 And it's interesting that the outer meter is on my hand, but I'm in the Delta track going down to. I haven't got the time to check on the height, but mentally I'm reading off the height. Two and a half thousand feet, two thousand feet, 1500 feet, and I'm really getting close. I just got to stage where thousand feet, but I was so close. I can remember thinking, this is shit or bust. And I came over the top of him, skidded, and he looked at me with his biggest smile and I was like, bullet, bullet! And we were instantly just new by my expression, pulled reserve, I spun around, threw my pallet sheet, went back to the record, because recreated in the 60s, hit this record, looked down, and I thought, I'm in the trees, you know, and I just thought, it just seems unfair. That's a bummer. And to my surprise, the parachute opened and we were second halfway from impact. And Leo's wife was filming for the ground and all she could hear me was screaming, pull it. She turned away to the camera and burst into tears. She just thought, that's it, we're both in. Andy, how are you brother? I'm good mate, how are you? Yes, phenomenal. Absolutely delighted you can join us today on the Bought the T-Shirt podcast. For our friends at home, Andy is a former Royal Marines commando, like myself. And to say this gentleman has an absolutely adventure packed history, doing all of those boy's own things that some of us try and do a bit of it, but a lot of which we just aspire to. And I'm delighted you've come on the show mate, thank you. Thanks for asking me. So, I'm just going to start with a bit of video, Andy, bear with me. And this is you standing on a bridge. Here we go, let's have a look. You won't be able to see this, but our viewers at home will. Do you mind if I go mate? Brilliant. The funny thing about that, Clint, after you breathe a sigh of relief when your shoot opens, is the guy saying to the other guy, do you mind if I go mate? He's like, yeah, sure. I would have thought you'd be so sort of keyed up by that stage. No, no, no, I'm going, I'm going, I'm going, but it all looks very relaxed. It's something you mentioned you're used to. I mean, for me on that actual jump, that was after a 28 year layoff from base jumping, and I was just getting back into it. Wow, this, sorry, this jumped 28 years after you started? Yeah, I started base jumping when I was told it was going to be a dad. I just thought I had the responsibility to actually start base jumping. I always said once the kids grew up, I would get back into it. And eventually, as the kids were in the late 20s, I decided to get back into it. So I went to Croatia, met an old friend who was running a base school out there, 50 Cal, and he took me back to the course. Wow. Nothing's changed, still heart thumping moments. Yes, I bet. What happens if your drogue shoot, so for people at home, when you skydive, you chuck out a mini parachute, which then pulls out your, your main canopy? What would happen? And I mean, does that, does that mini drogue ever snap off? It shouldn't do, but with base jumping, there are no second chances. You haven't got the height for reserve. So the parachute fails to work correctly, start walking towards the bright light. Yeah, it's kind of, there's just no margin for error, is there, whatsoever? No, that's why it's heart thumping moments. God. Right, let's have a look at the next video. Let's get us back onto the desktop. We'll look at these and then we'll discuss your fascinating story. No problems. Now we've got you and a group of base jumpers hiking up to the top of a, what can only be described as a precipice. Um, that'd be a rental in this link. Right. We've got no volume on this one. I don't know if that's my technicals or no, that's the actual radio tape. There's no sound to it. Wow. It really just looks, here we go. See you. Now you look very calm. I wasn't going inside. That's just your grateful to be alive. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm guessing. Um, it's funny when you watch your base jumper jumping off a cliff, they, it, it looks like the more you descend, the closer you are to the cliff and the closer you are to hit it. But I'm, I'm guessing that no, actually, you kind of move. Well, the thing with the high cliffs, and it's like that with El Capitan, which I first jumped in 1980, that started me on the, the basing. The first five seconds, you don't go anywhere. So when you leap off, you start forward and the cliff is right behind you. And it's like being in the underground when you start to see the post is getting faster and faster as the train starts accelerating away. It's exactly the same on the actual base jump. But at five seconds, you've picked up enough speed that when you alter your body position, just like a skydive, you can start to move horizontal along the ground. So you can actually get further distance away from the cliff face. So the high cliffs are actually quite safe because you can get around 600 feet clearance of the cliff. So it's not as dangerous as people perceive, unlike the really low stuff that you just don't get the distance. Do they call that delta tracking like they do in skydiving? Exactly. So there's no difference. Yeah. Got you. Right. Let's look at the next one. It's a great way to start a podcast. Sorry, technical skills, everyone. I've got to put us on desktop and turn the audio down. Let's go for that again. So this one, you're getting connected up to what looks like a giant zip wire or death slide or water jump off from a zip wire. How did that come about? Well, Sean, who's next to a Royal Marine Commando, he actually owns it world. So when I went to see him, he's telling me that he doesn't get rocket man to go up the zip wire for publicity and he was going to get a base jump at the jump it. Well, I immediately said, I'll do it. Sean knew my background for the early days of base jumping, helping to pioneer the basic in the UK. So he said, right, your project. So the problem I had with the zip wire is the speed because we pay the parachute for low jumps for fast opening. But when you've got speed, you don't particularly want a fast opening. So that's my first problem. I had to look on the location in the landing area. All the ground side was slate. And I just thought, shall we slate? You have a bad landing. You'd actually get cut very badly. So the safety option seemed to be the water jump, which I wasn't looking forward to, because the news would be freezing cold. The next thing was how I was going to actually come off as it were, because you got those second chances. So I had to make sure that when I disengaged, I was going to fall away cleanly, face to earth. So I had a harness made up. The difference was skydiving harness. Instead of the risers being from my shoulders, I had it from the back of my back. So it tilted me slightly forwards. So I had a harness made up for a carway system. So I wore that plus the parachute with his own harness. The risers from the carway system were connected to the zip wire. And we did the test run to record the speed, which I personally thought was too fast. I didn't really want that hard opening. So what I did, I took two pilot shoots to create drag. And that slowed me down enough that I deemed it safe enough to do the low altitude base pack method. And that's when I had my marker points, which was my highest point, and all I had to do was release and throw the drug out. And exactly as I thought would happen, worked. You always have that thing when you do something brand new. Have you covered all the angles? Do you meant to go through the whole thing? I've done this, done that. All the boxes are ticked. So the only thing that's stopping me is the mental game. You just got to save yourself, believe in yourself, believe in the method. Take a deep breath. Then the journey starts. My gosh, and is there any kind of risk of drowning? Well, I'm guessing there is. Not when you've got a safety belt. Now I was expecting to head the water to see this roar of engine, and this boat comes zipping towards me. Instead of all our swords, the boat then chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug towards me. I was out of treading water. The interest with the Zipwire one is the first time it's been done in the UK. It's never been done before in the UK. It's only been done abroad. And far as we know, it's the first commercial Zipwire that's been base jumped. Wow, congratulations. Did you have to wear a lifejacket or was that too cumbersome? There had just been too much, with two harnesses, and a lifejacket. The fact I had a safety belt then was going to get to me. I deemed it not necessary. There's no currents or anything. It's just a leak. Right, got you, got you. Right, let's have a look at the next video. Do you know what Chris's face was like? I'm clear. Yes, so this one was, was it called Ghost Plane? Oh, the Ghost Plane, yes. Again, what we're actually doing, I'm jumping with three parachutes. So the first parachute I'm always going to disengage from it. We call it Ghost Plane because normally when you do canopy relative work, when you link up parachutes, you do what we call a biplane, two guys and you normally split just before you land. But what's unusual about this fact, when I disengaged, it left my parachute with the other guy who keeps it flying, but ensuring they speed it tightly into the risers. The system disengaged, the parachute retains its shape. So you have this unusual thing of a guy flying, two parachutes, but there's one guy, there's a guy missing, hence they named it Ghost Plane. A lot of fun. Wow. Yeah, I'm just going back to it to get it clear in my mind what's going on here. So you've hooked up in midair. He's done the old feet around your risers. I've tried to ensure that upwinds the disengaged parachute eventually when he releases it will land back on the airfield. I see. Is there no risk he was going to get entangled with the parachute or is that part of the, I guess you factor that in? It's probably why I was giggling afterwards because I knew I was perfectly all right. I let him with the problem. But no, it's not a problem because all it has to do is kick his feet out. Again, it's just the perception. It's actually very safe to do. Yeah, it looks like your chute has just remained open. Is that what was supposed to happen? Exactly that. And that's where it's to put his feet tightly into the risers. So it doesn't cause any slack when I release. My gosh, so we're looking at you wing walking. That's a good laugh. I thought I enjoyed that. Well, you look happy in all of your shots. The thing about wing walking again, if you analyse it, you're in the harness, you're tightly strapped in, you fix the airplane. So there are no issues. And all you've actually got is just the air flow. So in a way, it's exactly the same as free fall. So there are any risk factors on the landing side if the pilot messes up. Yeah, then you get pancake. That's why I choose not to think about that side. I focus on the positive side. He's a good pilot. But did you have to think about death a lot? Andy, you'd probably know this gentleman. I watched a documentary. It was about 15 years ago now. And there was a former SAS chap and he was passionate about his base jumping. But over the course of this documentary, you started to get the impression that this guy was getting edgy. Like his nerves were started to become a factor of, you know, I mean, obviously you're going to be nervous, but it was like he was second guessing himself. And they went up to the famous cliffs in Norway. And I don't know if it was there or if it was shortly after, but he I don't know what the vernacular is, but I'm going to say he creamed in. And that was him. Good night, Vienna. Do you know the chap I'm on about? Can't say I do. Depends how far you're going back. Yeah, it was a while ago now. I couldn't tell you for the life of me when it was, but I just always think in a documentary when you see someone being nervous and at the end of the documentary, they die. It was the same with that canoe canoeist chat that tried to was it canoe from New Zealand to Australia or all the other way around. And he said off, he was in tears, going, oh, what am I doing? I've got children. I've got a family. And he got within 10 miles of the coastline and his canoe overturned and he couldn't get back in it. He was too exhausted. And the tragic thing was all his family were waiting, like literally on the beach for sort of daddy to finish this record break in canoe. And they'd heard on the radio a distress signal, but nobody could work out what what this guy was saying. When they later played it back, you could hear him saying, I'm the canoe guy. I'm the canoe guy. And yeah, I saw that documentary very, very sad. Oh, incredibly. It was it was just so tragic. And I said to one of our bootneck brothers yesterday, Mike Buster Keating, who's who like me has just run the length of the UK. And I said, Mike, are you up for rowing across the Atlantic? And Mike came back and said, I'm not sure about that, Chris. You know, I've got kids. And I hadn't thought of it like that. I thought rowing the Atlantic was statistically fairly safe. It seems I think you I think very few people have drowned doing it. But yeah, it's that thing, isn't it? When you are a parent, it's not just you you've got to think about. I mean, so that's one of the reasons I stopped base jumping. Because the risk factor is high. There are no second chances. And a friend of mine, Frank Dunlin was killed on the base jump. And at the time, his wife was expecting. And they're always looking into me. You know, the fact that he never got to see his son. He's done never got to see him. And he was raised without a father. And I just thought, you know, the day I'm a dad, I just won't go down that road and take those extra risks. And I'm thankful I made that decision having had two sons. Would you, as a new parents, when your kids were around five, like mine is now, would you have climbed Everest if you'd got a place? That's the difficult one. You know, because to say Everest, to get a slot is extremely hard. I don't think I could answer that until I'm in that position. But I think some things that, I don't know, you're your own person, what joins you. Yeah. And not to be that person is quite hard. Yeah, I've been thinking about it because Everest was always been a dream of mine. And I was fortunate to chat to another brother of ours, Nims Dye, on the podcast who summited what was it, the 12 highest mountains in the world in record breaking time. And he offered to train me to climb Everest. And I also remember Aunt Middleton made a documentary fairly recently about his. Saw that. Yeah. But of course, he's got several children, four, maybe even five. And in that documentary, you saw just how close he came to not making it back down. Yeah. So do you. God, just say these are the kind of things, Andy, that my brain works at a million to one all the time anywhere. And I'm always, it's probably some things that other people would just not think so much about. I really kind of like think of the moral kind of element. I mean, you also go look at the larger picture, you know, who's the team? Who's making the decisions? You know, are they very professional there? If the conditions are not right, they'll make that decision no matter how close you are to walk away. And that's one of the hardest things is to make that decision to walk away. And I've had on the base job, you know, my brother P did the very first cliff based job in the UK. And after watching him go off, when it's my turn, I stood on the edge about 15 minutes. And my other brother said, you know, you don't have to go. And I looked at it and said, too right, I don't have to go. And what a fan. I've used all my adrenaline watching my brother jump. I had nothing left of me, you know. And I actually had to say to himself, you know, there's nothing wrong with walking away. It's the sensible thing to do. It doesn't feel right. Walk away. Yeah, you've got to live to fight another day, haven't you? There's always another day. And that's what you remember. Definitely. We're back to you. I'm just going to play your base job again. This is just a classic. Nice. Very nice. Do you mind if I go, mate? Do you mind if I go, mate? Yep. Yep. Be my guest. Incredible, Andy. Just absolutely incredible. I'm a big fan of Travis Pastrana. I don't know if you've seen any of his stuff. Yeah, I've seen him. He did the no shoot jump as well. Yes, he did. And he's my favourite athlete. I think he's the world's... If you have to pick one, certainly for me, he's just the world's best athlete ever. All his dirt biking and his base jumping and all the other crazy stuff he's done. But I remember they took his dad, right? His dad is an ex-Marine, USMC, and they literally got him on a bridge just like this in the States. And not only did his dad never ever done a parachute jump before, certainly hadn't done a base jump, but he did a backflip on his very first base jump which, for anyone listening, I'm sure Andy would agree with me, kind of flies in the face of all the safety rules, Andy, does it not? It certainly does. I wouldn't do it. I'm that stupid. I definitely would do a base jump. I mean, I've done 30 jumps now, I think, between my military course and my AFF skydiving course. So I don't think I turned out... I don't know. Again, very different as a father. If I was single, I'd throw myself off this bridge without any... The things we remember nowadays with the base scene is everything's changed. The equipment's been designed for the job. It's been manufactured for base. All the safety stuff that we've learned over the years has been incorporated in the equipment. Now people get trained to do a base jump. Totally different to my time when we're using conventional skydiving gear and no one to teach you. So it's learning how to actually doing it, you know. It's a lot safer. Now the strange thing is, when you do a lot of base jumps in the short period of time, it actually becomes normal. It's just like high board diving. Instead of going to water, you know, throw a parachute out to deploy the parachute. Yes. I remember when I was skydiving that it just becomes such second nature to throw yourself out that plane without... without any nerves whatsoever. The only time I did get nervous, I don't know if you've got any viewpoint on this, Andy, is I went up once in the morning and I had a mega hangover. We'd been caning it at a barbecue the night before. And I realized when I got in the door, I wasn't my usual just throw yourself out and do a load of somersaults and don't even think about it. I was really, yeah, well, I was feeling nervous. Is that anything that is that sort of well known in skydiving? It is. And we're skydiving in the early stages. We haven't got many jumps. One, if you leave gaps between jumps, you still get the nerves. It's when you do a couple hundred jumps, that side goes. But what you probably notice is your thought process was slowed down. And that's what made you more nervous because of the alcohol side. Certainly back in the old days, alcohol and skydiving seemed to go hand in hand. So you did a day skydiving, then you did a hardcore drinking session and started again next morning. But times have changed. We don't see that so much nowadays. When people finish jumping, they tend to go home. Don't see the hardcore drinking days as we did back in the 70s. Yeah, I remember it. Have you ever jumped at Sebastian in Florida? I have actually about two years ago doing the canopy formations. Back in the Marines days, we all did the single column stack. But now they did the pyramid. So I wanted to gain some experience in the pyramid stuff, what we call the diamond formations. So my older son was going out there, so I tagged along the trip. And it was fantastic. Just experiencing large formations. Chasing my thought process, what it was like. Wow. I've just got up on the screen. I'm guessing it's your Royal Marines stack. You can't see the colour of the shoots in this black and white picture, but... There's a cracking shark as a side profile to see all the individuals. Who's the guy that's separate? Is that a cameraman or is that a guy just attempting to join the stack? Cameraman. We had three of them to film in different angles. Yeah. And I was trying to work out how you did it time wise. And then of course, I'm forgetting that you hop and pop basically, don't you? You pull your shoot as soon as you're out the door. So you get so much more time in the air. We do. And one of the things we'd learnt was when everyone exits the aircraft at the same time, the guys were jumping and docking on the bottom of the stack. Because they spent so much time trying to make the parachutes die faster using muscle strength to pull the risers down. The time was their turn. They ran out of strength. So what we did in 85, the first attempt at the world record, we staggered the aircraft. So we had one aircraft fly at 15,000 feet. The next aircraft came at 12,000 feet. And the last one came at 10,000 feet. So the bottom guys left the aircraft. You actually freed falling past the stack, then thrown past you, only just underneath it, waiting for your turn, sliding in and making an approach. That's far more successful. What a clever idea. Yes. Right, I'm just going to flip through your photographs and I'll just pin you a few questions, if I may. Yeah, if I won't. Ah, so there's the cover of your book. So we're going to cover the contents as we talk through the podcast. But like I said at the beginning, Andy's done everything, folks. And I think type T is this is the adventurous personality, Andy, right? Tight is the personality, risk taker, throw seeker, and it seemed appropriate. Yes, what a great name for a book. Brilliant. What I do, folks, I suggest you grab a copy of Andy's book. I've read the first couple of chapters and like I say, it's very, very gripping, extremely gripping. I'll put a link under the podcast so you can get straight to Amazon and grab yourself a copy. Right, we've got, I don't know if this is you carrying the camera but looking very Mujahideen. That'll be me carrying the camera. Wow, what's the story behind this one, Andy? Well, that goes back to 1981. My second brother just been out to Afghanistan filming a war, coming back and sending the film footage to the TV networks. And I was listening to the stories and thought, wow, you know, what a story, what an adventure. And he approached me and said, look, I'm going back to do a second trip. I'm going to carry more camera gear. Would you like to come along? And as I was in between jobs at the time, and I was just thinking, yeah, what an adventure. So I didn't spend much time thinking about it. I just said, definitely, I'm there with your brother. I should have put more thought into it. For some strange reason, I had this idea, my brother has a large camera with a long lens, would be on the hill, filming some sort of action about a mile down the road. So he got away with the camera with a very short lens and he filmed from the front. So that was a bit of a shock. And this is Afghanistan in the 80s, you say? It's Afghanistan 1981, when the Russians were there. Right. My gosh, that was one hell of a conflict, wasn't it? Well, we've just learned the same process, you know. The Afghans have this attitude. There's no time period. They'll stay there for a long stay until they need to fight for it. Yes. So you had the Soviets that invaded Afghanistan. You had the Mujahideen, which was being backed and trained by the CIA. Fascinating, putting the tragedy of it all to one side. What a fascinating conflict. You had the might of the Soviet Union against these rebel fighters. There's a few. There's a book I read recently called The Bear Trap, which is how Afghanistan is colloquially referred to by the fighters for obvious reasons. I also watched a film called Ninth Company. I think in Russian it's La Rota. And that was from the Soviet perspective of these guys that volunteered to fight, found themselves in the parachute regiment and ended up in some serious, serious hand-to-hand combat. Did you see a lot of action there, Andy? Well, we had a couple of actions where the Mujahideen basically had this attitude. They'd wake up in the morning, stretch their arms and say, right, peace-cooking breakfast. We've got an hour and a half. Let's go tag the outpost. So they all just get together, go down, fire some shots at the outpost, come back, have breakfast, and then basically relax for the day and go back to sunset. But on one occasion, we were just sleeping out in the open next to this track. We woke up and the Mujahideens were sort of running around. My brother said, can you hear anything? I said, hear anything? He said, listen. I said, I can hear vehicles. He said, exactly. The only one that's got vehicles around here nowadays is the Russians. So we suddenly realized what the Mujahideens were doing. They were just grabbing all their gear. So we just grabbed all the camera gear and started following them. What you notice is the Russian patrol is armored vehicles. As we're driving down the road, they're just basically shooting up the area. So you've got this constant fire. You can hit Mujahideens, find the single shots back. An armed group managed to get ahead of the patrol. We had a guy called Hermione who was leading our group who crawled out to open ground with an RPG. You know, I just thought, you know, that guy's crazy. No cover whatsoever. No open ground. He's not going to survive this. My second brother got his camera ready. I've got my camera ready. And Ken just said to me, are you rolling? I said, yeah, camera's rolling. He looked at Hermione, nodded. He just knelt up, firing an RPG. And this is against Russian BNPs. It's quite a low profile armored vehicle. And we watched this rocket go off and he's doing straight over the top of the armored vehicle, missed from 200 meters. And the thing you found in Mujahideens, they weren't actually trained with the weapons. So they weren't using the science. They're just pointing the weapon in that direction and firing it. And the first thing you notice, the Russian firepower went down. So you instantly tell yourself, they're looking, they're looking. So I was hugging this embankment trying to keep a low profile. And I answered me, a second Mujahideen jumped from a doorway and fired the second RPG, where the back glass kicked out the dust. And his rocket missed. And the Russians just instantly identified there, three armored vehicles maneuvered, then put cross-fired. I can honestly say the world was disintegrating. I could not hug down the embankment more tightly, squeezing my cheeks in, feet 90 degree angles, watching the dirt kick up around my ankles. And when the rounds go past you, you get that supersonic crack. And it feels like someone's slugging their hands right next to you. So I found myself constantly blinking. I had twigs and branches falling on my head as the rounds were coming through. I just thought, this is bad. This is so, so very bad. I could hear one armored vehicle maneuvering. And I just said to myself, look, the longer you stay, sooner or later, you're going to be looking at the turret calling out BBC. It's just not going to do anything. You know, this guy's probably really hacked off. They just attacked him. So I thought, I'm going to go. But there's so much firepower coming in. I just thought, yeah, the moment I move, I'm going to catch one in the back, but I have no choice. Go. And I took one stare and it was just, boom. I just went sailing through the air, complete some sort, landed on my back, big impact, just picking up and lifted left to my feet, looked around. And as people running in all different directions, I just found this path and thought, go for it. And I ran for everything I could. I was dropping lenses, bits and pieces. I just couldn't care. I was just trying to move as fast as I could. When I got to this narrow path, there was a young lad about 19 in front of me. And I just thought, mate, you're running too slow for me. And literally as we got next to him, I sidestepped him by going to ditch. And the moment I did that, he caught one in the back. I could hear the impact and all the air being exhaled out from his body. And he went down. I fall credits and looked to my shoulder. The two moves behind me came up, scooped him up and dragged him off. And towards the end of this path, he did a 90 degree turn. And I just got to the stage. I said, you know, you're out of time. I cannot believe I've not caught one already. And I looked at the wall in front of me and I thought, go for it. And I didn't think I was going to make it, but I showed the world biggest leap, impact of the wall. But the mentor took me over the wall on the land on the other side, talked about breathing heavily. And then I made my way to a compound where we regrouped. And as I sat and looked around, I noticed one person was missing, my brother. I thought, that's bad. That's very, very bad. So I went up to her main, and I don't speak Pashto, but Chana Yusano, indicating the two of us. Where's the other one? And he called a guy over, asked a question in Pashto and this guy looked at me and shook his head and I was like, man, I really want to see that. What am I going to explain to mum on this one? I said to him, look, need to go back. I need to see. And full credit to the guy. He actually called another guy over and he was taking me back to where all the hell broke loose to find out what the score was. And as we got to that bend, out from his cornfield, popped my brother. I said, where the hell are you being? He said, I've got cut off. So I was on the other side. There's so much rounds coming in, I couldn't get back. So I had to go to the cornfield. But then while I noticed I was going to the cornfield, I was causing the corn to move. So the Russians put him all fine to the cornfield. So he was actually crawling through. And we got back to the compound we sat there. My people were like saucers, huge. I looked at my brother and I said, you know, Ken, we nearly got wasted there. And he just looked at me and said, Andrew, you say that. But if you looked at World War II, the amount of rounds they got fired, the amount of people that got hit, the odds were in your favour. And I looked at him and said, are you having a laugh? Ken, five minutes ago, I did not think the odds were in my favour. But yeah, Ken kind of got used to it. But for me, massive shock. And I was just like, you know, I wanted an adventure, but I wasn't expecting that. I bet. And I just want to go back because we didn't. I'm just going to go back to the Royal Marines freefall team, because we didn't really cover that as much as I would have liked Andy. I almost glossed over it then. Because back in the day, it was a big thing in the core, wasn't it? I remember you used to have the bumper stickers, Royal Marines, you know, free, freefall Royal Marines and that kind of stuff. And the old jet marine stickers was upping everywhere. Yes. Yes, that's right. And of course, I think it goes about saying there's obviously a bit of rivalry there with the Red Devils who were the Army's freefall display team. I'm guessing mostly mostly manned by the parachute regiment, was it? The Red Devils was Paris, you know. The one exception was Jackie Smith, who was in the Army, and I allowed her to join the team. And she was an exceptional jungler, became a world champion. Yes, she was the only female in their team. Was that right? Correct. The very first woman to join the military display team, parachute team. Wow, a great bit of history. And what was the qualifications then to get into the Royal Marines team? Did you have to be interested in skydiving? Did you have to have done a paracourse or something? Or was it just you put your name forward? Well, it initially started when they looked towards forming an official team. They picked people who were already qualified. And there wasn't that many. It was only like a handful of us. Now, I joined the team in October 1978. And I joined with a guy called Andy Grace. And the reason I managed to go straight to the team, there was only Andy and myself that were qualified in the Marines to go show them to the display team. And when I joined the team, I had two brothers on the display team, Pete and Ken. The one thing I learned was canopy relative where it was fairly new. And no other display team was doing it. And what the older guys for me, what they decided was that was going to be their display doing the canopy stacking to make them different to the other teams. So you did your normal free-for-stuff, open parachutes, then linked up. And you're taking the canopy stacking into the arena, which are against additional risk. So when I joined the team, the first thing I had when I opened a parachute was my brother shouting me, stay there. And I watched him come across, grabbed onto my parachute. I said, what are you doing? When we landed, he said, Andrew, this is what makes the Royal Marines parachute display team different to anyone else. We do canopy stacking. Get this to it. And at my stage of that tone, I was still thinking the parachute was fragile. You know, but it took me from being a below average jumper to someone who's now recognized and respected amongst all the other skydivers because we were the Royal Marines parachute display team. And my first training camp was in Pate Valley in California. And we got the British record six day. And that kind of started this whole thing by going for records. When we look at the world record, it just came to discussion when we talked about guys on the team, because after I'm doing myself, the Marines realized you have to start training people up. When people applied for the team, had the incident got selected, they spent a year at perishing school, building up the jumps. And after a year, they then joined the team. So we sat there counting how many people of the years have been on the display team. We realized, you know, if you count the X Marines as well, we've got enough people to go for the world record. So Rod Boswell organized the whole thing in full respect to him for organizing all. We contacted Mick Upton, he left the core 10 years previously, hadn't jumped since. We're like, Mick, it's just like riding a bicycle. When the guy in America flew back to 1985 was our first attempt at the world record with enough people to go for it. Which at the time, the world record was held by the Americans at 23. What we achieved in 1985 was we managed to equal the world record, but we did get the night world record of 22 at night. But what was frustrating the big stacks, the bigger they get, the more sneaky they get. So when you get like a turbo and sit in the stack, it's like a whip. It ricochets up, comes back down, then the bottom guys just get exploded. So we kept getting like 21, 22. And you think at the time, the biggest stack in the world was 123, 122, 121. But when we finished, we did 123, 1222s, 1221s. And we just thought, you know, we're so, so close. We made the decision to come back in 86 and to try again. And then very first jump, we equal the world record again. My issue was constantly the cloud. Every time we got a load down, we got near a cloud, it created the turbulence. I can remember when we finally got it, I was totally unaware. Because when the stack gets bigger, it gets heavier. So when you're in the stack, it feels like your legs are being pulled out, your arms are being pulled out. And I actually took a couple of twists and lines to be able to hold on. Because I just thought, you know, if I dropped 16 rings, they would not be impressed. So I cheated and took a grip with the lines, took a twist. And when we broke off the stack, I had no strength for landing to play the parachute miles to dispense. And I remember just bouncing on the ground, picking myself up, walking back, thinking, go, you know, I'm going to have to do that again. Someone came out through a big smush, and he said, you've done it. You've done more. He said, you just got the world record. I was like, oh, thank you for that. Let's go for the team. Oh, brilliant. Was it, was it sort of a feeling of kudos to be in the team? Did it make you a hit with the women or anything like that, or just amongst your fellow bootnecks? I think the biggest thing for us was to respect from other skydivers. You know, we built this reputation. We were, without doubt, at the time, the best display team in the country. No one could compete with us. And even the Red Devils respected us for it. I think that meant more to us. You know, as for the women, you know, we're too busy skydiving, we're mortars and skydiving. What we did have was other members of the display team, I was on the Arnold Combat team and various other people, kept pinching our skydiving t-shirts, and then the evening going around as the freeform team. Brilliant, brilliant. And, Andy, why did the remembering how legendary, I mean, you guys were like on Blue Peter, so this children's TV program, you were on the news, you were almost like constantly in the media and stuff. It was a big old guy, I almost used to wear propaganda tool then, but I meant it was a big recruiting tool, wasn't it? Why did it end? Cutbacks, that appeared to be all it was. You know, the Marines had to find areas that had cut back on money and they chose to freeform team. You know, for us we couldn't understand it, just for the PR side, what we did. But the same thing happened with all Marines' motorbike display team. When they were operating, they were best in the country and they got axed, and hence the army white helmets became like the only display team around the motorbikes. It's a real shame personally, I think it was a mistake, but maybe that's because I'm too much orientated on the PR side, I don't know. Yes, of course. It's funny when you think the price of one of the modern-day rockets that they fire in abundance in, you know, whether it's Afghanistan or somewhere, you could probably fund that team for the whole year. It's just one of those things. I mean, you mentioned earlier about San Sebastian in America. Yes. When I went on that trip, and I was talking to the other hard-core cantileverers for those Americans, and they heard I was one of the Marines on the big stack, they were in awe. Because that was 1986, that world record has never been beaten. The Americans actually said to me, you know, that's one of the world records we've tried to get back, but we've just not been able to beat it. So it still carries a lot of respect. Yes, I'm just going to just one second while we're on the subject, Andy. I'm just going to see if I can get my Sebastian right one second. I've got to try and do this without any volume. Let's have a look. I can't put the volume on because we'll get hit for copyright, but I'm just going to play our friends at home. This is me, folks, at Sebastian. This is in the preparation area where you go and you either pack, you shoot yourself, or if you don't know how you pay somebody to do it. That's it. Then you walk to the plane. You mind the propellers or the props. My friend Crow flew the plane, and these guys just get absolutely mental at it. They get so precise at just getting up as quick as they can, and then they just put the plane in almost into like a spin to get back down to the airfield to pick up another bunch of skydivers as quick as they can. They know how to feather the propellers to get the best out of to really make the plane perform. This is us going up over the beautiful Florida sea. When I used to fly over the sea, you could see sharks swimming in the water, sometimes near the bathing beaches. There we are. Sorry, there's no volume, folks. It's just we'll get hit for copyright because the tracks, they don't care what track they put on. They don't care at the skydive sent if they're breaking copyright. They just want to sell you a video. So he sent me now, one of the guys in the plane. How you feeling, Chris? Some shit myself like I always do. It was a lie. I never did accept that time when I had the hangover. This man here, my little boy, always says, is that you, dad? I say, no, that's Mr. Boring. He's gone for the traditional exit. Daddy comes out. It does six somersaults. This is the delta tracking that Andy and I were talking about. Everything cool in the USA is called delta. So that delta tracking, delta force, just going to backflip. Then you make this movement to signal to skydives above you. You're going to pull your shoot. My skydive is not pretty, by the way, folks. I'm the harder you try and do something, the more out of control you go. There's probably some sort of lesson there, but it's nice to do a standy upy when you land. Yeah, that's it. It's just one of those things. Have you ever seen a film, Point Break, Andy? I have, yeah. I watched that back in the mid 90s or late 90s and I just thought, I've got to do this sport. Especially when he goes, right, put that on and the guys never, is it agent, special agent, Utar or whatever his name is, has never done a skydive in his life. He's like, right, put that on and just, you just pull that. He's like, okay. These times are great. Right, we're going to go back to your amazing photographs. So that was Sebastian. What have we got here? So, a few people are going to be familiar with this road, Heartbreak Lane or part of it. I think it's when you go, I think this is referred to as the pig farm, Andy. Is that, is my memory serving me correct? Correct, yeah. Just as I was going to help. Wow. And when you look at this photo of you guys speed marching, it's going to be in the latter stages of training because you're all wearing your battle fatigues. So I'm guessing this is the nine mile pass out or maybe the sixth miler. It's the nine mile speed march. Nine miler. And it's just anybody that's ever been through limestone will, this photo says it all, doesn't it? It does. And I always found this big march is not too bad because I was a runner. They swing some roundabouts like short guys tend to be finally running not too bad, taller guys tend to find it a bit harder. But then you get a load carry, payback. I suffered big time on the load carries, but the bigger guys felt fine. Yeah, I suffered on all of it, mate, to be honest, not not. I was a PT superior in the gym. I think I was the only guy there might have been two, possibly three. But I certainly was one of the only three that could climb the 30 foot ropes in full kit using just my arms and then do it again, right? And when you bear in mind some of the guys that just couldn't even climb it once using their legs, that was that was how strong my upper body strength was. But the swimming, the battle swimming test, and the speed marching and the low carrying was just torture, absolute torture for me. And the swimming was just, I didn't pass the swimming test until, I think, until we got in a king squad. Did you find a lot of these things though? And it's been like some of the extreme stuff. It's sort of a mental game. You just got to win the mental game. So things like speed marching, they used to say to themselves, it can't last forever. At some point the training team's going to say, stop. So just keep going. So you just play the mental game. Yeah, I played the mental game. It's probably so painful. I should have just dropped out and gone home. I mean, we I think anyone that's got the green lid is we've all know to play the mental game, don't we? You're just hanging there. But but the pain, the pain of hanging in there was it's just extreme. I'm not being a good recruiter here, am I? But but plenty of people out there will want the challenge, the challenge of yourself. And that's what they need to find out to monsters. You run along. Don't you, don't you, Andy? And you think, do you know what? If I've got the energy to collapse now on the on the verge, I've got the energy to put one more foot in front of the other. And that's that's just like the philosophy, isn't it? It just just you just pray in for them to say, right, true hope or break into what's it break into a quick to not quick time. I can't even remember the terminology now it's been so long. But you know, you break into a march and then it's stop. Right, fellas, breathe in through the nose out through the mouth. And by this time you all collapsed in a field going, yes, it's over. It's over. The finishing line is the finishing line. Yes. And it's not always the finishing line, is it? Sometimes you think the four-tonner truck is around the next corner. And it's not. And then sometimes it is, which was kind of the ante. Here, mate, we've got your your record book, your log book. And it says here first British solid object jump four went off. Something looks like three squares or something from 900 feet. Um, round a round canopy, which is interesting. Yeah, that was me. An experience I will never forget. How about that? So what's the story behind that? Yeah, what's the story behind that one? Well, 1980, the skydiving had an AGM. And in those days, people used to bring the latest films out so you can see the latest skydiving. I just went to the cinema section and my pint, you know, just wanted the rest of my legs. When this film just finished and the guy said, oh, can I put my film on? Yeah, yeah, put your film on. The first thing he noticed was backpackers hiking down the road. And the camera kept panning to this cliff. And I was like, what's he doing? This is a skydiving convention. And he's put a climbing film on. And half the audience got out and started to leave the room. And the next thing you saw was these guys huddled around a bonfire. And they just went, click. And everyone's a skydiving gear. And you're like, why are they skydiving gear? And the next shot you saw was them stood close to the edge. And one guy looks at the camera, turns around and starts running towards the edge. And everyone's leaving for good. No. And next, you know, these guys went off the whole night. It's just the buzz. Did you see those guys jumping off the cliff? And I went back on the road with the display team. And then the season, a friend of mine, Ian Gray said to me, Andy, what are you doing at Leith? What do you know, Ian? That film, I saw the AGM. I hate heights. Now, from the aircraft altitude was so high, you don't relate the height. But the idea of actually standing on the cliff, I would be able to late snap. And I said, I need to know, can I do it? So I'm off to America to get to jump this cliff. And he just said to me, you know, I'm not doing anything. I'll come with you. So we flew to America, went to Parris Valley, I spoke to Sky Dogs there to find out how do you go about jumping out Cabotin. So you need to get a permit. What the Rangers used to do was issue you three permits. Well, most guys would do the one jump. I'd be happy with that. So I found two guys, each had a permit for the same day. Gave it to us and a friend of mine, the Rangers had to say, these guys are not jumping, they've given us their permits. Do you mind if we take their place? This year, that's not a problem. So we both went down to Cabotin, jumped it, and it just blew me away. I was so scared. I remember landing in the meadow and another skydive American guy jumped after me landed. He walked up to me and said, you know, Andy, that's the most terrifying piece of cake. And I just gave it a shot going, what do you mean? He's not there. I was terrified. The moment I jumped, it was just another skydive. And I thought, you know something, you're right. Well, back in the UK, a man guy called Frank Donlan, another even, and he had jumped out Cabotin. So it was quite common for us to be drinking at the end of the evening, come together and start talking about a Capitan again. And one day, Frank came up to me and said, Andy, I've got this letter from a guy called Cal Bonich that started this thing called base. It's a base. So what's that? He told me to qualify for a base. You need to jump a building, a tenor, a span that could be like a bridge or cable car, and earth, the cliff. And that's where you get your base number. He said, how high is the building? It can't be that high. And he thought nothing more of it. Then my older brother came back from the States and I said, I'll have to go to the States, Pete. It's not really good. I've got 35 jumps on an airplane. And I looked and said, why would you say that? He said, say what? I said, you said 35 jumps on an airplane. You wouldn't say that. You would say, I did 35 jumps, but you didn't. He specifically said on an airplane, what have you done? He started to jump to the tenor, an aerial. He said, how high was it? He said, 11 feet. 11 feet. You're mad. At least our Capitan was 3,000 foot. And then a couple weeks later, we were drinking, I mean, cup of tea served by the bench. How do you know, Pete? This aerial, a tenor thing you jump to in America, we don't have them in the UK, do we? And he said, wait here. Went to his car, came back, my brother's a pilot. Later the pilot's mad. And all these areas are listed with the highs. I said, can I borrow that map? Of the next few months, I was just driving around, checking all these the tenors. And like I always remember, I was in Suffolk, came over this little hill with my sonny Walkman playing, Boston, more than a feeling. And I was on my motorbike, and I just saw this tenor, this aerial, and I went, oh, my word. And I instantly just got the shakes. And I parked on the bike, walked across the road, walked around the compound, looking at this aerial, and I went, this is the one. And my heart was thumping, my mouth just went dry. Got back on motorbike. The month later went back for another skydiver. We climbed another fence, got onto the aerial, started climbing it, got to 100 feet, there's a big sign there. Danger to life. Like paused. And he said, what do you reckon? I start thinking, it's rubbish, it's just a scare, people. He said, oh, we're going to carry on. It's like, no, it won't be telling the truth. We need to get back down. We need to research this. So we left. And then Frank Don came out to me one day and said, I hate your fan than the tenor. I said, yeah. He said, can I jump it? I said, look, mate, this is the deal. I need to be the first one to jump it because I found it. He said, no, that's not a problem. I said, this shop got a moment is trying to do research. And the days you had no internet, going to the library. I said, I can't find any information on the aerials. A week later, Frank came out to me and said, Andy, I've got a guy. He knows everything about aerials. He said, oh, that's great. And they called Mike McCarthy over. We just jumped in the car, raced down to Mendelssohn and Suffolk, got out of the car and looked at this aerial. Mike McCarthy was still looking at this aerial. And I walked down and said, well, Mike, what do you reckon? Is that sign true or false? And Mike just looked at me and said, how would I know? I worked in the signals regiment. We worked with 54 aerials, not a thousand feet. And I looked to Frank and went, you've suckered me to give this location away. And we decided to come back to where it was all for, to come back the following Friday. Well, on the Monday, I saw my square parachute. So all I had left was my reserve. I kept thinking, do I trust these guys to wait until Friday? I was like, no. So I decided, right, I'll jump around reserve. So I transferred the reserve into the main compartment, leaving the line stood in the reserve trade and put a policy on it. And I went back. And for two days, I spent living the field next to the zero and just waiting for the weather. And it just rained. It was windy. And after two days, I was like, this is like a Friday morning. I was like, I'm hungry. I haven't eaten. I feel rough. Let's go to a twitch, get B&B, get some food, get a shower and freshen up. And I'll meet the guys that night. And I had a Chinese takeaway, had a shower, lay in bed. I fell asleep. And I woke up and it was pitch black, no traffic. I was like, oh, no. I didn't have the motorbike at the time. But I was actually on public transport. So I ran out on the road to my bag. And the lawyer came along and I hitched to lift. And I couldn't believe he was just starting to get me lift. I thought, oh, I can't believe that the only vehicle that's given me a lift. We got to the area. I said, this will do, mate. And he's like, look here. I'm going, there's nothing here. I said, oh, I live in a farm over there. It's okay then. I jumped out. I crossed the road to the lane, but there's two vehicles there. And I sat the guys. I walked out and there's two guys who've looked to me with like evil looking faces. And I was like, no, don't tell me to get mugged. Obviously the guys haven't turned up. So I just continued around, got into the field, unpacked my gear, put it on, climbed over the fence and started climbing the aerial. I got halfway. I love it. I hate heights. So climbing that ladder was so scary, but every entry for there was a rest platform. I'd go off and shake my arms down. And I got to around 400, 500 feet. As I was climbing to my shop, this parachute just suddenly opened next to me. I thought, what the heck? And I watched this parachute fly down. The guys in the roof, because I'd go out and I thought, well, that's the DZ party. And they say, I'm doing another parachute, but I thought, who the heck's that? I'm only expecting Frank. There's two. And then the other shocker, I had the third parachute, there's three parachutes. And I watched the guys just jump in the cars and they rolled off. And I was totally utterly gutted. But my McCarthy was the first one to actually jump off. So he did the first UK base jump. Yeah, we should say hello to Mike, because Mike's been on the podcast. Lunatic threw himself off the Empire State Building. Oh, he's quite a character. Yes. Yes, he is. And I get the full uncensored version, because we're friends. Not a bit more than we can put out on the podcast. But yes, incredible man, incredible man. In fact, I did a podcast with him yesterday, actually. So, Andy, just one second. And we're back. Yes. Looking at a photo here, Andy. I'll try and describe it. It looks like two people have jumped out of a Cessna 172 and then changed their mind. Can you hear me okay? I can hear you. Can I just jump in? Yeah, there's two guys clinging onto a Cessna. Ah, yes, yes, the stunt. One's acting as the student. And it's recreating incident in the late 1960s. I was actually from a Dragon repeat, but we just don't have those jump final days. And the student left the aircraft and got hung up. The jump master went down the line, grabbed the students' derv, camped so free, you put the students' derv, and he got the George medal. Oh, one second, mate. One sec. Yes. Sorry, Andy. For friends at home, I had to interrupt Andy, because we got a technical glitch. So, sorry. Can you just refresh your memory, Andy? What was the reconstruction? On the stunt. Yeah. It was recreating incident in the late 1960s where the student left the aircraft, and the static line got snagged, and he was hung up outside the airplane. The jump master asked the pilot to keep flying, retaking the altitude. He decided to climb down the static line, grabbed all the students' derv, cut the static line, and as he fell free, he deployed the students' derv and got a George medal. Wow. Now, we were recreating this for a documentary called Dead Man's Tales, which covers a few stories. So, I went down on the static line, and I had to climb down the staff van to get to him. And just for film purposes, when we released, we were going to do a little bit of free fallside, just to entertain the public watching the documentary. But we added that five times. Oh, you did the stunt five times? Just to maximise the footage. Wow. The only thing I did different was the guy who did it for real had a strop that he had fed around the static line. So, had he slipped, he would still end up with the student who was. But I looked at this and thought, if I'm coming down with a strop and my parachute accidentally deploys, I'm going to pull the whole aircraft out of the sky, and I ought not to do it. So, if it did deploy, I would get ripped off, but not the aircraft, so just slide on the caution side. But we did that five times. Yeah, when I skydive, and it's probably this, I'm sure you've had the same experience. The pilot normally wears a very thin parachute just in case anybody brings the plane down accidentally. Yeah. I mean, that stunt went well. It was the stunt afterwards that was very, very interesting. Do you want to talk about that, or should we go back to the logbook? Don't mind. I'll tell you. Okay. All right, if you tell us this, then we'll go back to the logbook one. So, having got the aircraft footage, the next one footage we wanted, Leo wanted some free-for-footage with me grasping for the reserve handle. So, somebody went out in the aircraft, and we thought, you know, there's not much to this, so we'll only get 7,000 feet. So, we left the aircraft with me holding on to, and he's actually on his back. But too much surprise, he dropped his arms. So, he was doing that delta track on his back for me on the side, and what happened, it just caused a spin. So, we just ended up spinning away, and the jeep was with such, I couldn't release one hand to reach the reserve handle. And I looked him out of me, it's nice and a lot. This has gone pear-shaped. Well, break of fun. Let him go. He's going to realise, well, break of fire and just deploy his parachute. So, let him go. I turned it a half-hearted track, because I'm expecting his parachute to deploy. Looked over my shoulder, and to my surprise, he was still on his back, free-falling. I quite spun myself back around to look at him, thinking, what's he doing? And he suddenly hit me. He's lost his altitude awareness. And I just thought, instantly, just thought, I'm going to get to him. I started to dive towards him. And it's interesting that, in fact, the altimeter is on my hand, but I'm in a delta track going down to him. I haven't got the time to check on the height. But mentally, I'm reading off the height. 2,500 feet. 2,000 feet. 1,500 feet. And I'm really getting close. And I just got to a stage where 1,000 feet. But I was so close, I can remember thinking, this is shit or bust. And I came over the top of him, skidded, and he looked at me with a big smile, and I was like, bullet, bullet! And we were instantly just new by my expression. Pulled, reserved, I spun around, threw my parachute, went back out of the ripcord, because recreated in the 60s, hit this ripcord, looked down, and I thought, I'm in the trees. And I just thought, it just seems unfair. That's a bummer. And to my surprise, the parachute opened. And we were at second halfway from impact. And Leo's wife was filming for the ground, and all she could hear me was screaming, pull it. She turned away to the camera, burst into tears, because she just thought, that's it, we're both in. And afterwards I thought about it. We had just got back from America doing training jumps from 13,000 feet. And size of the mental clock was 13,000, not 7,000. It was a massive shock. And we didn't have safety devices in those days, the automatic activation devices. Now, to size credit, every year around Christmas, we tend to meet up with a few other friends, and they always might be a point to say, thank you very much. No, my two kids exist because of you. Just incredible. I'm just making note of that, Andy. And you were going to tell us, I just wanted to ask you one question before we go any further. And that is, I've noticed the cool sign on this plane. Get the picture back for our friends at home. The cool sign is G-R-N-R-N-R-N. Is that the Navy's plane? They come along to the Royal Navy Royal Marine Sport Parish Association, that was placed at Dunksville. And at the time, I was the Chief Instructor. I didn't know you could choose the... I'm trying to remember back to when I learned to fly, your cool sign is what's written on the side of the plane, is it not? Yes, this. G signifies the UK aircraft, British aircraft, and American. And America, yeah. And I didn't know that you could choose your own cool sign. How did you manage to wangle that? Surprisingly, it's not that expensive. I think we'd paid about £60 and could change the registration. When I purchased my own aircraft, I looked and was doing the same thing. And I was going to have Gulf Uniform Echo Sierra Tango guessed. But it turns out a helicopter's got it, so I couldn't have it. Oh, that's not fair. And what were you going to tell us about the police when you did the aerial jump? Oh, the funny story with the aerial, the other three guys had jumped to the cars and they shot off, leaving me on this aerial. I got to the end of the footmark and I noticed a stroke to the aerial changing, and I thought, you know, that's the transmitter. I'm not going to go any higher in case I get cooked. I'm going to leave from here. And all of a sudden I had this police siren. I thought, oh, what? And I noticed someone left us in the industrial area. And some of those people had seen the other people jump, but they had also seen me climb. And one guy used to run outside, look up, then go back inside the building. When I got to the aerial footmark, this guy came out, ran back in, about 40 people came out. And then when I heard the police siren, I thought, oh, you snitches. You phoned the police. So I thought, what am I going to do? And I sat there and I thought, I'll tell you what. I let the person climb the ladder and I jumped off. And then to my surprise, the police didn't get out of the car. They drove off into the industrial area and I thought, I'll tell you what, the winds are going that direction. Let's think about this. I jumped off, they've never seen anything like it. They're totally amazed. I'm drifting away, I land. Then they start thinking, we need to get to. Meanwhile, I'm running. Time to go now. So I got ready, climbed down the structure, holding to the parachute, looked across, saw this police car parked up and the guy ran from the crowd. It's both this police man and the guy in the car. The next I heard was his voice screaming, Oi! Get down! I thought, I'll tell you what, since he's called it, I'll do it. And since I've got an audience, play to it. So I gave them a big wave and I leapt off through the parachute, my round reserve parachute opened. And to this day, it's still the only round reserve parachute base jump. And I landed and I actually did manage to get away. When I went back to get my power bag, it was missing. So I thought, okay, the police have got the power bag. Well, wet sleeping bag. Don't worry about it. Three hours later, then later, my brother phoned me on the pay phone and he said, Andrew, I've heard what you've done, congratulations. I said, hey, how did you hear? I know the jungle drums are good, but that's ridiculous, bearing in mind no mobile phones in those days. He said, what did you leave behind? I said, wet sleeping bag. So I was living in the field for two days. He said, why else? I said, I don't know. Let's put it this way, armed police surrounded the parents' house. I said, what? That's way to the top. He said, what did you leave the power bag? I said, my brain's locked. Go on. He said, you left your Afghanistan souvenirs. That trip I did with my brother Ken, on my way to the mass, I stopped in London to show my friend parts of antipersonal mines, part of our rockets, all these bits and pieces, everything spent. He said, you know, the whole Suffolk police force have turned out, they think you're a terrorist in some sort of stunt. I suggested give them a call. And I was like, oh, this has just blown up proportion. And I phoned down at my parents' police station. They said, I may or may not be interested in the Suffolk police, you need to phone them. I said, I haven't got their number, they gave it to me. And I phoned them and I said, I believe you're looking for me. It's Mr. Guest. Say yes to you, Mr. Guest. Yes, we are looking for you. Are you going to come back for your stuff? I said, what a strange question. I said, well, might as well come back. So when would you like to come back? And I was like, well, I was hoping to get a jumping this weekend, can I come Monday? Fully expecting to get verbal abuse and police cars, to be honest with you, to pick me up. The guy just said, okay, we'll see you Monday. What time? I said, I'm flexible. She said, shall we say 10 o'clock? I said, 10 o'clock's fine. He put the phone down and I was like, what just went on in there? That was far too friendly. And on the Monday, my father drove me there. We parked outside. There's a small police station in the village called I. And he parked on the car and I said, I'll go have a chat. I went in the police station as the dust sergeant there. And he said, good morning. So can I help you? I said, good morning. I believe you expect me, Mr. Guest. And he's just smiling. Oh, Mr. Guest, this is what I expected you to be at the door. I went through this door and there's a table of two chairs and he came up the other door. I said, Mr. Guest, would you like a tea? I just looked at it and said, yeah, tea would be nice. He said, who's that in the car? I said, that's my father. He said, would he like a tea? He's like, no, he's a coffee jinker. He's never getting a coffee. And off he went. I was thinking, what's going on? And all of a sudden, a policeman arrived in the doorway with his arms folded, looked at me, smiled, nodded and walked in. And there was this endless policeman, one after the other, all doing the same, pausing the doorway and walking in. And eventually I had policemen, all four walls, looking down. And I was thinking, this is very intimidating. This is when the mattress comes out and they're filming in. And the desk size came back, play the biscuits, cup of tea, lean back and it's chanted. Well, Mr. Guest, tell us a little bit all about it. It must have been very exciting. And I was like, looking again. Well, yeah, it was very exciting. But look, understand one thing. I am actually a very experienced skydiver. And all I was trying to do was celebrate my 1000th jump in a different manner. It was actually a thousand and five, but I thought it just sounded good. And when we finished, he just said, what was that in the bag? I was an artist in the trip to Afghanistan filming the wall, sending the footage to TV networks. He said, Mr. Guest, you do like to lead an exciting life? Well, then I said, that's your stuff. You're free to go. I said, well, before we go, can I just ask one thing? He said, what's that? I said, would you sign my logbook? And he signed it. And then I left a book for the police station, apologised to all the policemen to say, look, I'm fully aware that you guys got recalled back. The whole thing got burnt out of proportion. Being X-Men is checking and understanding how this went down. And I can only say I'm really sorry about that. Had I remembered what I had in the bag, well, I'll call you sooner. And the great thing is, when I got back home, I went out to my mother's in the kitchen and said, Mum, I'm really sorry about the unpolice surrounding the house. And she just looked at me and said, oh, don't worry about it, son. These things happen. I said, no, Mum, these things don't happen, not unpolice. Yes, sounds like you've got the, your parents are saints. Well, my father was an ex-rawmarine as well. And he served in the Indian Police Force, jungles on the lair. Got you. It's very good to never try to restrict all three sons, all three Skardos, all three sons in the Royal Marines. Andy, we're going to come on and look at this ruffy, toffee picture. It's you. It looks like you're holding a Kalashnikov or some similar weapon and you're in the desert with your chest webbing on, looking very, I was going to say, Rambo-like, but you haven't taken your top off yet. But I guess she just... Arms Security of Afghanistan. Yeah, was it, is this private security work? Private security work. How did you get into that? I basically received a phone call. I was in between jobs, having just sold Skardon School. And my brother Ken was working out there doing arms security, the same brother I went to Afghanistan with. And he said, how do you fancy working out here? And the salary was such, I couldn't really turn it down. So I said, yep, yeah, I'll do it. Then the company phoned me up, gave me the job, and said, right, two weeks, fight your kids, you're on your way. And Ken actually met me in Kabul Airport. We looked each other, burst into big smiles, I didn't even want to throw it, brother. 20 years later, we're back again. You're a bit mental, you're this brother thing you've got going on, aren't you? Well, each brother's got their own adventures. And Ken was a freelance cameraman in war zones, not only in Afghanistan, he did Lebanon at his peak, Cambodia, you know, a whole range of stuff. Wow. And what company did you work for? Were you working for... It's one of these sort of reputable companies or how does that work? It's a complete respect for a security company. There's a number of them, more specialising. And they're just basically picking guys. You've got a skill factor from the military experience. Yeah, got you. And what year was this, Andy? I went out there 2008. The first project I was given was this project manager was implementing arm security on an American basis. So I had a job at the airport and I had Bob Costner on the Pakistan border. So it's 375 Afghans when we ever seen them. Wow. And were there any kind of mishaps or adventurous bits, I'm betting there was. Well, the first one went to Bob Costner. I had my team and vehicles and we got behind an American patrol. And I was like, we're not going to go past that American patrol, just in case the bit trigger happy. And because they parked out, I parked out and I was like, how long are you going to be? So that's all right. Okay, guys stayed in the vehicle because I didn't want the Afghans to get out of the vehicle with weapons in case they mistook us for the Mujahideen or the Taliban. So I climbed out the vehicle and I took my body on, because I didn't want it to be thought as a suicide vest. Walked about 60 pages forwards. I just started stripping, just went naked. There's no, I've got nothing in the front, nothing behind me and shouted in my best English accent. Excuse me, would you mind awfully if I could go past you in the vehicle? The guy said about, yes, stay where you are. Ah, permanent. And when I eventually got to Bob Costner, I actually met the guy who said that, he said, I was just messing with him. But Bob Costner was amazing. In a sense. The perimeter fence was only test height. And I was like, I looked to the side, there's a one standard bad wire. I said, sir, what's happening here? Oh, it's a major cock-up. I said, what's the cock-up? He said, we've got the plans for the base 300. So we built it 30 meters. Then we discovered you brits were complete. So they ran out building materials. Oh, I got you. And, and I'm looking at your weapon here. Is that a Clashnikov or is it some version of it? It's an AK-47. AK-47, yeah. And they all they're all looking like quite well used. Where how does a security company operating in Afghanistan get such weapons? Well, in those days, black market, you can actually purchase them. Initially in the early days, you could pick one up for $50 and towards the end, they were costing some like $600 each. My AK-47 was manufactured in 1958. Wow. Is that an optical sight you've got on it? Yeah. And I actually put a hand grip at the front as well. I modified it. Yeah, I can see that. It looks fancy, but it's just an AK-47. Yeah. But they're very reliable, aren't they? That's the beauty of the AKs. I mean, people bury no weapons, dig them up 30 years later and they're still working. Yeah, I've got you. Blimey. And just flicking forward through the photos. This is just an iconic picture here. This is the stuff of like, you know, National Geographic or something. It's you, lent back against the sandbags with your weapon leaning up against them. Oh, yeah. And you really, I think you've gone rogue. You've gone native. Well, I end up working 14 straight months without any leave, seven days a week. And the whole idea, the way our thought process was working low profile, because on that project, I was looking after the American clients, so the security team, there's four of us looking after him. And the whole idea was to blend in. So I just wore local clothes, grew the beard, hoping that if we did get ambushed, they just bought, bought me three seconds. So I'm going to decide, is he Afghan or not? Yeah, I've got you. My money would be that you are. I think your parents are hiding something from your Royal. So what does a security operative carry on him? How many magazines would you guys be carrying? Well, I was fully aware there's an incident where security team got caught in an ambush and actually ran our ammunition. We're killed. So my whole thing was to ensure we didn't run out of ammo. So I carried something like eight magazines. We also had another bag with more magazines and my team carried the same. So we had a firepower. Where does the ammunition come from? Who supplies that to the, to the security operations? Well, again, that's purchased on the black market. I was asked by another expats, no, can you come with me tonight? This is in Jalalabad. And here's my sort of country manager. And I said, yeah, sure. And we got into the vehicle and we drew through to another bag and we started driving the countryside. And there's an intertree of us. And I was like, where are we going? He said, we're going to meet a guy and buy some ammo. I said, let me get this right. You're meeting a guy who knows you're carrying cash to buy ammo. That's not smart. And he's picked the location. I said, that's just not smart. We drove along in pitch blackness parked up this lay by with high ground to my left. And I was just waiting for the muzzle flashes, you know, eventually there's two guys appeared from the darkness with a box of ammo 7.62 brand spanking you. Where did it come from? The Americans go to the Afghan army, who were then proceeding to certain the black market. I've only gone back, I just said to this guy, don't ever, ever do that to me again. Letting people know you're carrying cash and letting them choose the ground just didn't make sense. No, that's not good drills, is it? No, it's not. Did you, did you have anyone killed them while you were doing this work? I didn't have anyone killed. I did have incidents. We were in an Afghan army training camp in the corners of the middle American base. And my American client said to me, Andy, I don't need your security guys to follow me around on camp. We're actually on the camp. I said, I hear what you say, Steve, but here's the thing. It's an Afghan training camp. In the last two weeks, I've noticed the Afghan officers have started carrying sidearms. I'm asking myself, why do they feel the need to carry a sidearm? And we don't know where the recruits are coming from. So I said, Lord, I have a duty of care to you, your family and friends that I take every precaution. So my security team will be with you. They won't be on your shoulder. They'll step back so you can do your work. And he was involved with construction and he was overseeing the construction of barracks. And then one particular day, I was driving around the corner and I could see all these Afghan army guys rushing out their accommodation. I was like, what's going on there? And I looked towards my right and I couldn't see anything. So I said to my driver who's an Afghan, what's going on? He said, they're watching the football, Miss Dandy. I said, football. I said, no one's playing football. And he just looked at me and said, they're anticipating football. I said, don't give me these anticipating football. Pull the vehicle over. He pulled me over and said, look, there's a guy running back from the opposite side. Go ask him what's going on. And he went across, came back and said, Miss Dandy, that's very, very bad. I said, what? He said, the tower guards just opened up, shot some Americans. I said, right in the vehicle, we're going to find a client. I played the client. I said, God, this has been an incident. I know Americans have been shot. We're going back into the compound. We're locking down. And he transpired that four Americans were out doing a training run who were actually doctors. And two of them got killed. The one was an American female. One got wounded and the fourth guy managed to hide behind the tank. But the Americans went and locked down and actually left the guy out there. And eventually a couple hours later, they managed to get him back. And then my client came out to me and said, you know, Andy, whatever you say now, it will go. I won't question it. You just don't know. Who shot them, Andy? Did I miss that? It was the Afghan army guard. Apparently the story behind it. His parents' village got bombed by the Americans and his parents were killed. And after he shot the Americans, he committed suicide. Yeah, well, yes. I think these conflicts have created a lot of upset people, haven't they? So it's been absolutely devastating. But now I know the winners. That's the trouble. Yeah, well, exactly. Well, the sociopaths that hoover up all the money, I wouldn't say they're winning because they're a bunch of losers, but terribly tragic. Did you ever hear of my friend? His name was Andy Bradsell. Can't say I did. No, he was when the private security thing first kicked off in Iraq. He took a contract with a company called Olive, Olive Security. Yeah, no, no. Yeah, he basically, one of his patrols got ambushed and him and a colour sergeant guy called Chris, I think his name was, might have been Chris McDonald. Yeah, they both got shot dead. Yeah, I remember the incident. Yeah, pretty extreme. I was watching a documentary on the Blackwater and all these kind of almost roguish companies that have cropped up. And next thing you know, I was looking at one of my best mate's dead bodies lying in the dirt in Mosul and his wife, who was a news anchor woman, just doing a voiceover saying, you know, Andy was everything to me. I'm like, that's my mate. But yeah, is there a little bit of, you know, live by the sword, die by the sword when we do this sort of work? Well, my idea was failure. I was paid to do a job and that's protect the client. And so that would have been me committed. Had to go to a firefight. I already turned my team. We do not surrender because they don't take prisoners. So what's the point of surrendering? You know, we get to firefight, we fight. Yeah, I was to tell my Afghans, you know, we have a duty of care to our client to protect him. But at the same time, I have a duty of care to you guys, you guys got family. And I was always surprised one day when one of the Afghans came up to me and said, you know, you're standing, you're one of the only people that we respect. And I sort of smile and said, why is that then? Because you give respect. When you give respect, you give respect back. No one else gives us respect. And some of the ways people respect them, I can never understand. No. Then the day you're in a firefight, you're going to depend on the guys. So you got to treat them right. And I learned lessons from my brother Ken. When he got to the main gate, the Afghans were, oh, Mr. Ken, Mr. Ken, there's all this manhugging. I was like, manhugging. I'm not into manhugging. The next time I got to the gate, I saw the way they looked at the other guys. I was like, apparently I'm into manhugging now. I'm a older brother who worked in Iraq. And he emphasised the whole thing about the low profile. See what the locals have got by what the locals have got, you know. And he worked for me. I mean, there were incidents of other teams being hit, especially the Americans, because they would all be body arm and arm vehicles, tarp windows, I wonder why they got hit, you know. And I did have one stage, a Kiwi complaint to my manager that my team weren't wearing helmets. So I was to wear helmets. And I said, hang on, here's the photograph. The only other people were wearing helmets driving vehicles. It's the American Army. So you're asking us to get hit by accident, because they might think we're American Army. It makes no sense. He said, I'll take your point. Don't wear helmets. So Lois is applying common sense. Yes, of course. Andy, what I'm going to do, I'm just going to come back and we'll finish off with your, the couple of Winston pictures that we didn't discuss. And then I think we'll need to do another podcast on another day to get part, to get part two in. So I'm looking now at your, looking now at your pass out picture. There's a guy who looks like he's dressed like a crow. Exit a man. Yeah, or a beef eater or something. And is that, is that you that he's looking at in that picture? And that picture on the furthest one to the right. Okay, I thought, I thought that might have been you. And did you have any views on the SLR versus the SA80? Well, my experience the SA80 was when it first came out. And there's just all sorts of issues. Like the magazine release was on the inside. So when you have the weapon, you accidentally release your magazine. And parts of it would be actually breaking all the time. My older brother was part of the team that did the trials. And they actually condemned it. But they got overruled. And it's like, no, that's what the manufacturer, even that's what you're going to have. And the one through the SLR, you hit someone, they went down, double decker bus. Yes. And that that was speaking to Dave Radband, who was former SFSG. And I think he was saying in Afghanistan that the, especially when you're fighting an enemy that could be really hyped up on drugs, you could hit them with 5.56. And they just keep keep coming at you. So the FSG have this like short version of a 7.62. I can't, I'm not familiar with the name of the web, anybody listening if you can put it below, or maybe Andy knows, but sort of a shorter, a shorter rifle, but it's 7.62. And it's obviously good for that kind of warfighting. No one through the short weapons is neither for vehicles. Yeah, that's that's why I had a folding button, my AK-47. Of course. Yeah, the SC80 was besieged with problems when it came out. I was one of the first troops in training to be issued it. They sorted out a few of the snags then. But it did make you wonder, do you think they commissioned the SC80 just so it could, because it was made by Enfield, wasn't it originally? It was, yeah. Do you think that was just to give this massive contract to a British, a British maker so the money kind of stayed in the country? Well, it can be a personal opinion, but my gut feeling that's what was behind it. Yeah, because the logical move would have been to get the the armour light, wouldn't it? The AR-16 that the Americans have used very successfully. And cheaper. And cheaper, yeah. Yes, I remember the first time, well I remember in Norway they had a problem with the weapons freezing as well, didn't they? I never did nor where I used to miss it. I was a real part of an implemish to cut off by the snow. I almost said lucky you then, because at the time I would have gone lucky you, but now looking back, what an amazing experience, but I couldn't get my head around it first. When you get your tent sheet up, or tents as we later had, you all stick your weapon outside in the snow in a kind of like a tripod thingy. I'm like, what? We just leave them outside. It's like, yep, kind of makes sense, because obviously if you warm your weapon up inside the tent, it's going to start rusting. I always thought that's fine. What if the enemy just comes through the night and take everyone, steal everyone's weapon? Both my brothers did the arctic warfare, and they got fond memories of it. I missed not doing it. I just had this thing that it's cold. Oh, it's just wonderful. And it's great to go back, I've lived in Norway on and off for a few years and in Sweden, and it's great to go back and put skis on and be a British person or an Englishman that's actually quite good at skiing, because it's not a sport we're known for in this country. No. And yes, the pass out parade, isn't it? I feel sorry for the guys now. They're having to do it over bloody Skype or something, right? They're doing it over the internet because of all this nonsense that's going on. So I mean, you look forward, don't you? 30, 32 weeks of training, it's now 36 weeks. You look forward to seeing your family and your friends at the end of it. My heart goes out to them as you're saying, it's the climax of all your training. Now that special moment is what you show your family. Yeah, these guys are missing out all that hard work and just not getting that reward. In my own case, quite was delayed, we actually finished the training by giving our green berries. We went on firefighting. Now when the firefighting was finished, then we went back to Limestone, tied up with the troop behind us and did the double king squad. Oh, well, we almost had a double king squad anyway, because we passed out with 55 blokes. Not all original, obviously, about, well, almost half were back troopers, but we were marching on to that parade square to the sound of Thunderbirds. We were a very long, long troop and I think good credit to us that we managed to keep it all in time and do the synchronized drill. Got a picture of you here and the, if I had to guess, I'd say you were in Northern Ireland, you're carrying a GPMG. Yeah, always the case, shortest guy in the United States gets the biggest weapon. Yeah, I had to carry the 84 in Norway and oh, God, just that just makes your skiing a whole lot harder. Yeah, was this, where was this for Manor or somewhere like this? That was basically four kill, Northern Ireland. Four kill, right. We were doing the rural stuff, not urban. Did you see much action? Did you lose anybody? We did, just after the second week. It's strange when we arrived and we were actually told, you know, be very, very careful after two weeks and towards the end of the tour and basically what they did the first two weeks is watching you, looking for any potential weaknesses. And what they did, they had a certain car, put forward registration on a local car, resprayed it to the local car colors. The only thing different was the aerial, instead of the short area, the long aerial. And I was actually on fault patrol and we just finished patrolling the village. And as we went back in, the next patrol would go now and actually passed a guy called Dusty Miller. He had a very short haircut. I was like, wow, is that the price you pay for an arm? And literally, I went to my room and put my weapon down. There was this huge explosion that shook the building, dust went everywhere. You ran outside and all you saw was this color and smoke. And apparently when they came out the gate, the first thing you got confronted with was this car. So they did a plate check and it was our local car, seeing every day of the week. So the patrol started to go down the road and they didn't really get a lot of chance to spread out. And when basically whoever put the car there was watching and Dusty got up to the car and peered through the window to look inside. They pressed the trigger and caught the full blast. The radio operator on the opposite side of the road got blown over the wall with a strike on his leg. He gave a contact report and got asked, what's happening? And he replied, I don't know, I don't know. I'm over a bloody wall. And we went straight into the lockdown. We weren't allowed to come patrol. They brought another regiment in to conduct our patrols just to make sure everyone calmed down. And then towards the end of the tour, someone across McLaren was killed the last two weeks. So that was predicted at the beginning happened on the actual tour. Yes, it was serious business over there, wasn't it? It was just so strange doing the patrols because I felt like I was walking around Devon, beautiful country. And the locals wouldn't talk to you, but in the evening of the past tour, they would apologize not be able to talk to you because they just didn't know who was watching. Just a crazy environment. Yes, it was. We were in the city, so Belfast and walking around with essentially what is a machine gun was just, I mean, it could have been Exeter, it could have been, you know, could have been Birmingham or somewhere. It's like you're in Britain or Ireland, whichever side of the fence is set on. It's just a major, major, a major city and there's you 19 years old carrying an automatic rifle and stopping people, you know, twice your age. Not just stopping people twice your age, but stopping IRA players twice your age. It's a bizarre experience. Then the I find funny is when you look at the pictures of that time and you just finished training, how babyface we looked. I'm thinking at the time I was thinking, Rory Commando, Matto and look at the pictures now like, I look like a kid. Yes. I'm just going to see, did I? I'm not sure I forgot that picture up for people at home. I'm just going to zoom in on it. The one in the in the sticks in Northern Ireland. So there we go, folks, in case you didn't see that one. And to finish off, Andy, I'd like to talk about this accolade here that you won. It says on it, hang on, I'm just going to write a time code down because right faster in this job. So yes, courage for leadership, unselfishness, cheerfulness, determination, courage. Yes, I'm not a full leadership. Yes. So is that the Commando medal? That's the Commando medal was presented in training to the the truth. And what did you do to earn that other than obviously being a good Commando recruit? It was I wasn't expecting it. I just as soon to approve it to one of the popular guys in the troop. I can only think in the sense that on the actual training side, I was one of the shortest guys there. When you look at like the endurance course, I remember coming through a training run on that. And the Sergeant Smith gave me a real bollocking where you've been and just laid into me and I was still trying to recover. And he goes clipboard out. Where did you start? As I was about the fourth group out and then you apologized. I actually come in at like 64 minutes as opposed to a lot of other people got around 72 minutes. I was also in the troop reached a core finals in boxing. And more for the fact that when they did the job of boxing, all the useless ones like me were in one half or the good ones in the other half. So when I got to the final, the guy who boxed was actually a box himself was like 65 beforehand, who lost way, came to my division and haven't reached the final. I remember looking around thinking, have I got talent? I don't know. Well, he didn't sort that one out exactly three times. I had a canvas. How did I get my stage hammer? I suddenly realized I'm in deep trouble. And the referee counted me. I was standing here. I was like, you know, I'm happy with that because there's only going to be one winner on that one. So why I got it? I don't know. But as far as I always remain positive, you know, I just don't believe in negativity. It doesn't get you anywhere. Always think positive, always just think at some point it's going to stop. Well, I was quite shocked. But it's nice to my two brothers, my parents and then King's squad, to see me actually see that. Absolutely brilliant. And it sounds like really well deserved. And it's not surprising you've gone on to do all that you've done, Andy. It's not over. No. Hey, that's what you're speaking for both of us there. Although things do seem to take different priorities once you become a parent, but I'm new to this parenting game. You're coming out the other end or the part where the birds fly the nest, is it? The babies fly the nest? They've left the nest, yeah. Yes. Andy, listen, it's been an absolutely fascinating chat. What a credit to the Royal Marines and a big hello to all the Royal Marines watching. I hope you're going to come back and chat to us again. Love to. And just on behalf of the Bought the T-shirt podcast and myself, massive, massive, massive, thank you. Just stay on the line, Andy, will I say goodbye to our friends at home? Then I'm going to come back and thank you properly. So to everybody at home, you saw the cover of Andy's book. The link is going to be below Andy's contact if you need to get hold of him. If he wants you to, that is. He'll give me and I'll put that below the video. So grab yourself a copy of Andy's book. Massive love to you all. Please look after yourselves. If you can like and subscribe and click the little bell thing so you get notified of the next podcast, that would be hoofing. Ciao.