 And we're on, in today's guest we've got Colin McLaughlin, SES Hero turned off a motivational speaker. You've also been on the hit show Who Dares Wins, SES. How are we brother? Yeah, good mate, good to see you. Yeah, good to see you. First of all, thanks for the invite, mate. You're home and thanks for coming on the show. Obviously you've got a great story. If you want to talk about how it all started, when you first joined the Ironman and stuff, what age and then, we'll basically take it from there. There's no questions, it's just a case of just talking. So on you go, brother. Yeah, I joined from quite an early age. I was 15 and like a lot of guys, especially to join the military and the infantry, came from a kind of almost a broken home stuff going on. And the military was like a second family to me. So that's kind of how I grew up. And Mum wrote a letter of special permission to join at that age. And I made the best of it like anything. I never really wanted to join the army, like a lot of young guys did. But I just, I mean, I made the best of it and got to enjoy it. And by the time I was 23, so I'd put my papers in for selection. And like any, in any environment you're in, you want to be the best version of yourself and the best version of what it is you're doing. And for me, that was special forces. So that was it. Joined up, went down to Hereford, and I joined a real fortune at time. I joined the right squadron at the right time. And we had a lot of quite high profile operations that I was lucky enough to be involved with. And left after my capture in 2005. And since then being involved in TV, book, motion capture, video games, charities, ambassadors, and public speaking. Yeah, you've done some magic things, man. It's when you first joined at 15 then, was that a scary part for you, especially if you didn't want to join? Yeah, particularly. I was in with a lot of guys that were a lot older than me, a lot bigger, a lot stronger. I wasn't particularly big. I wasn't particularly fit. I wasn't really convinced at the armies where I wanted to be. I wasn't particularly enthused by violence and guns and stuff. But I found a way to make myself good at those things and make myself valuable within the environment I was in. So yeah, I just kind of made the best of it and grew up quite quick. So was that just basically adapting to this, the environment and just learning as you go? Yeah, and it's a good way to look at it. It's like anything. And you look at the army historically, and that's always what they've done. They've adapted to different environments, whether it's the desert, the jungle, urban environment, and become better at their enemy and the environment they've worked in. And I guess for me, that was the same. I was in that environment. I wanted to make the best of it. Because you're one of the youngest as well, 23. You had passed the SCS first time as well. Yeah, passed first time. I was 23 when I went on selection. I was probably being younger since or probably before, but 23 is quite young. Kind of generally mid-20s to early 30s is the average age. How was the training? Was it tough? And how long? Yeah, so the training is slightly different from selection. The training, I got a week off my OC at the time. Guy Richardson, really, really good guy. He doesn't stay far from here and ended up coaching the British Lions. He was my OC at the time and he let me away just before selection to go and train for it. I'm not sure I had a real good idea of what I was training for and that might be a good thing because if you know what's in store for you, sometimes you can fail yourself before you start. But we didn't have any Royal Scots in the SCS, so I had nobody really to ask. But a couple of guys had been on and failed quite early on, so I didn't really have a knowledge of it. But I trained for the things that I knew about and the rest of it I just took each day as a time, because it's six months, it's quite a long process, so you can have to break it down like any long thing and make it work. What happens if you get injured during the course of the training and is that you're out or didn't you start again? Yeah, if you're injured enough to not be able to make times, then yeah, you have to come off and that's part of it is staying injury-free. It's a long time, six months. So you need a bit of luck as well. People talk about, oh, you just got to be fit or whatever, but I think a lot of it is luck in being able to keep physically robust, but equally as important if not more as the mental side of it. Obviously, we're here today to talk about one of the major talking points, which is PTSD. It's really bad, I don't know, I'd say it's a very hot topic. Just now, we should be a hot topic every day. I think there's 10 troops killed ourselves the last 12 days. Hi, and you see that every now and again, you'll get a spike and it will come to the public's attention and then it may be dissipate without any real positive action coming out the end of it. So it'd be good to see things like this raise awareness and some positive action coming out of it. We have a lot of probably too many military charities out there now and if anything, it can be a bit of a minefield for veterans knowing exactly where to go. I think one of the things that we lack at the minute is a kind of 24-7 emergency helpline app website that people can tap into in the early hours when they're feeling vulnerable for whatever reason and get the support they need and to date that we don't really have that. Because everything is the mindset. When you get captured then it was at Basra? Yeah. How long were you held hostage for? It was only a day. I was captured in the morning and rescued that night and like you say, a lot of that's just mindset. And for me, when I do talking, I talk about that mindset because sure, selection and training in the SS will prepare you for capture and stuff. A lot of it, I take back to my childhood though, you know, being locked in a room, being beaten up. That was stuff I was used to. I was comfortable in that environment. Now, it's very hard to train people, beat them up repeatedly, to train them for that. But the mindset's key to that. If you've been somewhere in your mind before, it's easier to prepare like in any elite sport or any emergency service. So that's obviously a difficult thing. So all the stuff that you've come back from the past as well that is, like I say, mental. So you adapt and you kind of get used to it. Do you think for the things people in the army as well do you believe? Do you believe in worlds as such as well? Do you believe it's a way forward? Because obviously I've read that you're more chance of committing suicide coming out in the army than you've actually got in war. It's like two times as higher to actually die in battle. So you've got more chance to actually commit suicide because obviously the catastrophic stuff that people must see, it's no good for human beings to kind of see that stuff. I think it comes down to a number of things. It's quite complex, but one of the things is we're trained for war. So we've been through war like scenarios in the past. So mentally we've prepared for some of it. We're not mentally prepared from when we leave and the support isn't there. And that's different to what happens to veterans when they've been in the service where they do an element of training for war and then there's support while they're there. But when they come out, A, the training isn't there for things like CV, house stuff. But what happens if you get in trouble with drugs, alcohol and just paying the bills, holding down relationships that have been probably fragile because they've been in the military, those sort of things are just the little things that can tip people over and where the support mechanisms aren't in place. There's not a safety net to catch them. That's when you can get problems. And we already know that those guys within those middle years are probably the most at risk even out with the military. So if you put the military stuff on top of that, it stands to reason they're the highest at risk. Because the stats are 75% of suicide animal. So who do you think is to blame then? Is it governments then or not enough for especially people who are serving in the army when they come out to have the safety net there for somebody to go and speak to? Because it's men, especially if you're in the army. It's tough. So for people to admit they've got a problem and they've got demons in here, they're battling. So I'd imagine it'd be tough to go and speak about the things they've seen, deaths or whatever. Do you think there should be a bigger safety net for... Do you think that should get put in place when you first start the army? So when it comes out that it's already there and you kind of understand that a wee bit more? Yeah, I think there's a lot there. And I think that there's a number of different layers that you can put in place. And certainly the blame game part of it who's accountable, but I think along that journey there's a lot of things we can put in place to prevent long-term some of these issues become life-threatening. So when somebody at the entry level joins that there's a certain element of support and kind of forewarning for stuff and post-traumatic incidents, there's a certain amount. So certainly if I speak about the capture, I did the capture after that. No debrief, no decompression, no timeout. It was just from one job to another. And I wouldn't condone that. I just think that there's... We can do better to help people get the best chances of not having stuff after it and there's things in place. The other time is that little period between people leaving the service and when they've just left, because that's a critical time and a lot of servicemen and women when you speak to them hand in their ID card and the next day they feel like they've fallen off the edge of a cliff because suddenly they've know nothing around them. And I think that could be an easier transition where we put people in place back geolocated back in their own home location with a support network around them. Because they've got a lot more time in their hands. They're probably used to being busy all the time, regimented, getting up early and being kind of toted what a day. So then they come back into normality. It's easy to go, fuck me and they don't... Their heads are back all over the place because as a man I'm watching just now called Joe Dispenser. He's all about the mindset. So what happens is if you think about that trauma, it releases a chemical and it relates to that emotion, how you felt that time. So if you were thinking about maybe your youth or all the trauma, it releases that chemical. So the brain doesn't know if that's happening in the present moment or back in the past and that's when it can trigger all the bad stuff. So for you, when you went through your capture and stuff, how did you deal with that? Did you deal with it pretty easy or did you try and block it out? Or how did you deal with it? Have you struggled with PTSD? I've struggled with a lot of symptoms that are linked to PTSD like sleep loss and hyper vigilance in places and stuff like that. And those are all atypical symptoms and a lot of veterans will tell you they have same symptoms to more or less a degree to the effect where they're impacting on the lives and stuff. I think right after the incident, it was so raw, I just kind of got on with it. But kind of research has shown that any really high traumatic incident you've been through can take up to about 12 years to reach a peak and that's sometimes when it can surface and it can be triggered for a whole number of different reasons depending on what's going on in your personal life. For me, I felt like over the last probably two years that's come to a peak for me where it's come to a period where I've lost sleep, I've overanalyzed things, I'm hyper vigilant in places. Or I've had elements of those symptoms before but they haven't been as bad to the effect where you're losing sleep, where you forget where you're going and you become clumsy and stuff like that. And those are all pretty atypical symptoms. So you must have had a good stroke, did you have strong pupil around you as well? Friends you could speak to because you've done great things especially with a motivational speaker and then being on the channel for SCS, who those ones? Yeah, and I think the TV, that particular series has shown one side of it and that mental side always trumps the physical and that mental side is key to everything and they kind of balance each other and anybody, you know yourself when you're balancing the mental and the physical they complement each other. If you feel good, you train better and if you train better, you feel well and they kind of all endorphins are going and they complement each other. When one of those is out of sync, it always affects the other one but for me the mental side is always that one that's had control. And you look at any of the elite sports stars when it comes to the top level and they're in the final and it's six, it's all in a tiebreaker, it's a penalty shootout, it's nothing to do with technical ability, it's nothing to do with physical, it's all mental. It comes down to the mindset because they always go that extra, but the extra inch is to fear they're learning how to control it. You've got, whether you're going to do stand-up comedy or like go do active whatever it is, motivational speaking, the fear is always there but we can utilise it to either create or else we go backwards and the fear also destroys because everything has the mindset and I'll constantly keep repeating it. So what's the next step that you think should be getting put in place then because obviously this probably happens every day with 10 people getting lost in 10 days and committing suicide. Obviously the media is kind of the mainstream media has jumped on it. So what should be the plans or the things to get in place to try and create the change and create the massive awareness to say like enough's enough, it needs to fucking stop, do you know what I mean? Yeah, I think there's a number of things. In the short term, we need a 24-7 trusted device at website phone line that veterans know they can tap into and speak to like-minded people. So for me, that's training veterans to speak to veterans, not them speaking to doctors and psychs. They'll do so much good, but you want to speak to someone that speaks the same language that has been through the same stuff because they can relate back to you how they or their friends have come through the other side of that dark tunnel whereas a psychologist will give you it from a Freudian perspective or stuff. And I'm not saying they won't do good, but I think people that speak your language will probably help you along that path better. So that's the first kind of short-term stuff and we're doing a lot of that at the minute with who dares cares and JP Morgan are building up perhaps so that hopefully at the end of this month they'll go live and that'll be a 24-7 capability. But long-term, I think the M.O.D. have to tie into local communities and networks and be able to have a plan from when a person leaves all the way through until the end of their life because they have a duty of care. You know, that duty of care, if you're signing up to say, I'm going to put my life on the line, I'm going to, my family will be my second priority and I'm going to go and do all this stuff, then there has to be a duty of care that as you leave and go into Civvie Street, you're going to give them the best chances because there's a support network around you. It is scary to think though that the numbers are so high. Since you've been in there, have you lost a lot of people from suicide as well? Yeah, I've lost a lot of people. And one of the reasons we set up the charity is because after my public profile was raised a little bit through the TV and stuff, I was getting contacted through social media by guys that were struggling and women and just saying, yeah, I'm struggling to get a bed this morning. I'm struggling with alcohol, with drugs, getting a job, my confidence. And I would lose, I would lose these people every few weeks. One would just disappear off the radar and I'd find out they committed suicide. And having spoken through to Cami through at Hamilton, we decided to set up who dares, cares. And since then, I'm glad to say we've saved a lot of lives, but we can only do with what we have. So it's growing networks and having them in place. So that no matter where you are in the UK, there's somewhere for you to tap into. And where can people contact you then? Where can people get this information? Who are in the struggle? Is it just servicemen? Or can it be anybody? No, one of the things about who dares cares is it's for anybody that's encountering stress. We advertise emergency services. So we have people from fire service, prison service, NHS, police. But primarily, most of the people, as you would expect, are veterans that get in touch with stress issues. On Facebook, we have our website, our Apple Go Live at the end of the month. We'll have a dedicated phone line that will be manned 24-7. And if we can't help, we're tapped into other agencies that can and we can sign posting help. So anybody can contact you. So if anybody's in the struggle, man, just pick up the phone and message on Facebook. There's also Chrissie South and Michelle who's a 24-hour suicide center for anybody. Just pick up the phone and phone because that's the scary part of calling, especially in the army. You've got the bravado, I'm tough, this and that. But as men, it clearly shows that we're not tough if 75% of suicides are male. And it's the numbers are rising massively each year. Do you think we should be... Do you think schooling comes into play with this as well? Getting taught how to handle feelings and emotions from a young age instead of bottling it up and then the time we hit the 20s, 30s, it just comes crashing. And that's when the mental side is pretty all over the place. Absolutely. I think mental health, right across the board, of course, any corporate organization, sports team, whatever, if you've got the right mental health support networks in place, your productivity, whatever it is you're doing is going to be better. I think that mental health, I think there's things you can do as long as you create platforms so that people know where to go and how to make that first step in terms of having the conversation. From there, it gets easier and easier and easier. And anybody that's written about their experiences, they've talked about it, they've listened, they've went out in the hills, went for a brew, even are walk-talking brews, that's why they are so successful. You go out in the hills, you walk up, you have a bladder with people that have been through the same journey or have had similar experiences to you and come out the other side. And it just gives you that peace of mind that you're not on your own. There are people that have been that journey and come out the other side. That's the scary part of sitting and thinking, right, I'm on my own, I've got nothing here. But everybody's got worth. Everybody's got something to give in life. If you're still breathing, you've got something to give. For me personally, it's hitting the house, going for a walk, fresh air, nature, connecting. I'm social media daft. I know this is addiction for me now and I'm constantly looking at other people living their life and going, they seem to have a great life but I'm doing and it kind of takes your mind away in what they're doing. So for me personally, it's gone up the house, even eating good and I might not look at it now, I'll put on a wee bit of weight, but it's a, I think eating... Looking good, Nick. I think eating clean, walking, exercising. Exercise is a good fix for that couple of hours but the problems are still going to be there. It's trying to get the routine problems as well. As I think out there in a child where you're talking about the traumas and the stress and sometimes we don't want to fucking dig it up because it's scary. It is, it's really scary. For you yourself, are you still exercising? Are you still keeping fit? Are you still... Yeah, I've got my kitties at the minute. So yeah, I always down tools when the kitties are here. So a ditch work, I don't hit the gym and I try and spend every hour I can with them because, you know, I've only got them for a month over the summer and they go back and I'll regret not have wasted that time. But once they go back, I try and get myself into a routine where I know a plan, I try and have goals like anybody else. So I try and hit the gym at least three times a week if I can, even if it's for half an hour, an hour. I know I've done it and it's something I've achieved and those small goals that you set, they all add up and they give you e-confidence builders. That's all about taking the steps to the goal and the progression. It's not about the finishing line and getting to the finishing line and achieving it. It's about enjoying the journey, trying to stay in the present moment and enjoying it especially. Were you, were your kids, were you serving then? No, I wasn't serving. They were only seven and five now. So they came after service and in many ways that's good because, you know, I was able to be there as they were, you know, first born and have a kind of hands-on part. But I know a lot of veterans and still serving soldiers don't because they're not giving that privilege and yeah, you miss a big part, you give up a lot. Especially if you're, it's your full life in it. If you've got kids and you're away from them, that's the mental side of it as well. It's not just what you're seeing in battles. The mental side of being away from your family, away from your friends. When you're there, do you have phones or do you have, when you're still contact? Yeah, it depends where you are and what you are. You have blues letters, you have the sat phones, sometimes you've got phones, you can get back, you've got access to IT and on the computer and FaceTime and stuff. But a lot of the time you're not. There's only certain allocation and if you've got a couple of hundred guys and you've only got a couple of hours of, you know, you're toiling to get any real quality time in terms of messaging or writing Homer stuff. But yeah, I mean, it's one of the things that they give up. So I think it's one of the things that when they come back, they should just be giving a little hand up to say, you know, this is going to help with whether it's relationship building or whether it's housing, jobs, community. Because community is a big part of it. When you lose that community and you speak to any veteran, the biggest thing they'll miss is the banter and being around the guys and girls and being out operations. Once they come back, they lose that sense of kind of duty, purpose, responsibility and community. So that's why we try and recreate that. We go out in the hills and you're blithering with people that have, oh, I remember when we were in Ireland or a member of Iraq and you know, you're speaking to people that speak the same language and that in itself brings them back to where they are and they feel free in a safe environment to talk. And that's what it's all about safety because if you're speaking to psychologists and I'm not putting psychologists down, but they are learning from books. If you're, if you're having an Iraq or whatever it is, you want to speak to somebody who understands how you're feeling. Do you know what I mean? Do you think you've came, obviously you've got the social media, you've got the platform now, obviously help others, do you get a lot more people coming towards you? Does that, how are you dealing with that? Because it must be a lot of weight on your shoulders now. I think that's one of the things. I think I always thought that I was quite solid. I had this solid mental resilience, but as I was starting to lose people through social media, that was affecting my own mental health. I would wake up in the morning, I'd encourage somebody to go to the gym or get out the door or get up the hills. I'd feel good about myself. And then that was, that had a kind of counter side to it because as more and more people were getting in touch and I was trying to juggle people and speak to them and reassure them, people were falling through my fingers and that was affecting me and I thought I can't sustain it. I'm one person. So that was a reason. Were you blaming yourself for some of them? I think you do sometimes because you can't, you're not there. You're not at the end. You're not there to answer everybody on social media and not within the time frames they want. And sometimes that can be frustrating because they'll suddenly have a perception of you that probably isn't real because we can't physically, you've got a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand followers. How do you keep them all and how do you interact with them and keep them all happy? You can. You can only do what you can. And you can't blame yourself because what happens is if you blame yourself, you've always the matter to your energy levels down there. So how can you help other people then? It's about doing what you can and realizing, do you know what? I can't save the fucking world. They're not gods or whatever. We can't save everybody. What we can do is what we know and how we can create awareness. So for the stuff like who there's wins, how did all that come about? How did you end up getting that role when that part was a massive show? Yeah, it's a big show and still ongoing. And at the time I was down on the books to help out in the TV industry with anybody that wanted help from a kind of military consultancy point of view. So make sure guys weren't fine when it was in the wrong shoulder and had the never ending magazines and went back to front and all that. That's that's the kind of thing I want you to do about the continuity side. There wasn't a lot of work for it and if there was, it was in London or abroad. And then someone contacted me and said, I've got this show, it's SES who there's wins, but they don't have any SES. It's all SPS guys have got on it. So I went down, met with the production team that made it Mino and they were like, we'll just put the cameras up and leave you to it. You can you can just run it as you want. And that the autonomy of that felt quite genuine and it felt like it was something I wanted to be involved in rather than a kind of typical, you know, kind of fake TV show where it was supposed to be reality, but it wasn't really. Did you enjoy it then? I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the first series and I enjoyed the distance traveled with a lot of the people that were on it. I felt like we'd made a real impact on their lives. That was people that we were setting off that had a real outer coating of mental resilience having been through that and confidence to get through, you know, boundaries that they probably wouldn't think they would have had they not been through otherwise and everybody else that watched it as well. It's a very popular show. It was a training as tough as it looked. I think, well, we only had kind of a week with these guys and it's a six month selection. So there's obviously only certain things we could do. Having said that, some of the individual things that we took out like the fan dance and the CFT, that's they're exactly the same as what you do in selection. It's just do it on a daily basis. Not as intense, but yeah. So for the motivational speaking stuff, because I know you're doing all this, how did that come about? Also, if you enjoying speaking to everybody else and trying to lift our spirits and guide them a bit, you enjoying that? Yeah, I love traveling around. I love seeing different organizations and what they're doing and the little things that they might want support in, whether it's teamwork leadership, motivation, elite performance. And I find that through some of the experiences I've had and some of the journeys and some of the learning points from it, I think if you can adapt to that and you can do anything. So there's a lot of positive messages that come through and I love doing it. That's good. For your kids, if they want to join would you advise them to join? Or would you kind of say no? It's a good question and I think it would depend where the military is at that time. I think whenever you want to, if you want to join the military, there's a lot of things you want to do and operations is part of it. Nobody wants to join the army, serve 22 years, get out and all they've done is kind of guard Buckingham Palace or something. You want to do operations. Having said that, you don't want it to be too, you don't want to get into an operational cycle you can't get out of and that's why we're seeing problems now where promotional side the training they can all other stuff the character building stuff that comes with the military wasn't happening because guys were just coming from operation to operation that can burn you out and it can have a kind of negative effect on the military as well because people don't think that's me, I've done my conflict. I'm getting out now rather than seeing it as a career. So it does damage on both counts especially now where we see the regulars are shrinking. There's many people lack that the last there's a lot of people last the 22 years or whatever they did they get to that level or the numbers drop massively? I think now you would see the numbers drop and traditionally kind of prior to 2000 I think you would have saw a lot of people come through and do their 22 years and see it as a career with sporadic operations whether it's the Faultlands of First Gulf and Northern Ireland. Now I think if you looked at 2000 onwards that you'll see a lot of people have come out in really short cycles because they go do operations and think right that if that's operations they have seen it and be it's not for me for a long term. Is the numbers is it because there's more wars then because people have seen that much shit that they want to drop out or is it as bad as it was in the 60s or 70s? I think it's a mix of things. I think that I think that some of the support elements so that you're seeing guys having a career within the military where there's all the things that are out with operations. So all the times that you go to different countries and you do training and you learn about that country and you've got the kind of R&R there. You've got your promotional courses so that when you leave regardless of the operations you've had a career that's shaped you in one way or another based on everything you've done over that 22 years and it's been a kind of gradual hill it's climbed and manageable whereas kind of post 2003 with operational cycle guys are going in there and just at 100 miles an hour for three to five years and like what, that's me I've done like five, six tours which traditionally you might in a generation before would take you 22 years to do that number of tours and they're just coming out and being burnt out and with all that trauma that's come with it with people that they've lost left and right in them. That's where so the 22 years they're getting kind of adjunct they're getting worked too hard. I think at the minute with the operational cycle post 2003 I think that's what's happened. I think a lot of people have become either disenchanted with what conflict is or the operational burnouts being too much or they're not getting time to do the promotional side of it that they want to do or the other things that they kind of wanted to do within the military hasn't happened and coupled with that some of the opportunities have come alongside conflicts like the security industry that's taken a lot of the military away where would they see well look, I can earn in five years what I earn in my entire career in the military so I'll go and do this and at least I'll be kind of set for life and that's a very hard cycle to get out of. So you're trying to obviously doing it for the money trying to blast it out so they can get out quicker but realistically it's really fucking their mind because they're doing that much stuff. It's scary. It is. It's scary to think that that's the kind of shit that's going on. It's scary to think did you see before you got an operation that do you get briefed or just in case I look you's are going there such a place where do you get a timeline or do you get total? Yeah, there's there's normally briefs and there's very few operations you'll go on where there's not some kind of brief and training leading up to it. But in the past you may have done a six months tour in Northern Ireland there would be about six months build up to that and people get a whole load of leaving a load of training work within your multiples you get all environmental stuff about what what what Northern Ireland's like and then you'd go off and do your tour and even within that tour you'd get a period of R&R and then after you'd come back you'd have leave and you probably wouldn't go back out on an operational tour for a year or two years three years now guys are doing six months coming back and a few weeks later a few months later going straight back out could be Iraq again could be Afghanistan and although that's slowing down now there was a chunk there after 2003 where that was taking its toll. See after an operation you came home did some people how was the mindset then? Was it kind of this doesn't feel real back in Normality and did that feel weird? Yeah I think what we forget is that we take normal ordinary people that's what a servicemen and women are myself included and we put them in extraordinary situations and then we lift them back up and we put them back in you know 45 Main Street in Glasgow Edinburgh and they go to the shops and they cut the grass and those are very difficult hats to keep on and off particularly with some of the stuff they've been doing particularly when they've been hyper-vigilant for such a long stay and then come back home it's very hard to switch on because there's a paranoia kicking then they feel weird that walking down the street and they constantly on edge obviously whatever you've seen and operations to come and they get paranoid they try to sleep and noise easy or like because that's what you're trained to do to be aware I think so and I think the vast majority of servicemen and women that come back from operations those are typical symptoms where it's very hard to switch off and relax and zone out you're always in this state of you know you'll go in somewhere it's crowded and you'll be just wondering where the exits are and who that person is it came in and sat down there with the backpack you just it's very hard to come out and extract yourself from that and just relax and when you're going at that state the mind's under constant pressure Yeah, did you are you are you dealing with it better now then that you're out and you've been out for a few years now is it have anything been coming is it becoming easier is it still the same are you still aware they have the situation I think there's certain elements that I still struggle with the hyper-vigilance is one sleepings another but there's a whole host of things that can help and I've certainly found it helpful tapping into those as you know spoke myself to psychologists I've had certain elements of medication that help with sleep I certainly find speaking and sharing to other people who have been through like-minded stuff very helpful I'd recommend that to anybody is the kind of first step particularly I think people think army or whatever and they think well there's this element of macho stuff but if they see someone in special forces at the frontline that's coming out with it I think it's easier then to come out themselves and say you know what I've struggled with one or two of that stuff myself and that's the first step there's almost those two people so you think you're standing doing your motivational talks that's a bit of expressing that's a bit of trying to get you're expressing yourself but it's also helping you as well because you're kind of getting it out there and other people come to you and say they've got that same problem so you're kind of not alone as well if you know what I mean yeah and it's very it's very funny because when I when I first started somebody said I'd be good if you came in and did a talk and I thought I'm not really I'm not really a motivational talker like a lot of army I'm capable of standing up in front of people and talking but I didn't didn't know I had the right messages to say and I felt that after I'd told my story I felt almost like when I'd written down my manuscript it was like a whole way had been released it was like I'd I'd almost rid myself of a lot that was kept up that I had to express myself so I think every time I stand up in front of people and tell my story or any time there's a therapeutic element to that that's fairly before you makes you feel good was it stuff like yoga or stuff like that and the people is that there like breathing techniques are there's a whole host of stuff so yeah yoga meditation there's an app I've downloaded recently called calm I'd recommend it to anybody it's got sleep stories meditation sounds even stuff you're going off to sleep you set it for kind of five minutes and it has water falls all that kind of stuff that has a whole host of stuff on it that's really helpful so yeah I would say animals animals are really good you get a pet you horseback UK's famous for that and they've got Bravehound and stuff and they found it working with animals and stuff helps so there's a whole host of stuff out there just tapping into what works and it's trying to get what's right for you as well because not necessarily it's right for you it's right for everybody else including myself when you did you wrote a book as well when did that come out so this last leadership book already came out I wrote my autobiography the Pilgrim the M.O.D. keep putting the blockers on that they keep saying it will set a dangerous president and we can't tell people you know and yeah I watch everyone else especially from the show that have written their books and yeah pinchies because you there's that element of injustice and there's nothing I've got to tell that people haven't heard they've heard it on who dares wins have heard on the Channel 5 show I've spoke about it in the public speaking it's been on the Discovery History Channel there's no secrets in that book that nobody hasn't heard however I just wish that the M.O.D. would just be a less prehistoric in their approach and say you know it's not this 30 years wait people know about selection people know that special forces are away working and just let me tell my story because everybody else has you know so they try to put the blockers on it yeah and it's recent as two weeks ago I said to the M.O.D. I'll give you three options I can write this as fiction if you want I can take out the the capture chapter you can give me back unedited copy and they refused them all so it just feel it feels almost personal and away because you see everybody else you know Foxy brought his one out a couple of weeks ago and Middleton's has been out it just feels I think it's around 2018 is that just against you I think some well it might not just be against me but I think the arguments they use for not putting my book out are kind of hypocritical to what the other books have been out there if it's setting a dangerous president well what have all these other ones done if you're saying that we can't talk about SF operations well what are some of these other ones doing you know if you're saying well we can't say we're working with intelligence services or no one knows about your capture well guess what everybody knows about it it was all over sky new so let's not kid each other so then what happens if you release it I don't I think they would put the block on it to release it I'm I'm I'm lost I need a lot a lawyer that will come on and take the MLD because I think a decent lawyer would be able to find a lawyer who's out there and help calling get his book out give him a shout give him a message because yeah I'd appreciate it everybody's got a story calling and it's no fair that your story's kind of it's not getting out there because there's a lot of frustration there because a lot of people relate to your story as well and try and get the help to I don't know whatever it is it's on the book but for people to everybody's got an interest in reading it revolving through some shit do you know what I mean yeah could you not change they're not you've changed they've changed whole bits to appease the M.O.D. to try and get the book out there but they just they don't want it out and there's nothing I haven't said and there's nothing that will risk soldiers' lives and that's the main thing and that's that's the only bit I really care about and and so the fact they've put the blockers on it it does that it can only come down to personal because there's no part of that book that I haven't already told on either national TV or any other platform I don't know because I know you are coming on it is everywhere about your caption this and that and like I say that's a story that people there isn't obviously for yourself it's grim but for people of that that aspect perhaps people in all this stuff being captured and what you've went through and that's that with your book sales yeah I think there's one side of it's that's the SF side that people always want to read about and I think another one is the journey the life journey and I think there's a lot of good that comes out of that because very few people live their lives and don't go through some kind of trauma or don't experience stress to some level I think there's messages in that book that give a lot of people hope and will hopefully if the book gets out there do a lot of good so yeah I hope it does one day Is there anything again in the pipeline to get it out there or is you're trying everything? Well that was the last one with the with the M.O.D and all personnel have changed so I hope they would see sense but Foxy's got through and and mine never I don't know I'd like I think a decent lawyer would be able to look at the M.O.D. and say look with a few tweaks we can make this book work just how like what is it you want us to do to get this book out there and have you spoke to the other boys then who've got their books as well how can they not guide you and put you onto somebody else to I think they've got I think one of the things one of the things is when you have you when you're starting to form form your own journey and your own path it's it's harder to be able to help other people because they're they've got their own path they're trying to make it work they're they're they're carving out a TV and a book career for themselves it's very hard for them then to come in and try and help you from a flank and I get that I get I get that side of it but you know I think probably I have more of a story to tell in my book I was I was involved in some quite high profile operations so there is a story there and I think the problem is they might not want elements of the capture to come out they might they might feel that there's an element of duty of care failure or support or that the SF world might not be what it's what it's deemed to be but for me I don't think it will do any damage from that side people realize what a vulnerable position sometimes SF are in I think there's a I think by the time you finish the last page of it you've got a kind of uplift and feeling that you know no matter what adversity you come through there's a life at the end of it I think that would scare people about to join maybe the army if they didn't go fuck that I'm looking through that well it doesn't necessarily tell it's certainly not an atypical army story I think that would be I think SF would be the kind of tip of the spear part so I don't think it would put anybody off it might put a lot of people forward for for going for the army certainly hearing about some of the adventures let's not forget the whole book isn't really just the SF part it's my it's my childhood it's the general army it's the SF part in the career after so this F part is only really part of it I need to read this book I need to read this book you need to get the book out there when you were so you see when you were captured for the day as well you had it was the British army that came yeah so we were captured we'd we'd went down to the border come back up got captured and we're held in the police station in Basra unfortunately for us em a green a green army unit had kind of put two into it together and realized we're in there and yeah they had a bit of armor and stuff and they there was a big riot outside the police station there was fire and RPGs and all sorts and luckily we managed to to get rescued em just right place right time as opposed to being wrong place wrong time before exactly let us say you were lucky because I read that you were blindfolded yeah naked yeah it was and and the SF prepare you to a degree for that they'll never prepare you fully it's very hard to so that element helped em and I think a lot the childhood stuff helped as well it was a kind of there was an element of no badly how beating you are you know you get through the next day and certainly that was with me there you know I was certainly always conscious of the fact that no matter how badly physically I'm broken down I can mend mentally I'm the kind of gatekeeper of how I'm feeling that's a that's an amazing way to look at thinking you are in control your mindset and you've obviously learned that from your childhood from speaking to you that whether it's abused mentally whatever and then driving that through till when you get a capsule does that kind of relate to what happened when you were younger then you kind of just accept it become you know what you can beat me black and blue you can fucking kill me but you ain't gonna break me up here did you become do you become numb then Colin do you become like fearful fearless do you become like fuck it basically do you think you've got to do I wouldn't say it's numb it might be numb physically it is certainly not numb mentally and I would never say that you become fearless anybody any soldier that tells you they're fearless or they're never feared as a liar there's loads of times I've been afraid and what there are loads of times in the future I'll be afraid so anyone tells you it tells you that it's it's nonsense it's how you manage the fear that's the key it's what what you do with it and how you shape it to your best advantage and not those of the the people on the other side mm-hmm fair play to you mate and for the future going forward what's the plans for you but if you've got the public speaking is going really well I do the motion capture for the video games which is an Edinburgh Rockstar I love that as well the charity is taking off I'm ambassador for a number of charities I do whatever I can for veterans anybody in mental health love the charity football hoping to address okay oh Tommy Sheridan the king don't need to replace him anyway mate because my back is so we carrying him mate he's in his 60s or 70s do you know what I mean he he needs to gear up man but he tried he tried Tommy erm the computer game stuff because I was talking to Gordon yesterday's about computer game fun is er so what is that then? yeah so I mean I've been with Rockstar games working with them for about 10 years now and they started from even then a successful company but I've watched them just grow and grow and explode and the technology now is phenomenal and I can't say too much about the game side of it because a lot of it's more secret than what it was when I was in the special forces but the motion capture side of it is basically a large massive kind of room warehouse size covered in the balls and you do the movement and then it goes straight on to the video games and they just put a different phase of that guy doing this all the moves rolling about and holding the gun I do a lot of the motion capture when you finish the game you'll see in the credits it comes up thanks to Colin McLaughlin that's brilliant man that's amazing I've seen Colin McGregor doing one was that what's the one what's the army the college duty so that's the kind of stuff you do yeah so I've done the Grand Theft auto series and er yeah so I've been working for 10 years so you can imagine the sort of games I've been involved in but I love it every day is different one day you're a fighter pilot next minute you're on a horse so yeah that's fucking brilliant and er I just like to thank you man for your your story thank you thanks for getting out there and all the good work you do being brave mate and like I say anybody that's serving a any out in battle man it takes a lot of balls but it takes bigger balls to admit you've got problems so for anybody in the struggle on the track get contact can you say it again how we can try and create awareness and get people the help that may be needed yeah totally we're always we're always here we've got the who there's cares Facebook page we've got the website who hyphen dares hyphen cares dot co dot UK we'll have the app in the website up and running 24 seven and yeah we're we're always there's somebody always here so just reach out let us know and there'll be someone that can help amazing mate just like to say thanks for coming on thanks for seeing me and we've also got a documentary out in the second of September and the homeless documentary at the meeting Glasgow so people can subscribe to the page and let people know what this documentary it's very powerful and I appreciate it thanks for everything again mate pleasure have a good day cheers