 I've still got one of the bullets that got in, so, um, my cars are not impregnable. We got backed up behind some American Humvees, and in those days, uh, they would shoot at you. And I'm terrified, you're not selling this to me, mate. The problem is, the curve of the bonnet and the curve of the roof are the same shape as an airplane wing. You just sleep on top of the turret. Nick, how are you, brother? Hello, Chris, how do you do? Yes, thanks for coming on the show. That's all right. Pleasure to be along. Yeah, we've got to thank Matt. Hello, Matt, if you're, if no doubt, you'll be watching this at some point for putting us in touch. And, um, Matt said, you've got to meet this guy, Chris. He's, he, he basically the most fascinating, fascinating guy you know. So I always like a bit of a heads up. Personal recommendation. All right, so hopefully I'll live up to the mark as it were, you know. I'm sure you will. So, um, let's go straight in at the deep end then. What, what, what's it like being in a tank? People talk about claustrophobia. I never found it. I never found anyone else in an armored vehicle who suffered from claustrophobia, because you tend to hope not, wouldn't you? But bearing in the amount of people that actually just joined the arm in the first place and joined an armored unit, having never been in one, it would be logical to think that there would be some sort of attrition somewhere where people say, I can't cope with the confined space. It's not true. It doesn't happen. Although unlike a submarine, you can get out of a tank, right? But you can't, you know, with a submarine of course. Now the, um, I first got into it by doing an armored unit visit to the Queens June Guards of Welsh Cavalry Regiment. And that would have been in the sort of early, early 70s sort of thing, you know. Uh, they did light armor, but I liked the idea that they had something which was very, very mechanical, you know, real proper machinery type thing. But they were frontline soldiers as opposed to being in the Remy or somewhere else. It was more of a support arm sort of thing. But when I joined, I wanted to join an armored unit that recruited from my area, the Southwest. So I joined the Third World Tank Regiment and they were equipped with, at that particular time, chieftain battle tanks, chieftain battle tank, quite a large bit of kit. You're talking about 60-odd tons in weight, somewhere in the region of 35 feet in length, about 12 foot high and so on, all right? By cold war standards at the time, very modern bit of kit. We looked back on it now, saying, not quite so. So in terms of what's it like to be in a tank, well, first of all, you've got to consider the crew. So you've got a driver who sits centrally at the front, all right, in the bottom half, and then the turret crew, being the gunner, the loader who also does the signals, and the commander all sit up in the turret. So you've got to separate the two halves out because when the vehicle is moving, it will go whichever way it needs to go to get from A to B, but the turret crew will at the same time say, well, we've got arcs from over there to over there. So the two bits sort of operate independently, all right? So the driver is effectively like the Lancaster bomber tail gunner. You can't see him, and he's just at the end of the intercom, all right? And all this is thundering along. Now, the idea of a tank just to sort of break away from what it's like on the inside, because people see things on TV about tanks sort of stuck in the field just slowly shelling villages and stuff like that. But that's not the idea, all right? A tank works as part of a team, and the best way of thinking about it is a tank is like a rugby player, all right? It's quite a big, give it a kick, and there's a lot of strength and energy there, all right? But a rugby player is part of a team. And if you can imagine a rugby team going around town on a Friday night, and they find a good pub, get in amongst it all, trash the place, all right? And then they pull out of it, all right? They go across town and they can find another pub, and they're going to trash that instead, all right? And they pull out that and go somewhere else. So you're talking formations of armor, highly mobile, all linked by good communications, good tactics, good navigational skills, no satnav in those days, all right? Acting as a cohesive unit who literally deliver the punch to the enemy. So you've got a 120-mil rifle barrel, as it was in those days. You can either fire a high-exposure squash head at them, all right? You've got two machine guns on there, 762 GPMGs, all right? But we've also got a nature ammunition called APDS or Armored Pissing Disguiding Sabot, all right? Now, an APDS round works on kinetic energy, just like a standard bullet out of a rifle, all right? But an APDS round, the middle bit is about that diameter by about that long. It's got a casing around it to make up the 120-millimeter barrel. That flies down the barrel, and I think it's about 1,300 and something meters a second from memory. The casing falls off, and then you get this round bit by that long. Flying through the air made of tungsten, all right, the hell of a weight to it at 1,300 meters a second, and it will literally knock the turret off the enemy vehicle the whole lot, all right? It will just take it clean off, all right? Or if sufficient resistance to the ammunition, it will literally punch a hole through the front of the tank that's just hit, pass through the driver, through the turret, through the engine, through the gearbox, and back out the other side again. That's a disruption, you know? But that's what a tank does. It's taking that, using mobility and good communication, good tactics, all right, as a team to go and start punching things on the battlefield as a group. It's an awesome, awesome bit of kit. Where do you sleep when you're tank crew? Never underneath it. Lots of stories dating back years ago about sleeping on the tanks. No one does, all right, because if it sinks overnight, you're stuck. So it's all doing a tactical situation, Chris, really. Quite often, you just sleep on top of the turret or you sleep on the engine decks with it. They're nice and warm. That said, they go cold within an hour. And of course, it's all hard steel. It's not really good for a good night's sleep. So sleep on the ground. So tank crews, like in an old issue, with bivvy banks, Gore-Tex, and you literally sleep rough, all right? So it's not always as comfortable as people might think. Trying to sleep inside a tank is actually nightmare than when you tried to sleep inside a car before. So you just sleep outside and you just take the weather that goes with it and bearing in mind that we used to do all our exercises in northern Germany in February, you were just sleeping out on the ground in a sleeping bag and a bivvy bag in minus 10, minus 15, you know? But we were young and that's where you did it. So if you could, you slept on the back for a warm night or a warm couple of hours, but generally speaking, you're on the deck, you know? How cramped are they, Nick? I didn't think they were, really. I suppose something might surprise you. The driver, for example, sitting essentially at the front with his head out of the top sort of thing, without getting chopped off by the turret, but you could actually drop the whole thing down and recline. There's enough room in there to move around like that. It's fine, you can reach left and right all the stuff that you got stored in there. When you get into the turret, though, the commander would sit on the right-hand side as you would be stood on the tank. So the same as the right-hand side of a car. Okay? All right, lots of room. All right, head out of the top of your knee tube, close down, lots of sights, lots of vision. But the gunner sits between his legs. All right, the gunner's head is actually between the commander's knees. All right? And then you've got the gunner's got the breach on his left-hand side as well. So as you're travelling around cross-country and the gun stabilised, the breach is effectively moving up and down next to the gunner. So the gunner actually hasn't got him off the roof of the room. He's got a sight just there. And then sort of when you want to challenge a one and challenge a two, you've got sort of thermal imagery screens and stuff like that. He can't do much. All right, he's actually quite cramped in there. And the gunner's just spent eight hours a day, you know, when you're in and out on maneuvers and stuff like inside there. You know, they get in in the morning, first thing in the morning when it's still dark. All right? And then they potentially wouldn't get out until guess what? It was dark, you know. On the other side of the turret, you've got the loader who loads all the ammunition for the main armament. All right? He does the infantry-mounted machine guns, 7.62 GPMG, does all the signals and radio stuff. He's got more room. All right? He's got a whole half of the turret for himself effectively. But when you're firing, that breach is 35.5 inches backwards. All right? You can't go behind there, obviously. Also, when the turret's going round and round, all right, the loader sits on the upper half of the turret. So he goes round and round with it. The turret floor down at the bottom, if he stands up, that goes round and round. But all the bits in between don't. All right? So on the loader's side, you've got bits of it that go round and bits of it that don't. So you've got this going on all the time. So if you put your hands and your legs in the wrong place, you're going to lose something. And people did every now and again. I mean, you know, got an arm caught or something like that. And when the commander pressed the button on the radio to sort of, you know, send out the call, you could hear the screaming in the background. 25, 30 tons of turret does not stop from, you know, doesn't stop any man whatsoever. All right? So don't remember hearing any horrific injuries, not really, which is testament to the bloaters of those, but it's big machinery stuff, Chris. And if you get in the way of it, it hurts, mate. It really hurts, you know. I'm claustrophobic. I'm dizzy and I'm terrified. You're not selling this to me, mate. You'd be fine. You'd be fine, you know. The other thing is, especially for the loader, all right, when you're going cross-country and closed down, all right, so you've got all the hatches back and shut, sort of thing, you know. The loader can't really see out that much to be perfectly honest. I mean, you're literally hanging on to handles on the turret roof like that. So things crashing around. And you've got the breach going up and down like this and you try not to get the throne over the breach because if that goes like that, it goes to the roof and your head's in the way. Well, that's going to be curtains as well. So, yeah, very aggressive environment in there. But when you start loading main arm and ammunition up there and that gun starts going up, there is nothing like it, all right. And you know that what you're training for is the kill at the other end, all right. Bang. Right, 120 millimetres right down the bloody barrel. All right, and start knocking people out. It's mega, you know, proper, proper stuff. What's the potential then for actual combat? Right now, not so much, although I'd say with Ukraine on the boil at the moment, all right, that could all go in all sorts of directions, all right. But if you take Ukraine out of the equation, at the moment on a Challenger 2, as a British Army now have, not so much actually on the Challenger, unless you're going to reroll them, going to do something else. My area was very much back in the Cold War. So I was sort of 1980s right through to 2000. So certainly 1980s saw that big standoff in what was West Germany and East Germany and the Warsaw Pact. And that, if that had kicked off, that would have been ferocious. That would have been absolutely ferocious. And that's what the whole thing was about, and that's why the British Army were in Germany at that time. That would have kicked off big style, all right. So for people who aren't overly familiar with the Cold War, it's worth looking at, because that was what the building was all about, and some fussing story from that period. That would have been proper tank on tank. Yes, I'm just picturing the lie of the landscape because now the British Army is all orientated towards this future soldier initiative. So it looks like defending the Suez Canal from rebels in African rebels basically. And of course, that's why it's all going towards being highly mobile and technological. Yeah, what the was criticism is, I mean the Cold War, because everyone just, two sides just sat facing each other. All right. Ultimate superpower stuff. So Americans and the Russians of course. And you could almost say that, despite the fact it was potentially massive, but at the same time, there was more peace in the world then, because effectively the Americans controlled one half of the world, and the Russians controlled the other half. Okay. So even if a small country in Africa somewhere started kicking off, there was so heavily influenced by the Russians or the Americans, who just picked the phone up and said, just shut up because you're going to start something off. All right. So the whole thing was just bolted down there and then. So incredibly despite all this nuclear missiles and all the rest of the sort of stuff that was all stacked up on both sides, all facing each other underneath all that was actually relatively calm right across the world, because everything was just bolted down. What you've got now, the Berlin Wall came down and everything sort of fragmented and China's sort of started becoming very big and so on. But no one's got massive control of all these countries anymore. They've all fractured and all gone their own way. So they're all kicking off with all these minor different insurgency operations. Now there was a certain equation I came across at one stage and it's something along the lines of for every month that a situation lasts for, can take a year to then go and sort out. All right. I remember a big British Army defense review sort of back in sort of late 2000 and looking at just that issue. So if you want to, if you want some of these days to be nailed down pretty quickly, you've got to be a real rack quickly before it takes foot. All right. Now I know we've gone through Afghanistan and Iraq and they both took a horrendous amount of years to sort out and I'm not convinced we ever really sorted it out to be honest. But if you look at all this other minor stuff that goes around the world, if you can get someone there quick and you can nail it down quick, then it'll stop it from becoming a big long protracted war which nobody wants at all. Yes. And you've done private security work, Nick, in the Middle East. Absolutely, indeed. That was unique in its own right as well, Chris, because that was all to do with having left the Army in 2002, took a year out to wander across West Africa and Androva. And at that stage, it sort of coincided with Gulf War II and the aftermath of Gulf War II. And what actually happened was the Americans or the Allies, but everyone else hadn't really put a plan in place for what happened after the war. Now, right at that stage was 30 years behind. Now, it wasn't just 30 years behind in technology, but it was 30 years behind in education. It was 30 years behind in infrastructure and how the electricity was generated. Social security systems, banking, business and all that, it was all way, way, way behind. So what the Americans had to do was then start bringing in private companies who were experts in social welfare and banking and business and all that sort of stuff to come and start rebuilding Iraq to make it a modern-day country. And they in turn needed security to get them from A to B and around because the American military and all the other military organizations weren't there for that reason. They didn't have the manpower either. There's no way that they could cope with that amount of work. So what was really a very small security industry at that stage? Suddenly grew very rapidly overnight from about really late 2003 onwards. I mean, when you get 2003 to 2004, it started going like that. So a lot of new companies started. A lot of existing companies got very big, very quick. I was kicking my heels at that stage. I think a year in Africa was enough. So I decided to come home, didn't have a job, let's go and use some soldiering skills, put on an adventure anyway. And by hook or by crook, I managed to get myself onto a contract in central Baghdad. Now, the company we were looking after, they wanted to go out into central Baghdad every day by Friday effectively to do a lot of banking business restructuring. The approach that we took was rather than go out in quite obvious to see armored vehicles, jeeps, four by four, that sort of stuff. We took an opposite approach. We grew beds, we dressed down, we got into BMWs, we hung things off the mirrors, we put fur across your dashboard because that's what everyone else did. We looked at what everyone else looked like and we tried to look like them. Now, I'm not saying that we wouldn't call it covert and there's no way on earth that a person like me is ever going to look like somebody from the Middle East. But the whole idea was by softening the way that you looked, was it took a second glance to see you. So we used to go out with two cars, with two clients, two guys in the front, two guys in the rear car, two clients in there and we just melt through Baghdad in a very fluid, easy sort of way and blend into the traffic and we just sink into the background and that's how we got from A to B. So highly vulnerable because we were only four guys at the end of the day, armed with an M4 assault rifle each with a Glock pistol. Cars for a long time weren't even armed with either. We were just four guys in Baghdad traffic with two clients and we stayed that way for a long time. It was good, it was good actually. So tell us some hair-raising moments and don't spare the horses. Yeah, certainly. They're sad because the hair-raising moments by being hair-raising moments tend to be very, very saddening and tragic cases and they were. There's no such thing as a free lunch press. You go out there owning that sort of money. Someone pays somewhere. One incident I was involved in, it was the Biap Road. It stood for Baghdad International Airport Road and it was about, from memory, about 10Ks or dual carriageway and the Biap Road connected the international zone where the Americans, the Brits and everyone else lived connecting it out to Baghdad International Airport. When you left the green zone, the international zone, that bit of dual carriageway just became free for all and the insurgents decided to put a bullet in but they made it known that they were going to turn that place into the most dangerous bit of road in the world, which they did. So you've got all the usual Baghdad traffic down there, all the people that live in those areas, they're all going up and down the dual carriageway and you'd expect anywhere else in the world and we were in the middle of it. And on one occasion, we came out of the International Airport. We were getting close to the international zone. We were in 4x4s at that time, which fortunately were armoured, very, very fortunately actually. The lead car was about 100 yards ahead of us. I was the Team 2 IC, sat in the passenger seat in the right-hand seat and the chat was with a driver, a fellow called Pat, ex-paratrooper, said, Nick, there's a car on the inside lane and it's got the windows open, and it's February, it's a bit cold. So bit of a combat indicator. So as we overtook it, we looked, and I looked inside the car and there's nothing untoward and I said, it seems fine, Pat, so we carried on. And then as we got to a junction in the dual carriageway, where we went that way to the left and over the top into the International Zone, the road also branched off and went south towards Basil Room, places like that. And at that moment, the whole world just went mad, all right? Now, you know when you're driving in your car and the stone hits the windscreen, that sharp crack you get when a pebble hits so it hit the windscreen of your car. If you think about something, you zoned out somewhere else, it actually can quite frightening. It's just the shock and the noise, the impact. Well, if you times that amount of volume by 10 and then times that by 28 rounds from a classical AK47, that's what it's like, all right? So effectively, the car that we looked at had had someone in the back seat. They suddenly accelerated down the inside lane past us because they could make their getaway to go south. And they just loosed off the whole magazine from an AK47 out of Bethlehem's car straight into the side of our car, fortunately being armoured, all right? I'll be honest, Chris, I mean, the whole just went noisy, all right? And I found myself in the passenger footwell, all right? You just open your eyes and you think, crikey, what the hell's going on? And sort of get back up again and shake yourself out because you're in instant reaction anywhere in the world. It's a duck, all right? By that stage, the car had gone, but we'd now taken so many rounds in the car that there are two flat tyres. The engine management system had been taken out because the bonnet is not armoured, of course. And we rolled to a halt, all right? We were shouting at Pat, saying, watch the lamp posts, watch the lamp posts, because it was slowing down from about 80 kph. We were heading towards this lamp post in central reservation, and the car wasn't easy to control because the power steering's gone, tyres are flat and so on. So we managed to miss this lamp post and we pulled over and got into amongst the scrub in the centre of the dual-carriage line. The problem was then, though, that the buy-up road was also notorious for suicide car bombs. So the insurgency would literally have people in cars driving up and down the buy-up road in a fully loaded suicide bomb car ready to go, just looking for a target. And then all of a sudden, we'd gone from having survived 28 rounds, because I can do the bullet holes later, 28 rounds from a Kalashnikov AK-47 that almost plumbed blank range to being a sitting target for a suicide car bomber. All right? And there's really not an awful lot we could do, either. So we've actually sort of, we couldn't even get hold of the other team members on the radio because they just cracked on and just went out of radio range. It wasn't great for Comjo anyway. So we were bomb-boost out of the car and we're now thinking, well, we need to get back to the green zone and we're now a sitting duck for a suicide car bomb. So we just got away with one attack and we're now waiting for the next, you know? I've still got the pictures. I've still got one of the bullets that got in. So armour cars are not impregnable by any standard. All right? It was one of the rounds that got in was a proper armour piercing, 7.62 rounds. Tiny cylinder of whatever it might be in tungsten or something on the inside. And actually got in through a door jam, did a complete couple of loops around the inside of the car took all the roof lining out and all the rest of it left the inside of the car shredded. And I've still got it. Just one of those mementos of one of the things that happened in Baghdad, you know? That's one. That's one. I can relate to a couple more if you like. Yeah. Did you lose anyone? Not on that occasion. Not on that occasion, Chris. But it wasn't long after that, actually. We're on the same rotation. We used to go into country for about eight weeks at times. We're still on that same rotation. And the car in front is a fella called Johnny Doleman, ex-power trooper, brilliant bloke. And he remains this day to be just such an inspiration to me. A fella called Nick Pease, ex-French foreign legion, chap from Hamel Hempstead. Tracy Couchin and John Erdley, who were the two clients from the company we looked after, lovely, lovely people. Again, we've been to the airport and we're on the way back. And when we came out of the airport, we were with an awful lot of security teams because everyone had gone to the airport to pick up all the people off the flight. And by virtue of that, you've got all these people all now trying to leave the airport or trying to get into the international zone. So we made the decision was let's get to the front of the pack so we can try and break away so we don't become part of that center of mass. We don't want to be part of that big group which makes a big, easy target. That's the psychology behind it, which I think in hindsight was still a very reasonable shape, to be honest. We got backed up behind some American Humvees and in those days, they would shoot at you if you got too close because they had problems with suicide car bombs as well. They didn't always recognize as Chrissie there. We're just four guys sacking two BMW cars at the end of the day, in fact, it was two four by fours. But we were in civilian vehicles, all right? So everyone was backed up behind these American Humvees and eventually they peeled off and then we said, right, let's go. So off down the Byatt Road towards the international zone. Because of the earlier incident, I've just recounted about the drive-by shooting. I happened to be looking over my shoulder like that because of the slip road that had gone off south to Basra. And as I've done that, there was a bang like when you stick a pin into a balloon. All right, that's what explosion sounds like when you're really, really close for anybody who's not and fortunately hasn't done it. But it's like a pin going into a balloon right next to your ear. All right, it's such a sharp crack. As I look forward, everything was black. And I just thought, crikey, it's us. And why doesn't it hurt? Because all the indications are there, it's us. And all of a sudden this cloud just disappeared like that and it was literally like driving out of a bank of fog and it was just open road. And I was looking in front of me going, crikey, where's John and Nick gone? And then it dawned. It was them that had got hit by the bomb. And what it was, there were two cars that had come the other way at the dual carriageway. The wrong way against traffic, which was completely normal in those days, right? Because traffic was just long as they did. That forced them to the outside lane to take, to avoid these cars coming this way, which would effectively nothing to do with it, to be honest. But as they went into the outside lane, all right, there's a suicide car bomb sat in the center reservation. All right, and the moment they went past, boom, and off it went. Pat, who I'm still, I'm still with and we're still very good mates now as well. Pat actually saw a six ton armored Land Cruiser physically leave the road, literally get blown into the air with doors coming open and that sort of stuff over the side of the flyover, all right? And then land on its roof in flames down the ground. So we stopped. All the traffic behind us just came screaming to a halt and turned around and just disappeared, which left Pat and I effectively in this car with all the shrapnel and all the rest of the engine block from the car bomb had gone past us as well. We just, you know, quick, very quick contact with the Porsche right in there. And the shock of the moment is your friends and we're looking over the flyover of this Land Cruiser on its roof in flames and the ammunition in John and Nick's pouches was all just self detonating through the heat, you know? And there's just, I mean, there's no way that anyone's going to get out of it and just landing upside down on its roof would have killed them anyway because the blast would have killed them first. The landing upside down on its roof would have double killed them plus everything else, you know? I sort of hope the families aren't watching this, by the way. But yeah, it was tragic, really, really, really tragic as it would be to watch your friends killed that way, especially knowing for anybody who might have ever known Johnny Dolman, fighting man through and through. If he had his choice, it wouldn't have been to die that way. Fighting somebody, you know, face to face, rifle for rifle in a proper contact, not just being blown up, you know? How do you recover, then, the vehicle if you're a private company? The American military do come to your aid, and they did, you know? I mean, we'd send a contact report that about 10 minutes and some of them didn't come out to the international zones. It wasn't that far away. They were at 2Ks and they assorted us back in again. After that, the American military do get on board and recover it all back. What happens after that? Well, there's a vehicle scrap, all right? But then you've got to go through all of the... Like anybody dying in any country affected. The whole thing went back to the Coroner's Court back here in the UK. Someone, some British people and Americans as well, actually, was killed and therefore you've got to go through the formal legal process of establishing the cause of death. It's all right, because it's a legal requirement to do so, even though it's quite obvious. You know, I mean, to make it doubly sad, Tracy perhaps she didn't need to go to the airport that day, but she wanted to sort out some flight tickets for some of her office staff who were due to go back and leave. John Erdley, Scotsman, really nice guy. He'd been out of the country for six months away doing, I'm not sure, person of his family or something like that. This was his first day back and that was the first journey back. And he was killed. Yeah. Yeah. That's the flip side, Chris. There's no such thing as a free lunch and that definitely wasn't. Yes. Nick, tell us... Can you tell us a bit about the anti-poaching stuff, your experience of that? Yes, yeah. That was whilst I was in the British Army actually and it wasn't a British Army gig either, to be quite clear that he was watching. I'd met a young officer who I still know now, actually, Wayne. He came from Malawi. His father, there was a businessman out there, ran the JMB Distillery Care for the Rare program as it was then. It doesn't exist anymore. And what they'd done is organised to get, or to re-establish Black Rhino into Malawi. So Luwande National Park, which is about three hours on a bland tire for anybody who might know Malawi a little bit, they put a compound in there. What's that compound? A fence line of about 16 kilometres circumference inside the National Park. And with a lot of liaison with South Africa National Parks and Acruja, they got two Black Rhino, male and female, and inserted them into this rhino compound to try and establish new breeding herd, which they successfully did. Matt Hanning, a friend of mine, and I, we'd spoken to this officer. He said, look, if you want, you can go out. We'd love to, because I'm always on the Red Africa. So on the strength of a fax and a letter, there's no emails with an IP, not that I had anyway. We both packed a rucksack each, headed for Gatwick, all right. And on Saturday morning, we just left Gatwick for a country we'd never been to, with a rucksack and a passport and some cash. And when we got to Malawi, we were collected at a long week, all right, taken about four hours south to bland tire, met some people for a bit of a welcome, how do you do? Got some provisions, taken out into the National Park on the Monday, taken a small campsite, which consisted of what you and I would know, two 9x9 tents or something similar, two campcots, there's a little catering tent facility thing there, a gas cooker and a gas bottle. Dennis said to us, look guys, a guy will come across the river every morning, all right, he'll sweep away the leaves to keep the stakes away and he'll empty the water pots up for you. If you could go and find the fence line, because we got some Malawians who were cutting all the elephant grass down to stop at the electric fence shorting out, if you can gee them along and just supervise, and that would be great. Someone will be out to visit you at some stage in the next two days, got to go because it's getting dark, and he went. So effectively on a Saturday morning, we were at Gatwick with a rucksack, and by Monday afternoon, we were stood next to River Sheary in the middle of a National Park in Malawi, and there was no one else there, so I think it was all girls and hippo and stuff like that, is it? So we got to know to these Malawian game scouts who had to go into the compound, this large area every day, and trapped these two rhino down. So we went in there with them, said we'd like to see two rhino. Now the elephant grass is very long, it's about seven, eight feet high for anybody who's not a picture elephant grass. You just literally walk around in very tall grass. And first occasion, they got bitten by a tetsy flies, spent an hour and they didn't find anything. So we came back out, went back in the day later. There were five of us all together. I was at the back of the queue and I was also following one behind the other in the tall elephant grass and the whole queue came to a halt and I was sort of looking over the top trying to see what was going on. And then all of a sudden everyone just bombed us. All right and there's this snorting noise like a like a racehorse at full gallop. I was just bloody rhino. I was heading straight in our direction. Now rhinos haven't got any good eyesight. They're really, really good hearing. A good sense of smell. All right, this rhino zoomed in on the group of us. They'd all scattered and we just left me stood there at the back and given what the bloody rhino. All right, so I just started ran as well. All right, and I think with everyone disappearing in different directions, the rhino didn't know what to do. All right, and he just came running to a halt. We got chased twice that day by the same rhino. And for anybody who's not lived, all right, get chased by a rhino. All right, and you'll soon appreciate your life and you know how quickly a human being can bloody move as well. But in amongst all that, there was the anti-poaching against the rhino. But there was the anti-poaching that went on in the Greater National Park. And that was organised by the anti-poaching by a fellow called Mike. He was a South African army officer retired. The poaching in the Lewandine National Park wasn't too bad. It wasn't after the big game. It was actually more like villagers who would just have to meet to look after themselves. So sometimes when you hear about poaching, you've got to take a very objective view as to why people are doing it. And you could sort of understand it. That said, the game scouts would go out there. They'd still shoot at them. They had a 50 of a soul life. You know, the bullets would go flying around. We went on a couple of patrols actually, all right, with these guys. And yeah, things kicked off and the ammunition was flying through the grass. It was quite air racing actually. But that's when you look at the big poaching that goes on Africa. There's a lot of Chinese back and there's some big money in there and stuff like that. I mean, that's wicked, wicked, wicked evil. That's for money. That's people who are paying a lot of money because they want powder rhino horn or something bizarre like that. That's not people that are looking after the feed themselves, Chris. That is proper international poaching. I've got no time for it. I've got no time for it whatsoever. And I could take part in that. I bloody well would do. I really, really would. But fascinating place, all right, brilliant place. I went back again actually and Matt was supposed to go and backed out at the last minute. So I ended up ultimately sleeping in this natural park on my own. All right. And it's the most oddest thing in the world to A, to have to sleep on your own because most of us sleep with that. We've got in the military, there were mates or something like that at home or whatever. You know, we don't tend to sleep on our own, but to sleep on your own, not in a national park full of weapons and snakes and all sorts of other stuff. All right. So you don't sleep to be honest. All right. It's a very strategy reasons. I spoke about 10 days out there, second time round, chasing these rhino around while they were getting darted and things cuts in the rear so they could be identified through through binoculars by the by the staff. Brilliant, brilliant place. Malawi, lovely country for anyone who's not been to Africa before. Go to the east or southern Africa. That's when all the game is, it's fascinating and it's brilliant, but the whole lot is blighted by poaching and the money that's involved with it. Yes. I once went on safari and Mozambique and the fighters in the Civil War had eaten everything. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, they do. That's why if you've got a West Africa, if anybody ever heads up, there's nine of them all there. It's all gone. I think Central Africa, Central African Republic, place like that, Congo, what are you supposed to call Zaire, Democratic Republic of Congo, lot of wildlife, Uganda and things like that, but not in the West. A lot of it has suddenly gone. It's not the massive big game herds that it once have been. I suppose we got to be thankful that people had the foresight to start up with big game parks, the big national parks and stuff like that. Yeah, I grew up on Tarzan and it was God. Even as kids, you believe that all those animals existed in that massive quantity, herds of wildebeest and zebras and crocodiles everywhere, but it really is quite limited in reality. Yeah. Another of the rhino things, that second trip where they wanted to literally cut chunks out of the rhino's ears, big V-shaped notches in the ears so they could see with the binoculars. Very, very interesting thing to get involved in actually, because what they did, they got, it's an alloy, a gazelle from South Africa National Parks with a vet. They'd go and track down the rhino as you can in a helicopter. Follow the rhino, because the rhino would then go on the run with the noise of the helicopter. I'd say they'd track the rhino and as the whole situation stabilised a little bit, then the vet bleeding out of the helicopter would shoot the rhino with the tranquiliser. It would take an amount of time for the tranquiliser to take effect, but eventually the rhino would slow down and then just keel over. Now that's the equivalent of doing a 400-metre race and then just falling over at the end of it. You've still got all that latent heat in your body, but you're not moving anymore to get rid of the heat and the rhino can very quickly overheat and die because it's metabolism and so I can't get rid of all that heat because it's just become unconscious at the, down on the ground. So what we had to do was then run through the bush, we got some land roads, we had to run through the bush with the 25-litre cans of water and then the helicopter would land, the vet would do the thing in the ears and we would then literally be pouring water over this hot rhino, which is known as a big steaming lump of rhino, emptying water all over it to cool it down, to keep it cool while the vet was doing his job. And then the last thing we'd do, he would then give it an injection to avoid the effect of the anaesthetic. We'd all hightail it pretty quick. The rhino would then sort of get up and shake it around, like what was that one about, and then go thumbing off through the bush. But it was brilliant to be involved in. A couple of that many people have actually been ended up laid flat out over the top of a damp hot steaming rhino. But it was pretty good, pretty good. Get involved for the people who ever thought so, get in touch with somebody, get involved, go and do it. Pay your own airfare, get your own cash out, get involved if you can. It's the best thing you'll ever do. Yes, whenever I'm in Africa, someone always tends to fall in the river. And then I have to dive in, swim and rescue them. And I usually get attacked by a crocodile. So luckily, I carry a knife and I stab the crocodile several times, rescue the person. And hang on, that's Tarzan, isn't it? I want to say awkward. Those crocodiles that we used to see in the river Shiri every day, they were huge. I mean, I know people think the crocodiles are big anyway, because they are. But they were massive. I mean, that river was so full of fish, because their state was quite really fish on a day-by-day basis. So full of fish. I mean, those crocodiles must have been, I'm guessing about three feet in diameter. Absolutely massive, mate. You know, but then of course you've got the hippo. A lot of people don't really take into account hippo. They cause a lot of fatalities in Africa. I mean, in terms of being killed in Africa, road traffic accident or malaria from mosquito, number one and two effectively, slain by quite low down, being eaten by lions even lower. But being attacked by hippo is quite a common thing. They are very, very big animals. Despite being vegetarian, they are incredibly ferocious, especially when you get two males fighting or a female looking out for its calf. And bearing in mind, they spend all the time in the water. You might not even see the calf or be aware of the things going on. If you're on the water on a boat and there's hippo around it, it could be a potentially very bad place to be. They are very, very, very ferocious indeed actually. And everyone gets lulled into a false sense of security if they're our generation because we grew up on rainbow, didn't we? Yes, yeah. George there was pretty harmless. Yeah, you see the real thing. You watch a couple of bulls fighting and you cannot imagine the amount of energy that's involved in that. They're both a man and a half, mate. When I worked in Mozambique in the centre of Nicala, which was the nearest town to where we were in the bush, it was a fenced, well, like a fenced cage about half the size of a squash court, you could say. And in it was an enormous crocodile. It had been there since the Portuguese left because these things grow, live quite some years from what I understand. And I'm guessing what would have happened is back in the days of colonialism, this would have been a feature in the centre of town, this, you know, a swimming pool with a baby crocodile in it or a juvenile crocodile. And of course fast forward all these years, the thing is still there. And it's surrounded not just by just covered in junk like a rubbish tit, but everyone would throw cats and dogs over the fence for this thing to throw the stray cats and dogs over. Yeah, why? That's not bad. Yeah. Well, that's the sort of job that someone like Steve Irwin would have gone and rescued it, wouldn't he? Absolutely, indeed. These kind of rescue programs. Yeah. I'll tell you a bit about crocodiles in Malawi, and it wasn't just Malawi, but the local people there, they're incredibly superstitious, very much so. And even sort of, you know, quite modern day educated people still have this superstition thing going on in the background. We all do. I mean, Kaki, who likes Friday the 13th, for example, you know, I'm supposed to be first, more type of educated people and stuff, you know. But they're very influenced by a lot of these superstitions. And a lot of Africans believe that crocodiles don't eat people. That was certainly belief in Malawi amongst an awful lot of people, because you'd see villages up to their waist in water at the side of the river fishing with all these crocodiles going past. It's the most bizarre thing to go and see. So I've made inquiries, what's this all about? Because, you know, we've all seen David Attenborough movies with huge crocodiles dragging all sorts of very large animals under the water and things like that. And the answer is, yeah, crocodiles don't eat people. Witches turn themselves to look like crocodiles and they eat people. And there's nothing you can do about it. It's a very fatalistic approach, which is sort of a bit of a military approach in some respect, because we have quite fatalistic manner of stuff. But they genuinely believe, all right, there was a normal everyday crocodile who wouldn't touch them. Oddly enough, quite often, they didn't either. All right, but if they did get eaten or someone did get eaten, there's nothing that could have been done about it, because it was a witch. And I just do not, that was the belief, all right. And on one occasion, we, as there was a poacher, he wasn't doing anything much, he'd been poaching for sort of, you know, small bits and pieces, but he had a dugout canoe. So Mike said to Matt and I, can you take the boat, we had a little outboard, sort of an inboard motor boat, which we've managed to get going. Can you take a couple of the game scouts and the poacher and an axe and get this guy to go and smash up his own boat so he can't continue poaching. So off we disappeared up the river sheer, he hustled the hippo and all the rest of it. And we got to this big reed bed next to the side of the river. So the river bank was actually 100 yards away, but then I had all these floating reeds everywhere. So we beached this this boat on these, on these floating reeds. And we got out and the two game scouts along this poacher, they went through the reeds for about, I don't know, about 10 yards or then walked into the water again, and they now waste deep, chest deep in water with these AR15 rifles above their heads in this poacher with an axe. So I said, right, guys, hang on, stop, stop, stop. You know, what are you doing? And they said, well, we're going to take this guy to chop his boat up. I said, yeah, but using the water, you're up to your waist, up to your chest, you know, there's crocodiles everywhere. They said, no, no, no, this is not a problem, Mr. Nick, you know, we do this all the time and I'm thinking, but in all the movies I see, people get eaten left, right and center by crocodiles, certainly would not be walking around the water. So they said, all right, Mr. Nick, we'll, we understand your concerns, so we'll do you a favor. And they fitted their bayonets to the rifles. And there you go. All right. And they went, I thought I'm having none of that. I'm just going to stay here on top of these reeds. That even that was floating on water with Matt. We just stayed there and we just waited. We watched them from the distance, hacking this boat up with an axe, you know, and then sinking it. And they let the poetry go and they came back and we all got the boat and went. So, you know, very different way of thinking, Chris. Yeah. So which doctors get taken very seriously in? Yeah, it's genuine. It's genuine, you know. But, you know, with people who want to smile and stuff like that, but, you know, you go back to what I was saying just about Friday the 13th and stuff like that. We've, we're all of us, got some sort of superstition going on somewhere. Look at the sailors, for example, Matlos, you know, there's always a superstition going on somewhere and they're just more influenced by it than we are at all. Yes, we can draw comparisons. We still live in a society that believes you, you catch the bogeyman from other people when... Yeah. That's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We could go on a better stop there. Can we talk about cars that can go 200 miles an hour? Yeah, absolutely, indeed. All right. You've got to fast-forward the clock a week, actually. I'll give you the background to it. 2015 decided to extract out of the Middle East. I pulled the plug, came back to Norfolk where I live now. Got a job. It was all right. Didn't really suit me, gave it up because I believe if you're not enjoying something, just kick it into touch and walk away from it. So I did. And then a friend of mine, all right, said, phoned me up. He said, I've got two tickets to the Tank Museum and bought it. You're an ex-Tanky. Could you show me around? I'd like to look around. There was someone who knows what we're talking about. All right, a bit tongue-in-cheek. I'm not convinced I was that bloke. But anyway, so we disappeared off down the Tank Museum in Dorset. We also got into in the camp down there with some of my friends of mine, got into a challenge or two. Basically, entertaining for a day and actually talking about armor, armor warfare and stuff like that. And he then went, we both went back to our separate ways and he went back to work. And his boss, when he got to work, because he used to do all these factory tours, showing people around the factory. His boss said, look, you're getting busy. We need someone else to come and help you show all these VIPs around the factory. And he said, can you think of anybody? He said, actually, I've just been shown around the Tank Museum in Bovanton by this friend of mine. All right. And he's really good. I don't know if my people are saying that, but really good time down there. All right, I would like to recommend him for the job. All right, you can talk about tanks, you can talk about cars, you can get a factory. So I got pulled in for an interview. So I went down there with a proper suit on and looking very smart and things like that. I got interviewed by Mel and subsequently got the job, you see. So along with Steve, this former friend of mine, we were then, all right, until more recent times, what was called Senior Product Specialists for Aston Martin. All right. And it was just phenomenal. All right. And all this technical understanding of chief and challenger battle tanks of V12 engines, turbo chargers, David Brown gearboxes, suspension systems and all this sort of stuff, that formed the underpinning for taking people around the factory and explaining how you build a 200 mile an hour sports car and why it's built the way that it is. And the people that I met, Chris, was absolutely phenomenal. I can't name names, obviously, anyone expect me to. But I met the most phenomenal people. Some of them incredibly, incredibly wealthy members of royal families and things like that. Other people were just people who'd saved up all their life and I got one Aston Martin's. Believe me, there's a lot of people out there who've got more than one. All right. They've got three or four or five or six and some Lamborghinis and the rest of it. Okay. All of them, all right, to a man to a woman, the most enjoyable, phenomenal people, you see. Now, a car factory for anybody who hasn't been there. All right. I mean, you start off with a load of bits of extruder aluminum. All right. You bond them together with glue. All right. So like Lotus cars are, for example, Aston Martin's and some other smaller manufacturers are all held together by glue that's then put into an oven. All right. So you'd heat the whole up to 200 degrees C in an oven for that two hours. All right. And the whole lot is then set like concrete. All right. Then you put your body panels on. Then you paint the body panels, put that empty shell, painted empty shell onto an assembly line. It goes around the assembly line and collects all the different bits that it needs. Part of that assembly line sub-process is another bit called powertrains that build a go-kart and it literally, as you look at it, it's a go-kart. So you've got this big V12 engine at the front. Okay. All right. With the radiator pack and all that sort of stuff and the front wheels and the brakes and lots of other stuff. A thing down the middle called a torque tree, which is a casting about that round out of aluminum with a carbon fiber prop shaft down to the middle. Back in, you've got the gearbox and the differential. It's all to do with balance and what they call a low polar moment of inertia and stuff like that with all the rear suspension and the brakes. You've got the go-kart. All right. They get the go-kart that come around on a trolley. Now the car comes round on this assembly line like that and they lower it down on top and then do the bolt-up. All right. If I remember rightly submit my 18 bolts, I think, to bolt the whole up together, then all the rest of the systems and the car carries on being built. You see, meanwhile, the seats and the dashboard have all been built by more crafts people, girls on sewing machines, garage building seats, dashboards, leather from Bridge of Weir up in Renfrewshire up near Glasgow, for example. I mean, the badges, for example, beautiful enamel badges built by Vortons in Birmingham. They're a jewelry company up in Birmingham. Look them up some of these Vortons. All right. Proper enamel badges. You end up at the space of what would have been probably about 10 days from memories of all trickles this way around. From being a load of extruded bits in aluminium to a 200-mile-an-hour plus car. All right. To give you an idea about the 200-mile-an-hour bit, if anybody might be sliding this mathematical way of thinking, drag increases with speed exponentially. All right. So, north to 60 miles-an-hour, not much drag, really, although you try it when you drive. It's all you drive and I don't recommend it on a public road, by the way. All right. You can feel the force of the wind trying to keep the door closed. All right. Up to 150 miles-an-hour, all right. Aerodynamics, quite serious to the extent that when you get 150, most manufacturers stop there. The problem is the curve of the bonnet and the curve of the roof are the same shape as an aeroplane wing. And the farther you go, the more the car wants to lift off the road. So, it's going to be a hell of a lot of really serious, clever design. But you don't tend to notice, apart from the fact that the car will be very pretty. A lot of design work goes in there to making sure the car stays down on the ground. And when you get above 150, those aerodynamic forces and that want to lift off the road becomes incredibly serious. And just look at Audi at the moment 24 hours. Get someone looking up on YouTube. You'll see an Audi car lift off the road. It lost the aerodynamic force to keep it on the ground. All right. And it left the road. All right. We still got low polar moment of inertia. Won't go into it too much. But for example, a BBS Superleggera at 211 miles-an-hour has got the same amount of kinetic energy as a challenge of two battle tank at 35 miles-an-hour. That's how much energy is in that car. That's why you've got big brakes. That's why you've got to have good handling and stuff like that. It's serious. But I'll tell you what, it's good. It's really good. So I've got to drive a car once a month to keep your hand in. So it's to take a DBS or a Vantage or a DV-11 out for an afternoon, for an evening, go and visit some friends and have a beer and not in the car and drive back. And some of the gigs and the events that we got involved in was absolutely second to none. For memory in terms of some of the people that I showed around Chris, two spring to mind. One was a lady that was blind. How do you show someone around a car factory who was blind? And you really have to change your way of thinking. Especially when we talk normally, we talk about, can you see this? Let's go and have a look at that. And all of a sudden you realise you can't see this. You can't go and have a look at that. So we went around the factory for about two hours and got more involved in touch. We could feel the shapes of things and then got that. She had an incredible sense of smell and incredible sense of hearing. But she got lost very quickly because she's like wondering around the woods in the dark. I took my hat off to her. She stayed with it. Quite a remarkable woman. Another one I remember is a family with two small boys who were about 10 years of age. One under dying. I had a terminal illness. So what they were doing was collecting memories. So when the young lad did suddenly unfortunately die, which was going to happen, they had a whole pile of memories. That was probably one of the most humbling tours around that factory that I did. Someone who knew he was going to die. Young lad aged about 10 years of age. Surprising what rabbits you can pull out of hats and things that you can do to make sure that someone just goes away with that wow experience. Probably one of the best things I've done in my life working in that factory. I'm about to repeat the same thing with somebody else very soon. I can't go into that right now. Can you tell us what's the connection with the James Bond films? How did that come about? Yeah, absolutely. It goes back to from the year now. So Dr. No, if all the Bond affectionados Dr. No had come out, then we're going to into Goldfinger. Everyone remembers the song by Shirley Bassey. Eon Productions, Albert Broccoli had gone up. I believe they went to Jaguar. In fact, they went to Bentley first of all, as the story goes, and said, we're doing these movies about this guy and the original books by In Flemington. Bentley could be borrowed Bentley. So they said, well, what's his guy called this? He's called James Bond. By In Flemington, I've not heard of him. What does this guy James Bond do? And Albert Broccoli is a spy. Bentley went, well, I'm not sure about that. It's not the sort of underhand sort of thing that we want associated with Bentley cars. So actually we'd rather not know who can't have one. So this is how the story goes. So then he went to Albert Broccoli went to Jaguar. Jaguar at the time had an awful lot of very, very busy place trying to build enough cars to fulfill orders. And this was going to be a major distraction to them. And they didn't have a spare car anyway, because they were all custom order stuff. They said, no, absolutely no way. I've got time for that sort of stuff. Go have a chat with a fellow called David Brand. He's got a little company called Aston Martin. So they went to David Brand. David Brand Yorkshireman said, explain the whole story. So look, can we have one or two cars? I've been a Yorkshireman who wouldn't give away any of the three. So I'm not going to give you a car. He said, but I'll tell you, I'll loan you one or two. But you've got to give them back afterwards. And it actually was a very late model DB4, just before it became DB5 in 1963. So that was the beginning of how Aston Martin and James Bond got together. After that all becomes a bit history. There was an interim period of course where Eon decided to use other marks of car. But then if you go back to 2002, the launch of the vanquish, as it was then, Eon took Aston Martin back on side again. And the rest of the guys history. Wasn't it BMW in one of the films? Yeah, that was an interim period. But what actually happened was, if you think about it, Chris, when you're getting product placement in a movie, people want the latest, obviously, but they want it to be different from the last time. You can't have the same Sony Violaq top over and over again on the same Amiga watch or so on and so on. It's got to be different from the last time. And over those intermediate years, through the 80s, the shape of Aston Martin really didn't change significantly. So it would have been like the same car again and again. I mean, the one that cropped up was on, I think it was called To Live or To Let Die, the Timothy Dalton film where they used an Aston Martin vanity with the skis on it and the rocket on the back. Well, that shape of car remained like that for decades, which was when you started to get these other car manufacturers being invited but when the vanquish came out, bingo. They weren't going to use a DV7 actually, but Aston Martin meant, hang on a minute, we've got another car we've been working on. Come and have a look at some of this. So it was the vanquish that brought it all back together again. It's a very good relationship. I know the lady who was in charge of that, the relationship between the factory and Eon, both incredible, incredible brands out on the world stage, both got their most incredible history and such a fascinating history together. Brilliant company, Eon. I've not met any of them, but I know people have lovely, lovely people and then tied up with the marketing guys and all the rest back at Aston Martin as well. Very, very good relationship actually. Yeah, and I'm guessing now that we've given the company some exposure, I'll be claiming my free vehicle. Absolutely, indeed. It'd be nice, wouldn't it? It'd be absolutely nice. Some of the people who used to get a vehicle out again were a lot of Chris called influencers, bloggers for example, who had such a massive, massive, massive, massive audience that used to get given a car for a while. They had audiences in the millions and stuff like that. I can't always say it's successful. I don't know how many bloggers out there had audiences who wanted to afford an Aston Martin, but the theory is there effectively. Stunning place, brilliant British mark of motor cars, not the only one. Brilliant mark of motor car. Incredibly proud of my time there. What a machine or group of machines are fascinating, brilliant, brilliant place to have worked and loved it. Nick, on that note, can I just thank you massively for coming and sharing your stories? Of course, yes, yes. I've got a feeling we've got a few more in there. We can eke out of you at another point. Absolutely, indeed. Pleasure. I don't know if it's been like for all the audience, me sat here in this armchair at home sort of thing. I don't know whether I'm saying anything that's particularly interesting, maybe you're not, to be honest, but I've certainly enjoyed it. It's been a good time so far. Yes, I've enjoyed it and that's the main thing. Sorry, folks. Sorry. Chris, did that light hit the right note, did it? Yes, I'm just going to say goodbye to our wonderful friends at home. Yes, it did. It hit exactly the right note. It's all the reasons why I started a podcast, Nick, was to have these chats that you don't normally get sat behind a computer in your daily life. So thank you ever so much. Pleasure. And to everyone at home, if you could like and subscribe, that would be wonderful. Thank you for joining us again on Bought the T-Shirt podcast. Look after each other and we'll see you soon. Well, take care, Chris. Take care, everybody.