 These raw ours is gone. All gone. If you turn up in the paramedics and say, no, we want them out now, that means, like, don't mess about, don't try to be gentle, just get them out. It's like a fucking war zone. If anybody's got any ideas, now's the time to say, because I'm just about to call it. You know, when one of those trains goes through at that speed and hits somebody, you know, there's not much left of them at the end of it. I see how the disabled guys are getting out. Steve, how are you, brother? Yeah, I'm good, thanks, Chris. Yeah, good, thanks. Thanks for having me on. Is someone trying to call you? No, it was just a thing popped up, asking me to agree to being recorded. Ah, got ya, got ya. And do you agree? It's not too late to back out. Yeah. Yes, if your phone goes in a podcast, just ignore it, otherwise we get cut off. Yeah, yeah, sure. So, mate, you mailed me a while back. Yeah. London Firefighter, how many years, Steve? 25. 25 years. 25, yeah. Yeah. And now a published author with two books out. And from what we've chatted already, you've got quite a good grasp on life, or at least acknowledgement that life's not always what we've seen. No, no, indeed it's not. No, no, yeah. There's a lot of things that are going on, but not just now, you know, for a long time, but yeah, all is not what it seems. Yes, exactly, exactly. Let's start with a training, mate, can we, because I think people will find that fascinating. How do you get into the London Fire Brigade? Well, I joined in 1993, and at the time, I think London's burning was tight in popularity, you know, and every young man wanted to be a fireman. And I turned up at Stratford Fire Station one day because they were handing out application forms, and when I turned up, there was a massive queue down the Romford Road into the fire station to get an application form, and I'm standing in this queue and I'm thinking I'm wasting my time here so I think in that bit of intake, there was about 10,000 applicants and 200 jobs. Anyway, I stuck with it, and in the queue, I'm listening to all this bullshit going on around me, and they've done this and done that, and they will do the Fire Brigade a favour if they give them a job. Yeah. I'll sit on them. And stayed there queuing up, and the queue was getting shorter in front of me and it was getting longer behind me, and I only had a certain amount of forms to give out. Anyway, I got to the table, there were two young girls there, and I'd heard before I went that if you make a mistake on your application form or a spelling mistake or a bit of crossing out or something, they just wrote it straight into the bin, don't even look at it. So when I got to the front, I asked for two forms, and I got two forms when I'm filled and very carefully send it off, and then I didn't hear anything for a year. So I forgot about it, forgot about the Fire Brigade, and then out of the blue I got a letter come through asking me to go for a written test. So you go for a written test, same thing, standing outside with a group of young fellas, all full of testosterone and bullshit, and you go in there, sit your written test like maths, English, comprehension, dictation, that sort of stuff. And I thought it was quite easy, and I came out and all these blokes were in despair because they said it was so difficult, they couldn't do it. And that was that, so I went home, and a week later I got another letter saying, can I go for a physical test? So I went for the physical test, and that was at Suffolk Training Centre, a famous training centre that they've been using since Victorian times, and it's a steeped in history, and just walking through the arch into the training centre itself was just breathtaking. And you see all the squads that were already in doing their training, and a family fitness test, and I'll pass that, but I just loved the atmosphere when I was in the training centre. And then I went home again, and then I got another letter to go for an interview. So I had to go up to headquarters in Lambeth, have an interview in front of a panel, left that, and then got another letter to go for me medical. And that's the last stage before you get in. And so I went to the, I think it was a home office then, some medical clothes in London. Had me medical, that was all fine. And then the last thing is, they sent you to a different place. It was in Wimpole Street for an eye test. And I went, left the medical centre, went to Wimpole Street for me eye test, done that. And the bloke who did me eye test, when I'd finished, he shook me hand and said, well done, have a long and happy career with a London Vibeade, and that was that, you know, and I couldn't believe it, that was it, I was in. And you said... Go on. You said, who said that? Boom, boom! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went home and I was told all my family, and everyone was happy, and I was happy. And then a couple of weeks later, I got a confirmation letter from the London Vibeade with a start date, and that was it. Turned up for training on, so I think it was about the 11th of November or something. And that was that. But yeah, what a feeling. What a feeling, walking through that. The arts into the training area, like the drill yards and that, at Suffolk. It's like an arch you have to walk through. There's an arch with two big black metal gates. And that arch itself is iconic, because every firefighter, every fireman, since Victorian times, has walked through that arch to do their training, you know, and here I was walking through that arch in 1993. It's hard to describe that sort of achievement, isn't it? Yeah, and so much going on, like, you know, there'd be other squads training and ladders being thrown out and water everywhere and shouting and hollering. It was very much like the military back then. Everything was like, I don't know if you know this or not, Chris. You might do, being a Marine. But there's a lot of naval history in the London Vibe Date. A lot of their terms and orders, bell signals and all the rest of it were taken from the Royal Navy, because when they first started recruiting firemen properly, they took men from the Navy, because they were used to the watch system. And like I say, you know, the uniform is like a naval uniform, the saloon, if we do a naval, we're used to do a naval saloon, rather than an Army one, you know. And yeah, so it was all really good. I loved it, you know, we had to march everywhere. We were taught how to march, which was quite funny, because none of us knew how to do it when we got there. And anywhere we went while we was in the training school, we had to either march or double. So what you do when you first start learning to march, you just start marching as a squad, get all muddled up, start tip-talking and all the rest of it and end up running everywhere. Were there many military applicants? There were, yeah, not as many as I thought there would be, because when I was queuing up for my application form, it seemed like everybody in the queue had been in the military. So I thought it was going to be all military, and I was going to be the odd one out. But no, I would imagine about 20% of recruits there had served in the military. Yeah, so it's really popular in the Marines. Well, you know, it's quite a number, leave and join the fire service and have distinguished careers. Yeah. I know the training was really good. You go to the suburb for six months and do your basic training at the suburb, and I really enjoyed it. You know, it was hard, but it was a good hard, if you know what I mean. A lot of people didn't like it. They didn't like the physical effort that you had to put in. They didn't like being beasted. We were beasted, you know, basically, which I don't think is a bad thing. Shattered at, polydead at things thrown at you, you know, for making the mistake, but it's important stuff. You know, you can't afford to make mistakes when you get out there. When I watched Blue Peter as a kid, I'm pretty sure it's Blue Peter. One of the presenters went and they did some training with the London Fire Brigade and they strapped him up by his ankles, lifted him up on a crane or on the extendable ladder, and then they aimed the fire hose. Probably calling it the wrong name here, but the... And they just sprayed this guy upside down and he was spinning around. Oh, yeah. Do they still do that? No, they can't now. I mean, when I'd left training centre and went to my first watch, which was in Hackney in East London, North East London, and all that sort of stuff goes on there. When you go to the fire station, it's the new recruit. Even though you've passed all your training and you go there and you're the new boy, you don't know anything. You know how to use all the equipment, but you don't know anything about firefighting. So what I do is you've come out of training school thinking you're the nuts because you know everything and you've passed all these exams and then you get to your fire station and then let you know that you don't know nothing. Yeah, and you get all that. I mean, I spent my first month, I think, like, saturated, constantly saturated. It's when I didn't grow gills because, you know, you're getting buckets of water thrown over you for the slightest little reason. Yeah, so you get all that and the pranks. In my second book, I actually wrote whole chapters on the pranks that have get played on you. You know, because it's a different world. You know, you go into a fire station and fire station life and it's a completely different world to anything you've ever known before. So when someone tells you to do something, you tend not to question it. Yeah. I just want to ask before we chat about that. At what point did women become included in the fire service? Well, there were one or two. When I joined, there were one or two women that had got into the fire service. But then, you know, I don't think I'm speaking out of Tonya. You can stop me if I am. But then certain government decided that they wanted targets. They said that they wanted to represent the population of London in the London fire brigade. So they wanted to recruit so many women, so many ethnic minorities, so many of this, so many of that. The fire brigade represented the population of London. Well, that's impossible. You can't replicate the population of London because it's so diverse. But I did. They tried. And what happened, Chris? These people that they wanted to target weren't really interested in being firemen and firewomen, whatever. So they were sort of, how can I say, they were coached. They were coached. They were taken to training centre told how to do the written tests in the application process, told how to do this, told how to do that, you know, give them help with the fitness test. And then when they applied, they were more or less guaranteed a job. Whereas the likes of me and blokes like me, that's a really fight for it. The other thing as well that they did their training, there was things in our training that we used to do that, you know, women couldn't do. It's nice to be honest about it, you know, women are not built the same as men. They're just not. They're physically, you know, not all women, you know, I've worked with women that are really good fire fighters, but most women are not built like men and whatever. So there was things in our training that they sort of dropped from training just so that more women could pass out. Yeah. Just to sort an aside, but I did the seamanship firefighting course. Yeah. It's pretty full on, you know, you do all the breathing apparatus stuff going in, going into the burning building or in our case, a burning ship. It was absolutely fascinating, but when I was on ship, and again, this come off the back of all this kind of equality, call it, call it whatever we will. Yeah. My ship was the first to have women on board. Right. And don't get me wrong, they're great bunch. We were, as we were a small detachment of Marines on this aircraft carrier, and we all got on like a house on fire. It was one happy, happy family, but I do remember thinking some of our chief petty officers were, you know, they was getting on for like 20 stone. Right. And one of the techniques, I'm sure you, I'm preaching to the choir here, but obviously if you need to get someone up a ladder. Yeah. I've just called it the wrong name then. Friends, my nautical friends, what's the name, what do we call a ladder in the Navy? But anyway, so picture scenario where if you have one of these chiefs that was unconscious in smoke on the bottom of a ladder, you wrap the hose around them and you hold them up the ladder. Well, that's almost an impossibility for a young Marine to lift someone who's, you know, even 15 stone. Oh Christ, yeah. And some of the girls on board were like the proverbial, like eight stone. So I did used to think how much of that is positive discrimination. If you actually went to a war like the Falklands, like Segalah had getting hit, Coventry, Sheffield, Atlantic conveyor, et cetera, et cetera. You know, I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure about the feasibility of it is what I'm trying to say. No, no, you're right. Yeah. I'm not saying right. You know, like I say, it's just one of them things, you know, they're physically different to men. There's, you know, some, a few women can do it a lot. Can't. And so what they did, they catered for the women that couldn't. It was what was happening. There was women going through trainings, not being able to do the training. So technically they shouldn't have passed out. But in what they did, they let a miss certain parts. I mean, we were tested every week, you know, and then you had your intermediate exams. If you didn't pass that, you were out. And then at the end of the six months, you did your final exams like practical and written. And if you didn't pass that, you know, get back squatted. But a lot of the women, they were struggling. So what they used to do is to get, like, private coaching. They'd get some instructors, take them to one side to run through the thing they were struggling with. And then they'd come out and the instructors go, oh yeah, they've done that. They passed that, you know. And then they'd go to the station and be totally useless. Don't get you wrong. I'm not being sexist. There was a lot of useless firemen out there as well. No, no, we got to have this conversation. You know, it's like Jordan Peterson said in that famous interview where they, the agenda was to hang him out to dry. And that just shows you there's an agenda and he just said, well, no. You know, there's some things that men are good at and there's some things that our women are good at and it's all right to acknowledge that. Yeah. I mean, we had a recruiter, one of my stations turned up and he'd been targeted, you know. And he couldn't speak English. I think there's one or two words of English. Like, how did that happen? How did he get in London? And the first thing that stood with me, this was after his training. This was after the conversation and none of us could understand him. So they sent him for English lessons. But how did he get through training if he couldn't speak English? But that was what they used to, and they admitted it. They said it's positive discrimination, right? And that's what they used to call it. They held their hands up and said, it's positive discrimination. And then it was found that they're not allowed to use the word discrimination. So they started to call it positive action. It's the same thing, you know. Yeah, we should, at this same time, give an acknowledgement, shouldn't we, to all the wonderful women firefighters out there that will come and save my life if I'm all my family. Yeah. I mean, I've worked with a few female firefighters that have been better than a lot of the men, to be fair. You know, I'm not, you know, I'm not bullshit, you know, it's the truth. Yeah, we had one of the girls on shit and she was the first woman to pass the Royal Navy divers course. And that might sound a bit, oh, it's just diving, but it's not. It's very, you know, you've got to be able to pick up all that kit, all the dry suits, all the cylinders, everything. Get it on your back and you have to run quarter of a mile under a certain time and everything. What about, what sort of tests do you do in your training? What's the kind of benchmark? Do you have to do the proverbial farmers carry? Yeah. Yeah, we do. And on top of that, we had to do what they used to call a pickup and carry. And I used to get an oval dummy, you know, it was like a crash test dummy and just dump it in the middle of a appliance bay or something, a big room, dress it in full fire gear. Now, because of the amount of water it was always being squirreled around in training school, the thing was soaking wet, so they're full of sand and then it's wet and then it's got fire gear on, which is saturated through. And so I suppose altogether, it probably weighed about four in stone and you had to get it from a prone position in the middle of a floor, drag it to a wall, get it onto its knees, shove your shoulder into its stomach, get it into a fireman's carry and walk off with it and then you had to put it down in a controlled manner. You couldn't just dump it on the floor and you were marked on that and if you didn't do that, you fell and you were gone. If it's just a dummy though, I think I'd just leave it in the fire. Yeah, it was good to do it, you know, because as you know, you know, a person that's unconscious or dead, whatever, it weighed about as much as someone that's alive because they're not cooperating with you at all. They're not giving you any help whatsoever. And the other thing we had to do was carry downs. We had to pitch, go to the third floor of the tower, which is like, yeah, the third floor, yeah, three stories time and pitch the ladder and then we'd get inside the tower onto the balcony and we used to have to pick someone up on the balcony into the fireman's carry and then get over the balcony onto the ladder with them over your shoulders and then bring them down the ladder and that was called a carry down but I don't do them anymore either because these were things that women found it difficult to do, to pick up and carry and carry down so women found it difficult to do. So they just stopped doing it. So people who go to a fire station now will turn up and they don't really know if they're going to be able to carry someone down the ladder or not if it comes to it because they've never practiced it, you know. I would just not go to any fires with any balconies. Yeah. Yeah. Getting into the nitty gritty then. Yeah. God, you must have seen some sites over the years, some sites that I think, you know, the majority of people wouldn't want to see and yet you guys and girls just charge on in there. Can you enlighten us a bit? Yeah. Basically, you've got fires, obviously, we went to and we'd find people badly burnt or dead in fires and they are, you know, burnt. Sometimes if they've died from smoking, like, they don't look, you know, just look like they're asleep, probably covered in sort, black and all the rest of it. If they're badly burned, they can just have half a body burnt. We had one of them, I remember. From the waist down, you know, you could see the bones through his neck because all the flesh had burnt away, but the top half looks normal, you know. And if you get someone that's been in the fire, that's been bottled up for a long time, then they just sort of, you know, like one of your sausages in a barbecue, when you get on there, it's all black and shriveled and, you know, that's what that's like. So they actually burnt stuff and then you got your car accidents. Usually a car accident with people trapped and injured in cars that you've got to cut out. You're too busy to actually take too much notice of what's going on. The paramedics are dealing with it. Normally they're there before we arrive because they've turned up with the police at the car accident and decide whether they need the fire brigade or not, and then we come on. But yeah, I mean, I see some bad injuries. I see, you know, people dying cars, some sticking in the mind more than others. There was one young lad, and I've written about him, I think, he had crashed his car and so on. I mean, if the paramedics say to you, they've got to come out now, because normally you've got an hour, they call it a golden hour, to get somebody out and stabilize before they go off to the hospital. If you turn up in the paramedics, say, no, we want them out now. That means, like, don't mess about. Don't try to be gentle. Just get them out. It's urgent. And we turned up at this young lad and they wanted him out straight away. I mean, you know, he was trapped by a metal as well as his injuries. So we just did what we couldn't get him out and basically they both sort of monitored him up and all the rest of it. We stood there. He had a broken leg, broken femur and I was given the job of, like, tugging on his leg while they put a brace on it because he was bleeding somewhere inside. I didn't know where. And just monitored him up and I just watched his life just step away from him. Like, you know, his blood pressure drops and his pulse drops and all the rest of it just went. But the Hems turned up. You know, the Hems helicopter doctors are absolutely fantastic. They're amazing, amazing people. But of a night time in London, they don't fly the helicopter. So they turned up in a fast car. So they turned up and they did what they could and I'm just about to load him onto the ambulance and take him away. And then this doctor, the Hems doctor turned around to everybody, including us. We're all standing there. And he said, if anybody's got any ideas, now's the time to say, because I'm just about to call it. He's just about to pronounce him dead. We're looking at each other, you know, and then one of the other Hems doctors said, oh, what about so, so, so, so, so. I said, okay. I called him back out of the ambulance, set up an operating theatre on the side of the road, as they do. And they opened his chest up completely. Clamps his ribs open. You know, I don't know where they normally do it that way or that way, I don't know. But it's... And then they had their hands in there and they're trying to find this bleed to try to stop this bleed that he had. And they couldn't do it. But the thing that got me, that surprised me, as they were doing this, they've got one of the paramedics pumping air into him with a bag. And as they're pumping air into him, every squeeze of the bag, his lungs was coming out of his chest, like two balloons, like inflating coming out of his chest. Anyway, cut a long story short. He didn't make it. He didn't make it. He went back. That was one that sticks him in mind. The more worst incidents go to, the ones that I actually hated, if we got a shout, or went downstairs and looked at the teleprinter, and if I saw a person under a train or a person hit by a train, I said, ah, no, that's sake, you know. Because I didn't like it. I didn't like it. It was horrible. Nothing nice about that, until nothing enjoyable. Because when you get there, you can't help anybody. But you'd go turn up the station and the train is... If it's a tube train, it stops in the station and they evacuate the train, evacuate the station. And as you're walking in, you've got all these passengers walking out, and they have white faces and, you know, because they know what's happened. But then we have to go in now and walk all the way along the platform and look under the train without talking to try and find where the person is. That was unpleasant. And then when you found where they are, then the job of getting them out. So that wasn't nice. But the worst ones for me was on one of my stations. We had a station where the Colchester to Liverpool Street trains used to go through without stopping, about 80 miles an hour. Just up the road from there was a mental hospital. A lot of mental inpatients. And what used to happen sometimes is they'd discharge themselves from the hospital or escape, make their way down to the station and shut themselves in front of the express trains. Oh, my God. You know, when one of those trains goes through at that speed and hits somebody, you know, there's not much left of them at the end of it. You know, they're just smashing scattered over. Hey, what? It's hell of a brave... Brave isn't probably the right word because when you're that ill, you're not thinking about anything, are you? You just want to end it. But it's a frigging way to go. Oh, don't. Yeah. I mean, I don't think... Well, I know for a fact I wouldn't ever contemplate that. You know, I've had friends that have done it and afterwards you think, I don't understand why, you know, they were fine. But yeah, to do it in front of a train, God, that's got to hurt, and even for a little while. I worked on a mental health ward once and used to do a brief before we started work and they'd go down all the lists of what they call patients. And it got to this one chart and I'd been having a chat with him the other day and some funny stuff had gone on. Clearly, one minute it was really well. Next minute, his illness took hold and it was just what we could have in a moment, but it was a psychotic episode. So they got to this guy on the list and he'd sort of been scrubbed out and I looked at the lead nurse and I said, oh, where's John? She said, oh. John took the train. I said, oh, what, gone to see his family? You know, I thought he got day released or something. They went, no, like he actually took the train. I'm like, oh, God. And it was actually the euphemism for clocking out was taking the train, right? But in this case, he actually had thrown himself under the train. Yes, it affects a lot of people, doesn't it? You know, effects. Yeah, I mean, I just can't, you know, to jump in front of the train, not to say, you know. I mean, sometimes it's on the tube. Every tube's actually in London. It's got what they call a suicide pit. And under the tracks, it's like a concrete trench. So if someone hits the train, they'll fall under the tracks into the suicide pit. And when we turned up, that's invariably where they'd be. Sometimes they'd get tangled up in the axles and all the rest of it. But invariably, they'd be in a suicide pit. And sometimes, you know, it turned up a few and the people were still alive. You know, in a terrible state, but they're still alive. You know, it probably died a little while later. But yeah, it's nasty. Jeez. But we went to, we used to, we went to a few suicides, different ones. But one, another one that sticks in my mind, we went, we got called to a bloke. It was electrocuted, right? So we went on our way to this address thinking he's had an accident. You know, he's been working on something and he's electrocuted himself. And as we pulled into the street, Hems doctors had landed in the school playground and they were running down the road with their backpacks on. Ghostbusters were in there on their way to somewhere. He's got all this gear on their back. And he ran down. It was a domestic house. And we went into this house and there was a woman in there and two kids and they were screaming and crying. And what it was, the father, he'd gone into his shed, the kettle flex, you know, stripped the wires, wrapped him around his thumbs and just plugged it in and turned it on. And he electrocuted himself in his own back garden with his wife and kids in the house. You know, I mean... Mate, we, you know, we were in a military, I call it a suicide epidemic. But, you know, it's been going on now for too long a time, over 10 years. Yeah. Like friends of mine have killed themselves and they got a partner and four kids was my last friend. And it's just awful. It's just awful to get that like alienated from life and from connections and friends to be in such a dark place that this can take place. It's like we got a lot of understanding to do, you know? I wish there was like a, you know, you've got a bloody little card and when you felt like that, you could just go and check into somewhere and the next day you wake up on a beach in Thailand or something with someone giving you a massage, you know? Yeah. Nice drink with umbrella and just the intervention, you know, in that moment, an intervention as opposed to what we've got is that you find out that your friends killed themselves. It's, I mean, my last 12 months in the Fire Brigade, I had two friends of mine that I worked with both killed themselves. And the thing was, they were both larger than life characters, you know, life as old as the party, full of it, you know? And then when you get called into the mess and told that, you know, they were found hanged in a wood last night, you know, you're thinking, what? You can't get your head round it because you think, what? It was not the life as old as the party, it was just a loud, big character. Why didn't he say anything to anybody? But I had another friend and he attempted suicide and failed, he tried to do it with drinking and tablets, but what happened was he waited until his missus was going to go out with the friends and when he was back with his bottle of whiskey and his tablets sat there and just wanted to do away with himself. Anyway, what happened? His missus had an argument with the friends and came home early, found him. But I went to him after. I said, what was going through your mind, Rich? You know, what happens? Does a still shutter come down and you can't think of anything else? He said, no. He said, it becomes the most important thing in the world. He said, you know, if you know, you've got to go to the bank tomorrow and pay some money and all you've got to go and pay a bill when you've got to go and do this. This is the same thing. It's just a job that you've got to do. He said, and that's all you focus on doing this job. Oh, these raw houses. Gone. All gone. What, mate? Cars, houses. Houses. Well, it's the first houses we got to when we was here. Look at this place. Fuck me. Whole little estate's burnt down here. Unbelievable, isn't it? It's like a fucking war zone. I see how the disabled guys have got to get him out. You've got a distant sign. Fucking hell, it's probably still going around here. They're just... This is unbelievable. What do we reckon here? Just to be here alone, I reckon. 20, 30 houses. Fucking hell. I've never seen anything like this. Jesus Christ. Steve, were there any events of... You know, prominent events that we might have seen in the media? Like, there was all the London Bridge stuff wasn't there and the tower block that went up and this kind of stuff. Were you involved in incidents like these? No. Okay. Well, sort of no and sort of yes. The only major incident that sort of everyone talked about and everyone still remembers was on 7-7, like the bombings in London. And I didn't go on the initial attendants because I was on me four days off. We used to do two days, two nights, four off. And I was on me four off. But when we went back to work for our first day, we had to go on a relief to Old Gate East. We had to go on a relief to Old Gate East. We had to go on a relief to Old Gate East Station. Just to be there. And it was eerie because you drive in... London was like a ghost town. You know, the normal castle and bustle and people everywhere and noise, traffic. There's nothing there. It's completely shut down. And there was all sorts of police and MI5, I suspect MI6 as well was there, don't for everything. And I just started to bring the bodies out of the trains but I had to document everything, photograph it, record where it was. And I was loading everything onto the refrigerator galleries. Well, we asked if we could go in there to have a look and they wouldn't let us in. They wouldn't even let us onto the platform because of cross-contamination. And the two officers that were given the task of getting the body parts off had blue boiler suits on and they weren't allowed to change their clothes even because they changed their clothes because of cross-contaminated evidence and all the rest of it, you know. I remember saying to one of them when they come out to have a little break because they were so hot down there and I said, was it suicide bombers? Because everyone was saying it was suicide bombers and other people denying it, no, it wasn't. I said, were they suicide bombers? I said, well, I don't know. He said, but let's put it this way. He said, there's not one body down there that's been smashed a bit more than any others. He said, so I suspect it wasn't. But then what I found out afterwards was that they had actually put their backpacks on the floor and what they'd done was just blown their legs off so the rest of the body was still quite intact. Greenfield Towers, I didn't go on. I know people that did go on it and I know what went on there. I asked to go on it. I had six months left to serve when that happened and I kept thinking that we're going to go on a relief because it was way out of our area but almost everybody in London went on a relief. We hadn't been sent on a relief so on our second day I phoned up their control. I said, look, I've got six months to go. I said, Greenfield's the job of the lifetime. Any chance we could be sent on a relief? So she said, OK, leave it with me. So I did and then about an hour later she phoned me back. She said, look, you can't go. She said, they're only sending senior officers there at the moment. She said, and you're a junior officer so you can't go. And that was that. So I couldn't go. But yeah, I spoke to plenty of people that did go. It was just an incredible nightmare. I can't imagine what it was like. How we didn't lose firemen at that job. I really don't know. Because they were told by the Chief Officer, Danny Cotton, forget all your procedures. Just do what you can do. And I did, you know, they were using up the, you're breathing that right as you've got a cylinder of compressed air on your back and it lasts a certain amount of time and the harder you work the quicker you use your air up, obviously. So they were going up the stairs in this tower block and then finding that they're getting to a certain height and they're really, really low on air. So I had to come back down again and some of them run out of air before they got back down and literally fell out of the doors. So what I was told to do is take a spare cylinder in with them which is a big number because what you're doing is taking the bomb into a fire, really. It's a compressed air cylinder into a fire. And they were carrying with the cylinder on their back and they were carrying in spare cylinders going up as high as they could before running out of air, changing the cylinders and then going up further. You know, they just went way, way over the bar. I watched the inquest on that and it was infuriating. You know, there was a big inquest on it and they just criticised the fire brigade left, right and centre. Mostly about this stay put policy. Our policy was always if there's a fire in a flat, it's a self-contained concrete box that ain't going anywhere. So someone on the same landing, as long as you keep your doors shut, you're safe. And that was always the case. But with Grenfell, it went up the outside because of the cladding. It didn't spread like a normal fire. It wasn't a normal fire. It started off as a normal fire, just a flat job. And the flames licked out the window as they do. And normally that would just lick up, like sulk, sculpture, stain the concrete or the bricks black. And that would be the end of it. The crew would go in and put it out by the end of it, over and done within five minutes. But because it licked out the windows and caught this cladding and it just went up like a candle. And Danny Cotton got the sack over it. So we had that first female chief fire officer. And at the inquest, when she was questioned about the stay put policy, should they have evacuated the block of flats? And she said, no, you know, if we had the same job tomorrow, I wouldn't do anything different. And she was right. She said that in the public eye. She got the sack. You know, because she didn't say what was expected. And to be fair, if someone had attempted to evacuate the block of flats, there'd be more fatalities at the end of the day. Because people would have come out into fixed smoke. There'd have been trampled on stairways and all the rest of it. You know, firefighters would have been able to get up for the amount of people coming down. It would have been a nightmare. And they died in there. That wasn't down to the fire brigade. That was down to the people who desired and built the cladding. But it might come out. I'll tell you what, it would pay to be a base jumper in a situation like that, wouldn't it? Yeah. Shoot on and dive out the bloody... People did that after the events in New York and Washington. People that were in high rises started to take in... started to take in parachutes. Yeah. They can't blame people for thinking like that. That's the only thing they did as well after Greenfield. Because somebody hasn't got a clue. Somebody doesn't know that it sounds like a good idea. And also the politicians want to make it look like they're doing something to address it. So they wanted to hold the ladders. You know, the hydraulic platforms the aerial ladder platforms whatever you call them. What we had in London was good enough really. Because of the streets of London being so narrow and these bloody machines being so big they weren't practical and if they got to the job they probably nine times out of ten wouldn't be able to pitch. Because somebody's boxed up on my screen can you say that? No. Is that your Russian wife? Yeah, somebody like that. Yeah. Yeah. So they bought these bloody great big ladders that can reach higher if there was another, you know but at the end of the day these things somebody knows wouldn't have just said no, they've got a lot of ways to time out doing that. But because everyone's so scared now and seeing their offices in a vibrate they're sort of more politician than they are officer. So when some politician says we want bigger ladders okay we'll get bigger ladders. They're going to get through the streets of London and they'll only take to set up and even if they get set up and get pitched how many windows can you pitch it to? Something like Grenfell, it wouldn't make no difference. Nothing would have made any difference at all. Once that cladding caught fire there was only going to be one outcome and nothing could have prevented that. Nothing at all. No. Steve you touched on relationships I'm guessing there's a lot of focus, focus goes on in the rank structures and stuff does it? Yeah, well you may be saying your ranks. I just mean not always the right people get promoted for the right job today and sometimes you get people that are just really clueless and yeah yeah I mean that happens a lot happens a lot and a lot more often now than it used to I mean back in the day any senior rockers that come through the ranks served on stations station officers and was well respected and liked by everybody knew their stuff so when they became a senior rank they still had that respect and they still respected the lads because all the shenanigans and all the rest of it they'd been up to it, they'd done it they'd done all the stuff that you shouldn't do and they knew what the score was and if you got into trouble they'd sort it out for you and then all of a sudden the attitude changed and they started to try to turn you know the divide and conquer thing you know where you get animosity between the senior ranks and the station ranks and people were just chasing the next round of promotion and it changed people because they were all competing with each other who could be the nastiest bastard really who could screw someone and get brownie points from the person above them and all that and that's what it became like, you know it works with men as firemen at stations and they were great blokes and they knew what score was and they'd been up to all sorts the same as we all did and then they get past a certain rank and once they're off the fire station it changes and all of a sudden you're not their mate anymore their mates are all up head quarters and they go and drink tea together and all the rest of it and decide who they're going to hammer this time yeah it could be nasty bullions, you know talk about stress and all the rest of it and most of my problems in the fire brigade were caused by corporate I don't like to use the word corporate bullion but it was, you know are they yeah I I think it's fair to say that you do get this in all professions when you get when you're a square peg in a round hole which certain characters are always going to be that and there's no fault of their own it's that generally they're too good for the bloody job and they don't possess to get on in modern society you've kind of got to be a bit gutless, you know I mean I've worked in offices where I got called into the boss's office he raised me this riot act it was something I said that was inappropriate or something I did and he said yeah this person's not happy with and like he's talking about the person that sits opposite my desk that I chat to all day long and like I thought we had a bond I thought we were we were mates and when you go back and sit down at that desk this person goes alright and you're like you two face so and so how can you be like how can you be like that but it's normal to be in a profession you've got to have the hell scared out of you and you've got a cow town and tow the line it's why I it's why I was happy to go self-employed just absolutely well that's why I struggle now what are you doing now Steve nothing I find it difficult Chris to work in an environment where you've got more of that I can't imagine doing a job where I've been told what to do by a 20 year old ass clicker basically and I've got no life experience I mean I struggled in the fire but I remember one time I was my governor was off six so I was acting up in Charles at the station and we used to have various targets that they introduced fire safety targets and all this and I went into targets I was into being a fireman you know and he called me in the office this sooner or later one day and he had a chart on his wall with all the targets on for the different watches and he said so I said I don't know he said have a look at the list I said no I'm not going to look at it he said have a look at my list have a look at my chart so I said no I don't want to look at it so I said well your targets he said you're not in so I said listen they're not my targets they're your targets they're your targets if those targets aren't here it's not my problem it's yours and that sort of thing you know it was furious he really wanted to punch me but obviously he couldn't I mean you know people nowadays were afraid to say no people were afraid to stand up for what's right and wrong you know we've had two years of it we've had two years of it takes a very sorted person just to say no you're not doing that bullshit sorry what a crock what a crock Tom now just when you were saying that reminded me I did a college placement once a building here in the city and it was a young people's organisation or something and when I started my placement and they did you the fire tour which all good introductions should include and it was all good it was like here's this extinguisher this is used for this and here's the fire door and here's the it was a three story building or a two story I can't remember but there was a top landing and this fairly youngest chap that's showing us around he pointed at the floor and he said and this is the spot where you leave people in a wheelchair and I thought he's I thought he's just you know saying it because he had to sort of say it or whatever and I said you are joking the building's on fire you're going to wheel someone out then you're just going to leave them here right and he went he looked at me in all earnest and went oh yeah because if you hurt them they could sue you and it wasn't that it was just the fact that he believed this bullshit you know I just thought as a you know as ex-military there's no way you'd leave anyone in a burning building if you had the chance even if you had to drag them down it was just it's funny the way life's gone maybe it was always like this but it seems to be really just brainless people get ahead if we had to drag somebody out of the fire you know drag them by whatever you could get out of what might be the hair or the leg or something and pull them down the stairs you know you just get them out the best way you can do they still have that trampoline thing the whatever you call it do you remember that no but when people jump out of the window into this yeah you had this big it wasn't a trampoline you didn't bounce on it it's huge plastic like blanket and the you'd have it for jumpers so people would pull this out and then if they did jump but I thought it was quite normal for firefighters that say from like a three story window where you break your legs if you try to jump on this thing you you stood a chance well you stood a very good chance just a bit like the old stuntman in Hollywood you know when they land on these big crash mats I thought that was a big thing when I was younger no probably in the films cartoons and stuff but I've seen photos of it being done at Suffolk Training Centre but that was like when they were still holster on fire engines so they did do it on one side but no we didn't we didn't know we used to sell people if someone was hanging out of a window we'd say stay there we didn't want them jumping you know a picture ladder and getting out but going back to jumpers we used to get a lot of people threatening to jump off of high buildings and stuff and we'd be there for hours because when someone's threatening to jump even though you know that they're not going to the police have to send a negotiator up there to try to talk them down and it takes forever they get whatever they want they get their packet of cigarettes and their Kentucky fried chicken they're sitting on the roof or whatever um yeah and invariably they don't jump the only one that ever jumps was already on the floor when we got there so they meant it and when it was in a department store car park on the roof when someone went off of there but when we spoke to the staff in the department store they watched it on say say say this fella just got onto the roof walked straight off and over he didn't stand there threatening and shouting like they do just obviously just attention seeking so if we turned up and someone threatened to jump there would always be a big crowd standing there which they loved because that's what they've done it for but yeah no I don't know um and what triggered your trauma then Steve would you say because you've been through the middle bit how did it start to manifest and where did it lead you two things really I mean one was personal something happening in personal life which I've written about in the second book when I lost a child lost my son and that had a major effect on me and that sort of started the ball rolling if you like that's something that you have to live with and carry with you every day when you're going to do your job and all the other stress that you ever work it all compounds but what done me the most damage I think we are losing dispute once with management about shifts I think I can't remember and what management decided to do they was um you know you have the same in the military where people that's up a rank to cover shortages and all the rest of it all the fire every day runs on temporary promotion really so because we was in dispute a union said well everybody is doing temporary buster cells and go back to your sustaining rank which we all did I mean someone in management come up with the idea of this divide and conquer again so what I thought if we can split the troops and get them arguing with each other then you know that's a good way that we can beat them so what I did they picked on the leading firemen which I was crew managers they called them later and they was giving us orders that we couldn't carry out they was ordering us to do such stuff that illegal orders really can you give us an example they would want us to go and be in charge if there was a station down the road that didn't have an officer in charge they'd want us to send a fire engine from our station to go and cover their station even though the people that they wanted to send weren't qualified to be in charge of a station that sort of stuff you know so technically it wasn't legal the union had told us not to do it because we were in dispute but you know the reason for everyone busting themselves was you know because we were in dispute so what I did they started deducting their money they'd give us these orders that we couldn't carry out and if you refuse they'd stop 20% your wages partial performance and then they'd give you another order and if you refuse that they'd stop another 20% you know and it was right on top of Christmas and all the rest of it and it was just horrendous because they'd be phoning up sort of on a daily and nightly basis and giving you these orders and yeah so no I'm not doing it and then you'd find yourself 20% of your wages short and some people they lost up to 60% of their wages and it went on for months you know and that had a big effect on me just because it was so stressful you know you go to work and you're just dreading the phone ringing because you know what it's going to be it's going to be more bullying so that got on top of me and what made it worse was some of the people that was doing it were sitting up at the big house the people that I'd worked with they weren't singling me it was all eating fine but that was such a stressful time in the end I did go off sick with stress and then when I went sick with stress it starts to ball rolling with a fire brigade they've got a really good process they've got a certificate from your GP and it adds stress or anxiety on it they would refer you straight to occupational health and that you know can you hear that sorry folks thunder rolling and I think we're about to shatter the hot weather that we've been having sorry Steve so you refer to occupational health and you get referrals to see them every month so they can monitor you and see how you're going and they give you the option of going to their welfare advice and counseling I think it's called now that used to be welfare then you can go there and speak to counselors fire brigade counselors are excellent because they've had so much experience of dealing with people with trauma and all the rest of it so I went to counseling and once I started having counseling they just opened the floodgates and all this stuff started coming out because of anything and the counselor couldn't make sense of anything every time she sort of got near this thing that was really deep down inside that was everything else was revolving around I'll climb up because it was so painful so she'd try to ask me and get it out and I'd go so far and it stopped and this went on he's supposed to have six weekly sessions of counseling and that should not but I was under this counselor for like two years because every time I should have finished I said I don't think you're ready to finish you need to carry on coming back and the counselor did for two years and in the end the fire brigade got a bit fed up with it because there were certain things that I was excused I was still working but I was excused certain things and the fire brigade didn't like it so they sent me to see an independent psychologist first of all and he reported back to them and said nothing wrong with a fella he's not taking the piss they weren't happy with that so they sent me to see an independent psychiatrist and I thought a psychiatrist they're going to try and catch me out I'm going to sit there and they're going to find these loaded questions at me and try and catch me out but it wasn't like that at all it was just a chat like I'm sitting there chatting to you and that was it at the end of it he said well okay I'll write my report and send it off blah blah blah I said am I mad? he laughed he said no not at all he called me a well rounded individual with well developed I'll forget what he said there anyway but he said no not at all he said you've got a problem and it's got to be addressed and it's as simple as that and it's an easy thing to address so I don't see a problem so that was it after I went back to the fire brigade again certainly I still thought I was taking a piss and then my councillor she said to me look what about this she said you go so far and then you won't go any further with the counselling and she told me about EMDR therapy which is a movement desensitisation reprogramming she said they use it for like PTSD she said how do you feel about giving that a go so I said yeah I'll give it a go so we started doing that and she's sitting there and she's you can't move your head you've got to follow her fingers with your eyes you can't turn your head and she'll ask you questions and you'll give her your answer and then she'll do this with her fingers again and at first I couldn't see the point because it wasn't doing anything but then towards the end her questions started to get a little bit more in depth a little bit more personal she started to upset me and the last few weeks she kept saying to me we're going to have to finish this so so I said yeah fine and then the session before last she said next week is going to be her final session I had to feel about that so I said yeah no problem and I went up for my last session and my god she did her fingers movement and all the rest of it and then she started asking me pretty questions and taking me right back she took me back to the delivery room when I lost my baby my wife lost her son and she wouldn't let me off she wouldn't let me stop and she kept probing and probing and probing and in the end I kept to knock Chris in the end it was like I was back there and I could hear the things that I heard at the time I could smell the smells that I smelled at the time I remembered everybody that said I remember the doctors faces and the midwives faces remembered everything it was just like being back there and it totally destroyed me it totally destroyed me I was at a mess and I broke down in a big way you know a really big way and then she carried on and then she took me back to me happy place before you start the EMDR they asked you to think of a place where you felt nice and calm and relaxed and safe and that's your happy place and that's where they always take you back to with their fingers after each session and she took me back to me happy place and she said that's it we're done and yeah I mean it worked it worked for me because up until that point I could never talk about it I could never talk about it because I'd get choked up and my eyes would well up and I'd have to walk away after that I mean from then on I've been able to talk about it if people want to ask me questions I can give them the answers and I can talk you know it's taken a big it's taken a load of pain away if you like I mean the fire brigade stuff you'd recommend this this therapy then yeah yeah yeah it worked for me it worked for me it's a bit unusual you know when you first started doing it I thought well what the bloody hell is this all about but it worked for me I definitely recommend it and apparently I do use it a lot for you know soldiers that are coming back from conflicts suffering PTSD and all that and the way it was explained to me was if you've got something that's so traumatic that you can't deal with it at the time you just stuff it to a part of your brain where you don't have to deal with it there's a part of your brain apparently where you stuff everything that you don't want to deal with and what this EMDR does by moving your eyes from side to side it unlocks this part of your brain this is how it's explained to me and then it brings those memories and incidents back so that you can then think about and deal with them and that's what happened with me but I suppose a lot of the soldiers that have suffered while they've been you know on ops whatever some of it so horrendous a lot of it must be so horrendous that they just sort of tend to block it out but then when you block it out it's still there it's still there it doesn't go away it still happened it holds people in different ways you know the nightmares and flashbacks all that you know but if you can get it back to the front of your mind think about what happened in terms of it I think that's a big help I think in the military it can be often the case that people do experience some severely violent acts but of course you're working you've got to compartmentalise and move on exactly eventually that glass overflows you've got too much undoubt with trauma well that's what it was with me like you say the glass overflows my phase of thinking in my life was a bit old but with carrying that with you all the time and then all the other stuff that happens at work not just conflicts with management not just that but other incidents as well that you wouldn't take to know yourself already it's not pleasant but like you say you're at work so you're busy doing something and it's from your job and that's it you just get on with it but a lot of it still sticks I mean I can look back and I can probably remember I can't remember them all because there's so many but I can probably remember 70% of phase of incidents that I attended when I say I can remember them I can remember where they were what it looked like, what we did that sort of stuff but just get used to it just get used to seeing these things Do you have any techniques Steve that you use now to make sure things don't get on top of you again Mindfulness, anything like this or stay away from the alcohol No, no I have a I enjoy a drink, I enjoy a few beers and a bottle of wine whatever I'm still taking empty depressants I've been on them for like over 10 years now because I've tried to stop taking them and it follows a pattern you stop taking and then normally after about 3 months you can feel yourself start slipping again you know You need to work on your tool kit I can help you with that You've got to be careful with meds nobody should do anything without consulting their doctor but what I would say is a couple of things folks just because it's a prescription doesn't mean it's not ultra strong chemicals that you'll pour into your brain every single day and your body but from the recovery perspective and developing the all important deeper connection with life you need to have a clear mind because your body needs to be operating in rhythm with life and it's why I hate taking painkillers and I've had to take them quite a lot in my life when I had to but there were times I couldn't walk without them but what I don't like it mate is it completely dulls my sense of living it dulls my natural high that I get because ordinarily I'm quite sorted in life I think I eat, I exercise I don't want for anything I literally live in paradise and meds they put this barrier in there no one ever talks about it you're never going to get a GP saying what I'm saying to you now they're very good at writing out these prescriptions but it's a temporary stopgap any medicine like that is a stopgap it's to get you over a traumatic period in your life or a period where you can't sleep if it's sleeping painkillers anxiety medicine should only be prescribed for a very short time no longer than a week or whatever because then you can develop such a dependency on it but with anything the secret isn't just a stop in my experience is cut down gradually really incrementally so small that your body doesn't really until you get to the day where you're on this silly ridiculous little and you're just like ah and you're there then you know you might have a bit of psychological hangover for the placebo effect but it's um you know these measures the stopgap this stop you know that there's nothing wrong with you there is nothing wrong with you as a person as a human being or whatever you just got to figure out a few more answers is what I'm trying to say yeah yeah because I suppose what it does it numbs everything doesn't it but it takes the edge off a thing so yeah your enjoyment as well is taken off of it I'll get exactly what you're saying I'll find it very very hard to get motivated to do anything these days yeah that's a byproduct of um life can be like that Steve life can be demotivating and you've got to crack it you've got to unlock the the energy I suppose the infusion you've got to unlock it in some way you've got to do it but you've got to be prepared to you know look at what you eat look at what you think look at your exercise routine and I'm not talking like Arnold Schwarzenegger any shit like that I mean like if you everyone should walk around the block at least you know in our family all the adults do it all two of us walk around the block anyone and I jog around sometimes I make it long you know I go a bit longer but it's really important this gets re-plenishes your oxygen in your tissues and in your brain etc etc it's really important to get off the stodgy western toxic diet of just carbs and meat and move to not just a more plant based diet but you know a diet that gets your body's pH back where it should be you think of any plant right you never feed a plant on bloody coca-cola and big max and shit people would look at you like you're an idiot but when it comes to human body all this has been hidden from us by the food companies and the big industry so they don't want you to know you're a living organism some things are going to do you right some things are a big no no it's a very this is all the stuff that enable people to understand when I'm life coaching some very simple basics we do a five day course in my facebook group we call it five days lost the legend at the end of that five days it changes your life so much that people never go back they never go back to the old way we do five very simple things for five days that's it even as silly as when you've had your shower in the morning turn it on as cold as you can bear as long as you can bear you'll get it up to fully cold eventually when you can just sort of stand there like it's going to give you such a buzz for the day especially if you had your jog around the block you know it all goes back to our ancestry and the fact that it would have been normal for us to get cold and wet in history you know we didn't have houses if we had a cave if you were lucky but a lot of the time we're just like the monkey we just have to sit there sit it out and nature's so clever Steve it incorporates this into our evolutionary design so it uses that coldness to stim in this case it stimulates someone called a vagus nerve and that's you'll feel good like nerve you know it's the same with a diet you know it's same with like fasting like fasted I won't bore you with the details now it's natural in human evolution we wouldn't have had food at hand three times a day every single day it would be naive to think that we would have gone possibly weeks without food while we moved from this foraging ground to a fresh one or we had bad weather or illness or whatever it might be and the body's so clever it uses that period of fasting to clean yourself out rejuvenate yourself and to get when you lose fat you lose a lot of acid that the body builds up and because the body will store acid in your fat it will store toxins in your fat etc etc etc so yeah this is all knowledge I try to enlighten people too because you're not going to hear this from your GP I'll show those to my GP she ain't got no clue what I'm going on about schooled in western medicine as you get your prescription pad out and you do it that way like I said before there is a time and a place for medication it should always be stop-gap measure no one's a broken machine we just have challenges in life and I just try to help people five simple things five days lost to legends at the end of that five days we got Bob hello Bob very very nice man down there in Australia we did the five day we jogged around the block in the morning you can walk you can take the dog it doesn't matter if you're not into moving your legs you can go swimming or sight what doesn't matter right he's turned into forest gump he's run every single day for 18 months now he's doing the old ultra marathons and he just loves life so much now he absolutely loves life so much now that sounds good I have to give that a go Chris that sounds really good stay tuned to my facebook anybody out there it's a good old five days the thing is with me Steve I don't like difficult stuff I like to do the easy stuff in life so there's nothing on that five day course that anyone will fight it's all stuff that you can do and yeah it's amazing I remember maybe a year or two ago I remember seeing something about this Wim Hof breathing I forget his name now he used to go and take the dip in his local rivers in the morning that sounds like Sam Murray who's been on the podcast before I'll tell you who else as well and I think it might be where I first saw him Stevie Burns yeah funny enough Stevie Burns and another ex-Marine Jim Cook I know Stevie I don't think I've had the pleasure of meeting Jim two lovely lovely fellows and cut the long story short about two and a half years ago my daughter when she was 21 was diagnosed with lung cancer and as a result of that in June two years ago she had to go into the bounce so she had half of her right lung removed and this was during the lockdown so I couldn't go to see her before she went into hospital I drove her to the hospital we had to drop her off in reception and leave her there with them couldn't go and visit her or anything like that and then I was coming back home and sitting there looking at four walls because I wasn't allowed to see anybody you know I don't live with a partner and I was just on my own going mad and I put something on the Oxford and Facebook page and Stevie phoned me up and had a long chat with me and then it was almost like he assigned Jim to look after me through this difficult time and I was getting messages and everything off of Jim daily and it was like having a guardian angel and I'll tell you you know just make such a difference such a difference and I'll always appreciate what they did and I'll never forget it because you know that's nice genuine people well this is the thing in life it's easy to forget that we massively love Steve you know there's people out there that you never met that love you more than anyone else in your life I even know there you go yeah I'll get Luke to put a link for up Spartan below because good old organization see started there yeah definitely brother listen let's finish I've just realised I've got to take someone up to the hospital so let's switch on something funny light hearted what was the funniest prank that you saw pulled in all your time in the service funny is prank oh my god so many so many most of them well this was funny just very quickly I'll tell you about this and then I'll tell you a funny instance out of the fire ground but one of the funniest things so when I first went there on the roll call we're all suggesting a fire gear on roll call and there was one fireman there with his undress uniform on and I didn't know it's because he was going on an out journey he was going to another station for a day but they told me he was going to church so then everybody goes to church we send someone to church every Sunday and I didn't know any different I thought oh yeah it might be a superstitious thing or whatever they said next Sunday it's your turn because you're a new boy so I said okay so the next Sunday I've got me under a uniform and they sent me next door to the church I've got an Indian and I was the only white person in there and I'm wearing a uniform right and it was one of them evangelical churches with the figures in a white suit and they're playing guitars and they're all just oh it's fantastic so I stayed in there for an hour and then went back to the station and they were obviously all laughing and all the rest of it did you like it it's nice to see it work bad actually and I said at least we've only done it now but I said treat her on a white book stayed for the whole four hours because he enjoyed it so much Brilliant Steve listen we're going to put we're going to put links for Steve's books below folks we'll put a link for Op Spartan I can't wait to read your book mate because I know I just know it's going to be engaging and I like I like to read good books and fed up with reading Yeah they're easy reads as well they're not done books Yes and come back and chat to us again mate and I'll see you in my it's called Chris Fraule the Legends Coach on Facebook anybody out there come and join us nice to be sure not to be absolutely smashing it and get a nice bit of community just meet nice people that's what life's all about Lovely yeah I'd love to come back because we've just sort of scratched the surface really Steve I've really got a fry mate so just stay on the line so I can thank you properly but massive thank you again brother for coming on the show and for getting you morning welcome you morning welcome to everybody out there please keep smiling remember challenges are only temporary and you look back at them in days, months, weeks years to come and go oh my god like you know can't believe how much my life has moved on so keep positive massive love to you all if you can like and subscribe that would be really kind and we'll see you next time thank you