you know yeah seem you started the rating once you came out was that is that do you think that's what's kept you saying probably it's a it's a driving force you know and it's something to look forward to because it's usually the process is a good six months for an adult novel and but then like i was saying when i do my kids books i got access to schools and i can't you know i i couldn't say to you i go out and buy manhunder and read the fucker because you'll be like that you know whatever but if i'm writing children's novels and it's there an hour they're in their class and they have to read it then i've got a captured audience and all you've got to do is capture a kid early and get them to read and once he gets over that sense of it's only a book and i can i can read a book they will read when they're adults and and it's the educational benefits of just reading that you don't know you're getting you know just the structure of a sentence words that you wouldn't probably know how to spell but you've seen it you've read it and and then you've been entertained we could all read manhunder here now we would see different colors different when i describe a guy you would see somebody different on a scene you'd see some different that's what makes reading books way better than being belt fed a movie because that's somebody else's vision but when you read something it's your brain setting up the information that you're reading on that page and what you see is slightly different to what okay your own vision obviously chris drying your name and all your books is that one of the reasons why you changed your name well no because when i when i came out what happened was there was a movie made called the one that got away and that was of the my book but they made it very controversial and i i only wanted to set a couple of things straight with that book i wasn't interested in doing novels or anything like that and so i just said right i want a pen name because obviously i'm not i'm not fussed about the colon armstrong thing but it's basically it was the fact was i was doing one book then the one that got away was number one for 16 weeks and i had a huge readership my editor then said would you be interested in going into fiction and i was like not really i just wanted that one story but then after a few there was a few things that had happened i then said you know what yeah i will do fiction well it started off as what they called faction so they were based on on real events that happened in the regiment but i'd bring fictional characters in so i could tell that story and then it went from strength to strength and then the kids a lot of kids were coming to book shops saying my dad won't let me read your adult book be rightly so because of the language and things so then started doing junior fiction then i discovered this new world of something in an underworld where i could make a difference and a good difference from all the shit i'd been doing in the sas i could make a difference in a good way and that that means a lot to me and you're putting something back into society i get letters now from kids who are now adults because i've been doing kids books for maybe 20 odd years and they'll say now i'm reading this book now i'm reading that this was the first book i've ever read you know douche and that means a hell of a lot to me yeah see talking about your story now how much does it play affect on you does it just normal now well well i can keep it i can bring emotions but i try to keep them uh you know keep on top of it i did a program for national geographic about five years ago and i was debriefed um by a team and it was in in france at my place in france and that's why i would never do it again because it was eight i was talking about you know each day individual day so when i was getting back it started opening up other things and i'd be lying in bed thinking oh i've never thought of that i must remember them remember to tell them that so it was just exhausting everything and it was nearly like a minute by minute account and i felt shite at the end of it and i said never again because it's you know there's bad memories i've lost good friends and you know i can't remember anything nice on that walk yeah it's always nasty and you know how i felt yeah that's pain and suffering yeah what was the thing you done with donal matt and tayer oh that was that was hilarious and the jungle where he's spread uh and joe pasquale what happened he's a funny bastard he's funny he's a good friend of mine he was actually on the phone he he i'd better not say he had an ailment um and he's been lucky they've gotten on top of it but no what it was um freddy flintoth had gone to africa with two girls and they were doing a alone in the wild now i knew the producer who produced it so freddy was off by himself but the two girls wanted to be together so they balanced it out dickphone was up and he said we're going to uh french guy on it um he said uh we've got joe pasquale donald matt and tayer but to balance it off would you go with donald matt and tayer and i was like yeah okay yeah i'm not bothered a week in the jungle no food no computer that's great having fun yeah yeah totally having so anyway we got in there went in and set up the camp showed him how to do it but they were having the worst rain that ever had so it was flooding everywhere and then i was like this is getting hard work with donald's like uh because he had to have a radio on to listen and stuff like that so i said right it's time i should go and i'll set my camp up he'll be there he was by himself for 24 hours and he had a breakdown and they nearly took him out of the jungle because they said we're really worried about him they had a psychiatrist watching him and they got on the phone to me ad said i'm your old basher had a massive fire going i'm like that great there was there and they went will you go back to donald i went no i'm not going i've got a fire going i'm like not doing it but yeah he was in he was in chit state but yeah that was funny and joe joe pasquale when he went in i was watching him um because we would have cameras we would video ourselves and then that would be picked up by local trackers and then go in so i'm like watching like joe joe pasquale go in and he's chatting away he puts his rucksack down but he just starts walking videoing himself and i said to the producer i went fucking hell he's never gonna find his rucksack again so he's walking and where this is after the fact because we're watching the footage and he gets there and he's like oh god where's my rucksack like this and then he's walking all around it so we had to send trackers in to get his rucksack to him but then joe just come he said i'm really hungry one day he said i'm i'm really hungry he said i'm i'm thinking of a birthday party i went to she was an anorek no she was a bulimic and he said fuck me the cake jumped out of her just like where'd you get them like but no he's he's a lovely lovely lads um but yeah with that sort of stuff that's second nature to me but again they did not uh donald did not like being in the jungle uh just before we finished up another one last story what was the story where the embassy in london when i get um they took hostages oh well when the the regiment was called in uh it was the iranian embassy and there was a policeman journalists and other members of the staff so it went on for you know quite a while and then they knew there was going to be a military intervention so it was my old squadron b squadron were sent down and it was the the first of its kind well when it when it all went bang the guys went in killed all the terrorists bar one um and all the all the hostages were saved uh the funniest thing that happened there was um you put a cordon in whenever you do an operation like that as soon as the the rounds have stopped firing um the house the building was on fire by the way as well they said right we need about half an hour um before we start sending body bags in and what what it was the body bags was for all the kit that these lads were pilfering like paintings off the wall these like arabic uh jokes and other stuff and like these big chinese um like vases which were all expensive but no that was iconic and all of them guys were in the in the squadron when i joined and it was the first of their kind because of what what you call it is a a multi-floor um entry where they're going in from different floors and then usually meeting up on on the stairwell so they go in clear a room kill the terrorist get the hostages secured they then keep the hostages in one safe space and then when you evacuate the building their hostages are passed down uh by other guys who are in there but yeah it was um it was classic and that was a message to the rest of the world about if you come here this is what you'll get and the s.s were the leaders of of of that type in its um you know close quarter battle you know with the from the anti-terrorist team tough bastards aren't they though but i mean they were with you think of the the courses now do you know about the courses now to come oh yeah yeah a lot yes a lot more high tech because again they've got gps's you know that'll tell you you're on the spot like an inch off the spot you've got satellites you've got now these nano drones guys have got like cameras and they can just send it out the window around this building and say yeah it's secure when the big thing for us went my day in the desert to find a place to lie up you you just couldn't now the lads would get a a reaper drone you know 11 000 12 000 feet switch on thermal and then it would pick the say eight guys up and then that would be on post for eight hours and they're talking to it and said fellas sleep well you don't even have to stag on and there you've got a you've got eyes on you and basically you've got your headset so if anybody's coming out of the darkness you they'll just say you've got guys coming in at 200 if it's a big bunch of guys they'll say we'll send some make down for them you know and you're taken out so the technology they have is phenomenal but it's it's the the jobs that they're doing keep moving away and changing and obviously the threat levels of different places I mean we saw that guy in Kenya he's a good friend of mine he went into that shopping center and he cleared the fucking old place out like you know um he he killed he killed four straight away terrorists and then he orchestrated and led the charge on a 17 hour siege and and did that so yeah the guys when it comes down to the basics they can still do them but now they've got the technical stuff going on as well which makes them even better makes that about easier yes it can make it easier but the thing to they have to remember is in war everything can get shut down and if it goes bad you still need them basic skills of knowing how to hide how to live off the land all the basic stuff because the Americans went down the route of fuck it we're flying in on a helicopter there'll be a there'll be a black hawk on the top of this building we'll have two mini birds coming down the street they'll drop you off at the door you're running the door you do the killing you're out onto the helicopter but if what happens if that helicopter crashes or that helicopter has to pull off and you're on on your foot you maybe lose your tracker and now you've got to survive like i did so they still need them them basic skills yeah one last question brother do you miss that of course i do it's fucking not it's not like the madness like wars and yeah is it because i mean i'm 60 and my head still says i'm 30 you look great though um but it's like physically you couldn't do it but yeah you miss it because it's the excitement and it's a bit of that adrenaline you know from that side yeah brother i'm coming on into your story you're a great story teller yes um working people buy all your books just one more time yeah amazon or any independent and if if they're give manhunter a read it's got the best um like final attack in their best best shootout ever thank you for coming on i look forward to no doubt i'll get you on for a part two because i could have spoke there for four hours but thank you for coming on and i wish you all the best for the future thanks very much cheers