 You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live. Your story is like, that's not defeated you though. The 60% burns like in hospital for years just going through all this stuff. That's the powerful thing about your story. It's like you've not let it defeat you, you've not just lay there and fucking give up like you're now here, now you do your runs, you're swimming like you're leaving. This is for anybody watching. This is the goal here. These kinds of interviews that as long as you're still breathing you've get something to give. I'd already decided up there if you will that I was going to glide in and I was going to exit that cockpit early because of the rates of increase and build up of fire that was happening in the cockpit. I thought I'm not hanging around in this thing so it was building up quite quite quickly as I was descending and I came up with this kind of exit plan or game plan if you will to exit the aircraft earlier. So for the record I was 63% third and fourth degree burns. Fourth degree burns means that there was exposed bone so remember I said where the fire breached in the lower part of the cockpit so when my feet were operating the rudder pedals my shins took the longer period of exposure to the flame and hence the exposed bone with the tibia bones on my shins so I was a massive trauma. The truth is I just didn't want to fight anymore so to give you an analogy I felt like the boxer in the ring right if you can picture that but I wasn't on round 12 you know kind of fighting and kind of taking a few knocks and a few punches still and getting tired after round 12 like a boxer. I was actually like on round 4,127 after 18 months and you know what I was just tired of being in the ring if you can understand I was tired of being in the hospital, tired of being in the fight of my life, tired of the open wounds, tired of getting taken down to theatre sometimes twice a week even you know it was just ridiculous and the wounds weren't healing the wounds weren't closing up and I just thought what life is this how can I possibly go on I mean having had the life that I'd had gone from being an elite soldier you know up here to sort of ground zero what life is this. Ben Moran and today's guest we've got Jamie Howell here brother. How you doing? Yeah good to see you man. Mate what a story first of all we'll touch on the book was that what was it? It's a life on a thread life on a thread how my fight for survival made me stronger. Powerful book life on a thread very powerful book subplane crash survivor that your plane was going down you ended up going on to the wing and then jumping off before it hit the ground unbelievable. I got lucky with that James to be honest it was a bit of quick thinking quick action but I was certainly up against it and under a great deal of duress you know firing the cockpit that had breached altitude as well so I was able to just sort of think on my feet come up with a plan if you like based on the training so I'd received a bit of training you know with the US instructors beforehand for about three weeks or so and I just kind of fell back on the emergency protocol and I was able to make a decision to sort of switch everything off on following the the dashboard or the instrument panel so switched everything off from left to right so everything sort of off off off and then remove the headset unbuckle the harness very low level sort of gliding in so descending descending descending gliding in scrubbed off as much airspeed as I could get away with and then as I say low level open that left hand canopy door climb up onto the seat momentarily get onto the wing and sort of balance and compose myself look at the horizon and then when the moment was sort of bang on just right so I was about estimated about one five fifteen feet sort of standing on that left wing momentarily and probably running in at about 30 knots at the time so about 32 33 miles per hour 15 feet above the ground looked at the horizon I just went for it so I just jumped out of the back the trailing edge of the left wing snapped my feet and knees together in the air hands above my head and sort of threw that little bit of airspace and then hit the ground and it was you know like I hit the ground like a sack of spuds to be fair it was a big impact my door that your story is like that's not defeated you know the 60% burns like in hospital for years just going through all this stuff that's the powerful thing about your story it's like you've not let it defeat you've not just lay there and it's fucking give up like you're now here now you do your runs you're swimming like you're leaving this is for anybody watching this is the gold here these kind of interviews that as long as you're still breathing you've got something to give but I want to get an old Jamie who you are before the crash what triggered you what you went through well how was your life then obviously what you're doing now but let's go right back to the start brother where you grew up how it all began yeah sure so I mean I think it's important probably to start by saying you know perhaps you know an incredible story you know I came through all that but probably the reason being fundamentally is because I was always a fighter I kind of knew that I was always a bit of a scrapper not necessarily in the physical sense sort of argy bargy down the pub that wasn't really me you know sort of this threatening guy but I was always a fighter in life I was always trying to fight to to kind of get on in life and try to make a better sense of life from my younger years I kind of started out with slightly slightly sort of disadvantaged upbringing I mean it's not a sob story and I by no means had a sort of a dodgy sort of upbringing or anything like that but all it was was that I you know in my younger years in my youth much of my parents weren't getting on they it was pretty evident that they were going to sort of separate at some stage and they did when I was quite young so I was about 12 when that happened and for any kids that you know where the the family unit sort of breaks down and you know the kids are sort of then perhaps pushed and pulled and perhaps spread to the spread to the winds as it were you know parents separate so my sister went with my mother you know my mother moved away my brother and I my younger brother and I stayed with my father my father was busy working you know so he was long long distance you know haulier you know driving these big rigs up and down the country and getting on with it and and so I was this young lad and I became a bit of a tear away for no other reason other than the fact that I was a young kid largely unsupervised you know dad was away at work mum was away obviously because parents had separated and there's me you know kind of the elder brother but I was only 12 myself my brother was 10 and you know I stayed with my father because I wanted the continuity in school you know to stay with my peer group my mates but I was largely unsupervised so you know what happens to a young kid when they're unsupervised they basically get up to no good because they've got that freedom and they got that flexibility and no one there to sort of crack the whip you with me so that was the that was the you know the essence of my younger years there I was kind of just kind of getting on with it but not necessarily at first following the righteous sort of you know the proper path so I was up to no good bit of a tear away I was out late in the evenings and I was kind of like playing truant a bit at school I was kind of getting involved in sort of a bit of criminal kind of fraternity not so we're not talking major league but nevertheless I was up to up to no good sort of up to all hours I was kind of pilfering and like stealing from shops and you know out sort of breaking into a couple of establishments here and there and just generally a bit of a pain in the ass for as a young lad in society you know a bit of criminal damage a bit of theft some some some of it sort of escalated and it was a little bit more serious but I'm certainly wasn't you know like I said it wasn't major league but I was definitely following a slippery path in life and then there was a bit of a turning point in my youth so I kind of realised that in order to kind of get on and to avoid being kind of caught up with the law because I got nicked a couple of times by the police when I was quite a young lad feel like mr. meaners you know pretty sort of petty sort of incidents as I said it would might have been theft or criminal damage so I got collared a couple of times by pcplod when I was that young terror where that young kid sort of 12 13 14 years of age and I guess I started to reflect on being basically a young hoodlum really and I'm starting to think about it all in my mind I'm starting to reflect and I'm starting to think well you know you've got two choices you can either keep up this pretense of being a bit of a hoodlum you know bit of a cock for all intents and purposes you know young lad not towing the party line getting into trouble clearly because you know you're getting nicked a couple of times and perhaps if you keep going down this path it's not going to be cautions next time around you know you're probably going to go to court you're probably going to end up with a criminal record that's going to probably haunt you and follow you for you know young adulthood and perhaps rest of days so I kind of got wind and I did sort of heed you know the warnings from the police at the time having got a couple of cautions and I didn't want to be that you know that kind of ne'er do well in life that was following that slippery path and perhaps you know literally ended up in the slammer you know ended up in jail so you know bit of crime there was a bit of drugs bit of sort of alcohol indulge indulgence you know at a young age and before I finally realized having learned a couple of valuable lessons like I said getting on the wrong side of the law that if I don't turn it around no one else is going to turn it around for me remember I was largely unsupervised as a kid and it's not a sob story it's just the way things were in the family and that was like in the early 80s so you know there wasn't really an issue with it you know let's say parents were away or out working and spread and sort of separated and it was up to me this is what I'm trying to say it was up to me to turn things around realize the errors of my ways as a youngster turn it around for the better like sort of take the high road and sort of you know steer away from the low road as it were follow a more right righteous path and just try and crack on and be a better human being as a kid sort of you know growing through adolescence and trying to grow up so luckily for me that's what I did I sort of recognized it all recognize where I was at and where I was kind of potentially heading and I decided to spin it around and I tried to do better so I remember getting my GCSE results and they were pretty shocking I think I've got like one sort of GCSE pass like the old O level you know perhaps so like what I'm talking about is like a C in above grade at GCSE so I think I've got like one pass in like English you know literature or something I quite enjoyed books and I quite enjoyed reading and I got that one pass and everything else was an abcheck fail got like E's and F's or you know like completely failed and I was like reflecting on it thinking my god is like you know I've done I've pretty much done you know like 10 plus years of schooling here and this is all I've got to show for it you know and I said I'd been on the wrong side of the with the law a couple of times I think only I can turn it around only I can do better so I actually went back repeated my education for that kind of sort of final or secondary GCSE year I repeated all that did one day a week at college to do some some other input at the local college in Dunstable it was in Bedfordshire and I repeated that that secondary year of GCSE in my high school in a late and buzzed in Bedfordshire that was and then I got a load more grade so I end up picking up about I think for the record I got about seven GCSE's you know like the old O level passes the following year and that was just about good enough for me to go on and do some A levels and I'm not joking but a couple of years you know not even that you know like a year or so preceding when I said I was getting up to no good and you know literally out till all hours and just being a general pain in the ass so I would have never have foreseen that I could have sort of turned it around and gone on to do sort of some A levels now I think that was probably the start of the turning point for me because I realized that if I was able to go on and do A levels and potentially get a few grades there then that could open up some doors right so we're talking you know possible job opportunities you know possible sort of higher education and so that was the road that I ended up taking but later on so I ended up going on doing I did like three A levels got a few sort of you know average grades nothing to really write home about but it was enough to kind of give me the opportunity in life and I did consider higher education but I kind of put that on the back burner right I'm I initially considered a career with the armed forces because I was quite driven by you know sports in school I enjoyed you know kind of football rugby athletics bit of cricket in the summertime but I was a lousy batsman and I wasn't much you know I wasn't really a natural academic I wouldn't suggest and I wasn't necessarily motivated in that arena so I thought about you know the challenge the adventure and where where was I going to get that and the idea I think talking to someone in school about possible careers the idea of the armed forces cropped up and I very very nearly joined the marines so I went through the like the initial kind of you know reviews and interviews for all of that and I got an opportunity to start the ball rolling with with the Royal Marines down at Limpstone but I was able to put things on ice for a little bit of time and the reason I did that the reason I sort of put things on hold because I made a decision that I wanted to go traveling and this was something I guess born from you know perhaps a slightly unsettled youth and I'd done a few jobs you know on the side as you do you know just just for earning earning a few pennies here and there saved up a few quid and and when I got enough money together I went off traveling and that was the first thing I did sort of after school if you will you know once I got myself together generated some some money through through some local jobs I got this round-the-world ticket and then I was off and I went to this was the absolute making of me as a young man really the truth be told it wasn't really the education that I described so I had the courage to go off traveling and I did that on my own and I went to South Africa Namibia Botswana Zimbabwe Zambia across the Angolan border even went up into Malawi I did all this on my own and like left so I left home as it were sort of still while I was 19 years of age was that an easy decision not really I mean it was tough at first but I felt that you know something I wanted to try and get out of my system and I had this somehow this pull not sure where that came from but I've always been you know kind of a keen traveler and almost a little bit nomadic sort of in the blood I wanted to get out there in the world see the world sample the world for what it for what it can offer you know the you know the countries the the spectacular kind of beauty of it all the fact that you know different environments change older cultures absolutely the culture the people you know and going to see a bit of desert and you know sort of tropical locations environments and are you feeling lonely at that time I don't know about lonely but I just had this pull I wanted to search for something maybe slightly misspent youth and I've done a few jobs and I'd sort of done a bit of education in the end but not really excelled as such but I just I really it was a former self-education if you if you like and this this kind of pull that I had to get out there and really see a bit of the world and do something really independent for myself before you know the likelihood was that I was going to come back to conventional normal life because I knew that that was inevitable you know come back whatever settle down you know follow the sort of more conventional path and I wasn't I guess I was just trying to put that off and see where the road would take me but you know the traveling was fantastic and really that opened up my eyes and being on your own was actually quite a positive thing for me so I met a lot of people and what were you well I met some great people so interestingly when I was down in South Africa and I'm down in initially in Johannesburg a long story I end up hitchhiking you know literally on the roads I took about seven different lifts from you know big big rigs or truck drivers to you know big sort of business guys with their BMWs or whatever driving down that major highway between Johannesburg and Cape Town and I'm hitchhiking to get all the way because I'm on a limited budget right I'm a backpacker and I'm trying to preserve the pennies for the long run knowing that my goal was to be on the road for a year because I had that back pocket around the world ticket so you know the goal was there because the the travel tickets were there and had limited money I needed to try and preserve that so where I could you know I'd try and do things you know beans and rice so to speak you know keep things kind of cheap and simple if I could save on a bit of public transport or another flight or whatever in country I would but you know the obvious thing to do was try and hitchhike it wasn't necessarily the smartest thing to do according to the locals I can remember being in Johannesburg and I'm walking around in the district in Joberg and this was in 1995 and there I was a young whippersnapper and I'm trying I'm literally walking around and I could see all these people sort of clocking me some of the locals you know and I probably stood out because I'm a white man in Johannesburg a young guy for all intents and purposes kind of just cutting around the around the city so all these people sort of clocking me on the street and some of them looked a bit sort of dodgy and I'm having to sort of think on my feet a little bit and I didn't want the last thing I wanted to do was get caught up and get mugged or something like that so I'm trying to be sort of street savvy and I can distinctly remember you know like these big sort of black beavers and Mercedes kind of screaming down the road literally and then the horns would be like me and then guys would wave at me and I'm thinking what are they hooting at what are they waving at and then I realized it was a sort of almost like a marker respect from some of the perhaps the Joberg sort of business set that would drive in and out from the suburbs and they see me you know just a young white guy on the street in Johannesburg sort of strutting around and that wasn't what people did I was always a bit sort of you know perhaps risk averse and I was willing to sort of push the boundaries a little bit you get what I'm saying so there was a young lad in Joberg and people said to me oh you don't want to walk out there you don't want to go on your own and you definitely don't want to sort of you know take too many risks here you know because it is a bit dodgy a lot of people said that to me even when I rocked up at the airport you know so there's me sort of pushing the boundaries just getting a real feel for the place on the ground and I had really really very little life experience but I was kind of just trying to use my instinct really and that was what was kind of driving me along so anyway I hitchhiked down to all the way down to Cape Town and I wanted to see Cape Town and I'd heard it was spectacular it was beautiful you got Table Mountain you've got that big backdrop and it's one of the most stunning cities in the world anyway I got down there and I mean long story short when I was down in Cape Town I went off on some trips and I ventured around some different areas in South Africa end up going back to Cape Town because I loved it I thought it was a really picturesque beautiful city people were really friendly in the backpackers and so on so I went back to Cape Town because it was kind of like my favorite location down there and and there was a guy that was running up to the north and he took this it was a beaten up old VW camper van and from memory this guy was American I think he was from California and he kind of put the word out in the backpacker in Cape Town he said I'm driving up north I'm going to go up the N1 November 1 the road which goes from South Africa all the way up to Namibia anyone want to come and there was me sort of sipping you know this little castle beer or whatever it was in the backpackers in in Cape Town and I'm taking it all in and this and I knew this guy I've been talking to him briefly I said you know what mate I'll come with you I said you know what was the score I said you know what's it gonna cost us kind of thing he said well he said I'm not gonna ask for much he said just chip in for a little bit of fuel we'll all club together and we said we'll get up there and we'll have a bit of a road trip and there I was you know joining this small gaggle of folk in the camper van so we drove up through the dead of night to avoid a lot of the traffic driving out of sort of Cape Town and sort of wider South Africa head up towards the Namibian border and that was us up into the desert in the middle of the night so I was doing quite ballsy things you know courageous things I was quite brave at a young age you know I mean it's not necessarily a boast but like I said earlier what was with you then Jamie do you think again that's with the mum and dad splitting up kind of a wee bit abandonment issue just looking to search for something on your travels yeah I think I was just interested in really like I said perhaps a bit of a misspent youth perhaps I felt that youth had sort of let me down a bit it's no sub-story by any means but I just wanted to really now that I was independent and I was a young man and I was venturing out into into the world you know for the first time as it were I really wanted to try and make the most of that and I wanted to try and grab life by the horns and just live life and to really experience life and the way that I did it I felt you know looking back I mean that was what 25 years ago now you know 26 years ago so the way that I did that and the way that I experienced that there was probably no better sort of education for a young guy that's really trying to initially make something of himself and find himself as it were so for me that was that was a real education you know you talk about university of life that to me was like the ultimate you know get out there in the world on your own go to somebody's weird and wonderful locations and countries some of which were a little bit hostile might I add and you know get to meet the people meet the culture you know befriend people but use your judgment and and stay savvy you know that was an eye opener that was a real education itself and I got a lot out of that I really did what places were hostile what was that what places were hostile well so certainly you know I felt that you know bits and pieces of South Africa were hostile and anyone that's been down there will know what I will know what I mean it's not sort of you know necessarily on the face of it hostile but you know it's not like there's an abject war zone going on but there is a definite divide between you know blacks and whites and unfortunately there's the racial tensions and the racial issues and I sort of felt that and sense that when I was down there you know some of the local guys some of the Africans would sort of tell me stories and you hear about stuff on the grapevine and there was an incident when so I mean this is a story in itself but I'll keep this bit sort of brief but I ended up getting a job later on I ended up traveling in the north met some I met a gentleman up there that was a director of a business gave me an opportunity to work for his business and he had a basically you know he had markets down in places like Durban, Jo Berg and Cape Town he said if you want a job you know long story short I'll give you a job I met this guy in the north a great great guy I remember and you know and I was thinking about I thought you know what a job would be quite handy because I could earn a few South African rands was the local currency it's not going to make me a rich man by any means but basically what that helped me was to preserve my own sort of bank balance to enable me to have the sustainability and the longevity to keep traveling around the world on my own sort of budget so I thought it'd be useful to get this little job so I went back down to Cape Town and I went to the market and I met the people were in the market so it wasn't the guy in the north that sent me down there with this little business card I handed it over to the guy on the market who was the manager these are big markets it wasn't like you know your sort of high street market in the market town in England or you know somewhere in the UK this was these were big sort of touristy markets and they were selling arts and crafts so all this stuff was being bought in the north from Zimbabwe Zambia and and then they were being shipped down you know we're in trucks in vehicles and they were selling it in the south to slightly more affluent sort of tourist market yeah and so I got a job on the market as a salesman I mean I was a pretty lousy salesman at first but I learned you know off some of the other staff and so the staff members were predominantly white Africans and there was a few black guys that worked on the on the market as well quite interesting because they they lived out of town so they lived on a township which was about 10 kilometers up the road about six seven miles outside of Cape Town big township we're talking several thousand sort of people at the time in it again you know 25 years ago and there was one particular incident where I think it was a bank holiday or something and ordinarily so they would get in the vans and we would drive them back to like a rendezvous point this was like a petrol station somewhere in the suburbs of Cape Town and I think they'd pick up a local train from there yeah and they would that would that train would essentially bust them back in towards the township and that was how they kind of came to and from but because it was bank holiday so the black Africans that worked on the market and they were doing quite a lot of the maintenance work and working on the the arts and crafts and the curios as they were called they needed to get back home right in the evening even though it's the bank holiday but the trains weren't running so I remember the boss came to me and he was in african sort of white chap and I'd got to know him really really well and he said to me he said I've got to because I was a driver I had a driving license so I was doing some of the van driving and delivering people and you know dropping people off and running errands and all the rest of it for the markets that was part of what I did and so the boss came to me he said I need to get these guys back to the township reason being trains aren't running it's bank holiday yada yada yada so I was like okay he said so what can I what can I help you with and he said well he said we're gonna we're gonna drive back to we're gonna drive back to my place first of all and then he said we'll we'll take we'll then take a run back and we'll pick them up and then he said we'll basically proceed to take them to the township and I and I said okay fine I said why don't we take the guys to you know take the guys out to you know your your home or your suburb he said no no no no he said I'm not having that he said he said we need to go back to mine first trust me at all it will make sense we drive back to mine we'll come back to the market we'll pick up the guys we'll leave them just sat here just they can just relax and then we'll drive to the township so I thought okay fair enough he doesn't want the guys you know going to the the area where he lives he doesn't want to see you know hit the guys to see where he actually lives in the suburb of Cape Town as it were so that sort of sent the alarm bell straight away because I thought well clearly there's this divide you know the two sort of cultures don't necessarily trust each other and I kind of understood that the manager the guy in charge didn't want these these black Africans to know where he lived I thought it was a little bit sad in a way but you know there were these tensions like I said and so we went back we ended up going back to his place and I kid you not he basically went into the house this this chap and he brought out he brought out a handgun and he basically said to me here have you ever used one of these before and I'm like plural I said listen I said I have handled one but only because my my grandfather took me to a gun club when I was a kid so this was pre you remember they changed all the laws in the UK after the Dunblane incident up in Scotland but my grandfather before all that was a keen sort of amateur shot and he used to go to the local gun clubs and he used to fire off on the ranges you know and hit the hit a few targets so when I was a teenager he took me down to the gun clubs a couple of times just for a bit of target practice so I had had like small experience with a with a revolver as it were with a with a basic firearm and this guy the manager of this market said have you ever used one of these and I said well limited experience you know kind of thing I'm not too happy about that and he said well he kind of handed it to me gave me a quick overview of the weapon and said right if you need to use this he said don't hesitate he said well we're going somewhere where it's going to be a bit dodgy you know and so we need to get these but we need to get these guys back because I'm obligated to help them get back to the township get back home tonight so there I was and this this thing was in the glove box you know sort of tucked away this this small revolver and I'm a young bloke with very little life experience really at that stage at that stage of the game and we go back to the township and we pick up let's say we pick up the black african guys that had been working on the market and there was about eight to ten of these lads and they all piled into these the back of this big vw transit sort of panel van thing big white van and then we drove the 10 kilometers out towards the township and as we drove inside the sun was starting to go down and we having to stop every couple hundred yards to go over these big speed bumps like these sleeping policemen you know there's a big sort of pause over the bumps and we drive on a bit further we end up having to drive something like two or three miles inside of the township I mean this township was such a built up area there's so much habitation in there there's a lot of bodies in there there was something like seven thousand people living in there from what I was told and then and and the boss basically reminded me remember this guy that I'm with that's driving he said remember remember the gun he said if you have to use it if we if it you know if someone if it we end up getting followed and when we have to use this he said don't hesitate to pull that gun if you need it and he said I suggest you get it out of the glove box so I'm holding this thing and my hands were like literally shaking yeah because I'm thinking Jesus right is it that sort of hostile in here and we're driving in and we're driving all over these bumps and we're heading up deeper into the township and the sun's going down it's about six seven o'clock at night and then all of a sudden this kind of like small open backed pickup truck comes towards us on the road and of course we have to slow down for one of these speed bumps don't we the oncoming vehicle has to do the same so he slows down as well and as we're going over the bump the driver and his kind of co-pilot his passenger and all the guys in the back it looked like they'd been out on the roads working or whatever construction so there's a bunch of guys in the back all stood up with like shovels and pickaxes and we look at them they look at us they clock the fact that there's two white guys driving this vw panel van in their township we're about two miles inside of the township and we've stopped to negotiate and navigate this speed bump and we've got several more speed bumps to negotiate on the two miles to get the hell out of there and all of a sudden the boss that was driving he just flaws this vehicle so pedal to the metal he flaws it and there's this like ugly noise as the vehicle kind of like accelerates down the street like you know kind of full speed he drops a gear flaws it down the road and he's looking in the mirror and he's looking like that and he's saying shit shit he said they're turning around they're turning around he could see the reverse lights and he said he said remember what I said remember what I said and my hands were like that shaking and how the hell we got out of there in one piece because we were going over the speed bumps like bang bang crash bang and it felt like the bottom end of the van was going to drop off and fall out and the axles were going to drop off the vehicle but it was like you know it was just something like something out of a tense movie scene in my mind suddenly we bounce over about a dozen or so speed bumps every 200 meter interval we cover the distance we need to get out of the main entry exit point in the township and somehow miraculously we're back onto the open highway and it's sort of smooth tarmac and the van was sort of like ruggedly sort of still tanking down the road it just sort of held together god knows how and we're back sort of on the highway now sort of in sort of almost sort of darkness heading back towards kind of Cape Town proper but I really put the wind up me and it kind of it dawned on me you know just how much tension there was and how much risk there was perhaps in in that country I mean you don't necessarily think about it but you only think about the consequences if something really happens and then you get the fear but if you're living fearless and then nothing really happens then you can't really judge it on anything but if something does happen and it's a close call then that's when you start assessing everything so when did you join the army then what age when did you come back then from the world trip and then join the army was that a plan to join the army straight away so later on so I did that years travel and that I mean long story short I ended up joining the police for a few years that was a career that I did locally with terms of value police and but I was interested again in something a bit sort of a bit of a bigger sort of perhaps more global challenge so the idea of the armed forces again appealed to me and I took I ended up taking a sabbatical from the police after only about three short years of service I ended up going on going off to do a bit more work around the world and I was working as a diver in various location locations because I was teaching I was instructing um and that was just a personal interest because you've done a lot Jimmy you've done a lot yeah crowned a lot in what was it the police like for three years what was it like being on the police force for three years yeah enjoyed it I mean listen it's not an easy job and I've said this you know to many groups that I've spoken to I said that was a life education in itself because of course you're dealing with um you know the good guys you know you're dealing with people that are perhaps you know just innocently innocent sort of victims of crime or aggrieved members of society for whatever reason and you know there's a lot of good people out there in society let's not forget and you're there to serve um but you know you're also dealing with the darker side of life in the police and there was you know there was incidents that uh you know that kind of stayed with me you know where you know um I had so I was I was privy to sort of murder investigations that I assisted uh you know colleagues in the CID department um you know I wasn't a detective I was only um a police constable kind of in uniform but occasionally I'd get sort of seconded across to help out on sort of bigger wider sort of murder investigations and some of those incidents and um things that you know that I that I kind of heard of and you know was subject to as as part for the investigations kind of stayed with me in my mind and it was um it's interesting you know but um a lot goes on out there a lot of stuff that doesn't even get reported as well you know perhaps not within the public interest or um you know deemed uh perhaps so I don't know just not necessarily um suitable to for the media to report and of course you know sometimes a lot of a lot of things you know society I think largely is protected uh from certain harrowing events because I think it would probably be quite depressing if you heard exactly what was going on all the time across a typical kind of force area um but there's a lot of things that happen and there's a lot a lot of pieces that the police are there to kind of serve for and sort of pieces to pick up as it were did that affect you being on the police force um seeing that shot I did I mean I'll admit I found things a little bit depressing um and um you know it's it's not always kind of happy go lucky and you've kind of got constantly nurture your mental well health sorry mental health well-being I think as an officer in that job I think that's important that you do that and you keep yourself on the straight and narrow and you keep yourself well so I mean I did I used to tap into you know a lot of sport and I used to be a keen runner and keep myself fit and active kind of outside of the job which kind of helped me to cope with the rigors of the job on the inside because you know that with the nature of what you're dealing with sort of day shift late shift night shift constant rotational shift patterns it takes its toll on the body and and all of that kind of takes its toll on the mind so you've got to nurture your your health and well-being like I said um but I did enjoy the job largely but I just felt that you know there was perhaps more to life than potentially another 25 years in that career so hence my interest you know went back towards uh you know the the the thought process of joining uh joining the army and then I did that so I took that sabbatical I said I ended up doing a bit of travel around the world doing some expedition work doing some dive work in various locations and then following that about a year as it were sort of back on the road traveling I came back and I ended up going off to university so that was later for me so I was a mature student that went off to do a languages degree and um what language I did uh Scandinavian languages actually there was um uh some influence so um in in the you know on um in my family so I've on my sort of mother's side it's a bit sort of distant but there was a bit of influence there and um and I was kind of curious and I thought interesting to go and spend some time out in Scandinavia perhaps and being a mature student it didn't really matter what degree that I did I was just interested to kind of get the experience of gaining the the degree and um kind of having that life experience as it were and I thought it might come in handy kind of for future careers and the options that are available so um I decided to sort of follow my my sort of instinct on that head off to university for a few years end up living in Norway in my second year and sort of blagging a year um sort of working um with a sensor that did a lot of sort of uh mountaineering sort of training and I loved all that I mean I was in my element learning new skills kind of climbing and skiing and ski touring I took my dive gear out there I was diving in the deep fjords as well and that was a lot of fun I ended up teaching some of the locals um and that was a good bit of uh helped me to sustain my time over there because the beer's about where it was about 10 pound a pint and that was 20 years ago so uh gives you a bit of pocket money anyway if you can find a bit of local work which really helped me um and then also during my time at university so um I actually ended up um volunteering so I joined something called Cambridge University Officer Training Corps it's quite an interesting unit um attached to the university and I um so I had exposure with the perhaps what the British army had to offer so for the record Cambridge OTC was a bit of a recruitment workshop for prospective you know younger students you know people that were aspiring to perhaps join the army be it regular service full-time or reserve reservists and um and I had this fantastic exposure so I did like a lot of fam visits what they call familiarization visits and I was getting to go off with various regiments and cores and for like these long weekends and see what it was all about and kind of get thoroughly spoiled staying in um sort of posh officers messes and having fancy black tie dinners and and kind of during the daytime you'd get kind of familiarization with the various tools and assets that say the infantry possessed or the um the royal engineers or the royal electrical mechanical engineers or or the royal art the armored corps so you get to sort of play with all the tools and and and equipment that the British army had to offer and so therefore it was great exposure that's what I'm getting at and it was food for thought about the future like what was I interested in what line perhaps did I did I did I consider taking if indeed that that was going to be a career option for me and then um so the other part of it was I went on um if you like with the OTC I did a lot of courses my commanding officer was keen as mustard quite honestly and he knew that I'd been in Norway for a year as a student having a lot of fun and games out there in the mountains so he immediately was a keen skier himself this gentleman he sent me back to do a ski course I ended up doing a skiing instructors course I think I did a ski tour leaders course which is basically like mountain leader but on skis sort of guiding groups I did a PTIs course so I did I had a lot of opportunities you know I did driving courses up to sort of hgv class one you know the the big rigs so I got some great experience and then I was considering the future so life beyond that unit so life beyond the OTC or officer training corps and what what lay ahead potentially and it was put to me I think it could have been the co actually said to me would you be interested in doing all arms commando course you know the marines and I thought yeah I would be because I was really interested that remember as as a kid how old are you school so by that stage I was sort of 26 27 pretty old to be done yeah I was quite I was an older yeah so I was probably six seven years behind my contemporaries when I went to university I was a mature student you know a mature student sort of in reality and in inverted commas as far as the university was concerned but the OTC was was great opportunity you know for me to sort of test the water as to whether I was interested in a career whether it was full-time or reserve service and so it was put to me about this commando course all arms commando but I couldn't get the time off that I needed from my dean of faculty in the languages department at uni couldn't get the time off I was politely denied that that period of time that I needed to go off and do that military course so I went back to the boss basically the CEO and said sorry sir it's not happening and then I think more or less straight away somebody had suggested well why don't you go why don't you see if you can do p company and I was like what's p company and he said well p companies the regimental selection for the parachute regiment and of course I'd heard of the powers power edge and I thought well that's uh that's going to be a challenge that's going to be you know that's going to be tough that's going to be something to aspire to similarly to the marines there was the challenge that I was still looking for remember I'm still mid 20s so I'm still hungry for that adventure that challenge and I ended up it was a little bit shorter course so again I knew I probably wouldn't get the permission but I just blagged it anyway I just went and kind of ended up playing catch up with the kind of academia afterwards so that course was about a month full-time up at catric in North Yorkshire and I surprised myself actually I found the course you know bloody difficult I mean it was nails I mean anyone that says otherwise is probably lying through their back teeth but p company for me and for you know respect to all the powers or x powers that are out there it's a it's a damned difficult course it's very high speed a lot of short sharp events you know you've got to score points on everything and it culminates in a test week and you're doing log runs you're doing stretcher aces you're doing the milling you know the boxing standing toe to toe with your opponent in the ring and and you're doing all these short sharp sort of squad runs as well everything's high speed like max speed and you're literally you feel like you're being beasted within an inch of your life so that taught me a hell of a lot about my own personal character above all it taught me about you know digging deep within my character to sort of really pull something gritty out of the bag in terms of my own personal performance as it were because I think in something like para red or indeed the marines you have got to be a veritable athlete not only in the physical sense but in the mind because you've got to be able to sustain your performance over long periods of time you know I mean the selections kind of dictate that but not just that it's like the job dictates that so being a soldier in one of the more kind of elite regiments you know you've got to dig deep for long periods of time in the patrols on the ground and you've got to sustain yourself in kind of arduous environments you know and and that takes that takes a lot of get up and go and motivation and hunger and not everybody's got that it's not everybody's cup of tea so that's why it's a little bit different from perhaps kind of just regular soldiering it seems about doing but do you think that element of doing that training has helped you today after your crash to then never fucking quit keep pushing yourself to the limits dig deep within to then realize that you can still give more I think to be fair it's a great question I've had this a lot so I think yes my military you know experience and training and I did a lot in terms of training in terms of selections in terms of exposure to the wider British army I did I did a lot I feel like I gained a lot of experience and I traveled a lot with them and I went all over the world and then you know eventually went sort of SF selection with with the SAS with 2-1 SAS for a number of years but it's not so much of a boast in my case because the truth is I've got nothing really to report on on on any of that front other than I did it I kind of qualified I kind of went through the selection process like I mentioned I kind of gained the cat badges and I kind of served for a period of X I went all over the world I sampled lots of different environments and sort of worked in you know very extreme different temperature ranges from abject cold to you know seriously hot locations on the planet but I never really went anywhere in terms of operational deployment it never quite happened for me because I got injured in the summer of 2007 which I'll come on to but in order to perhaps answer the question I think the fight in me was always there from a young age I think you're perhaps born with it you've either got it in the bank as it were you possess it or you don't and I think that's set that's true for a lot of individuals they're deep down they're true fighters you know in that sense or they're probably just a bit average you know and I think I was always a fighter but what I will say about the military is that the kind of training that I went through whether it was um selection for Parareg or selection for UK special forces it definitely teaches you to dig that bit deeper within your personal character to really find the depths of what you're truly capable of that you perhaps didn't believe that you were capable of and it takes you to places that you probably ordinarily are unlikely to ever go to otherwise if you understand so I think that was the fundamental difference having gone through those kind of processes in life I learned as an individual to dig very very deep and to bloody well hold on at all costs and I think that part as well as being a kind of a natural born fighter perhaps but that learning to really dig deep and hold on as a result of military service combined was perhaps what helped me and it's just a suggestion but it was perhaps what helped me to ultimately hold on you know when I sustained later on you know a major trauma and indeed you know a huge you know third degree burns injury when did you learn how to fly planes so that that was something that I did as a personal ambition in the summer of 2007 and again it was something that cropped up in my mind you probably get the idea in the sense now that you jump on anything that you've got up here for sure so I was always one of these guys that rather than be down the kind of pub you know kind of elevating bicep and kind of talking the talk I was one of these guys that not only would talk the talk but if I came up with an idea that I felt quite compelled to go off and do in life I did it and I was one of these guys that would also walk the walk that's what I'm saying and so I just I like to get on and again I like to challenge myself and the idea came up that I was very interested to learn to fly and that was simply born because as a kid my late grandfather so my dad's dad he was a keen sort of aviation spotter and he also trained as a pilot you know it's at the back end of the Second World War but he was very young in service with the RAF and the war sort of wound up but he was a spotter and he worked in the kind of aviation sector for British aerospace engineering and as a young kid he used to take me to Luton Airport so there I was sort of face-pressed up against the the boundary fence with a broken binocular and I'm looking through the other side at the active runway and you know watching all the big boys kind of throttling up the engines and getting ready for sort of pre-flight checks and obviously taxing out to the active runway and takeoff so I would watch all that going on in the distance as a young boy and that was absorbing you know I was kind of inspired by that whole scene as a young lad and I thought maybe one day I'd like to learn to fly so years later the kind of maybe the seed was there and I kind of wanted to act on that right remember because the kind of character that I was so I got a bit of downtime summer of 2007 I've just been given the nod with my regiment that I was about to deploy out to a just general operational deployment we had a we had a a tasking on and it was definitely going to happen that that autumn of 2007 so a little bit of downtime had about six to eight weeks prospectively and I chose to fulfill the ambition so I came to London I managed to persuade the powers that be at the US Embassy that I was good for it that I wasn't a sort of a some kind of risk because remember this was post 9-11 and they were obviously a bit techy about who they were going to give visas to for especially for foreigners to learn to fly within US airspace for obvious reasons so I persuaded them that I was wasn't a risk got my visa and I was armed with that if you will and I went off to the States and I specifically chose Florida because of the likelihood of you know some decent weather over perhaps a six week period and the likelihood I was going to get the flying done in a in a good you know reasonable timeframe and not get rained off and and when I was out there if I kind of speed up and fast forward I was a month into the course and and I was now piloting command so flying solo just flying between small municipal airports in the local kind of part of Florida after just a month after just one month you were learning how to fly yes yeah just after one month is that yeah so you become a fast learner was that well I think no fairly probably average I don't think I was sort of you know you know particularly extraordinary in that sense you know you get to a certain point and then you go solo and then you're sort of qualified you get signed off to fly as a solo pilot so you can then go pilot in command and fly the aircraft on its own and you're then our building so that's what I was doing I was doing my hours so it's just small little hops or indeed going up into the local airspace into the local pattern over the aerodrome and on this one particular day I had an engine fire so what my first alert was I looked out the left hand canopy and there was a thin streak of like visible yellow orange flame and I did a double take and I thought yep sure enough that's flame and then those sooner as I sort of made my final turn now into wind approaching the active runway down below the fire then immediately breached the cockpit down below in the footwell so I looked down I saw flames coming in around my feet and ankles so as I'm descending and the flames were starting to build up within that small two-seater cockpit and I'm having to think on my feet and I'm getting flustered and I'm thinking about it all sort of left hand on the flight control stick right hand on the throttle and I'm descending descending and the fire is building up and all of a sudden I'll probably get to about half the height so I'm now about 500 feet indicated on my altimeter on the instrument panel and I make a decision that I'm going to actually glide and veer away and glide in so I veer away from the concrete runway below and head towards a grassy stretch and an embankment in the distance and the reason being is I'm going for soft ground and I'd already decided up there if you will that I was going to glide in and I was going to exit that cockpit early because of the rate of increase and build up of fire that was happening in the cockpit I thought I'm not hanging around in this thing so it was building up quite quite quickly as I was descending and I came up with this kind of exit plan or game plan if you will to exit the aircraft earlier so the idea was to glide in get very low level and that's exactly what I did so I've systematically switched everything off in sequence remove the headset unbuckled my harness open the canopy door very low level as I mentioned earlier 15 feet above the ground thereabouts I was able to get on the seat onto the left wing and jump I landed in long soft grass it was a relatively soft landing but I did come in like a sack of spuds I landed feet first but then there was a secondary impact so face first is the grass soft ground but the grass is like razor blades in the tropics and had a bilateral nasal fracture I had super orbital eye socket fractures above both eyes it fractured multiple soft tissue lacerations from the sharp grass I popped a collarbone hyper extended my left index finger which fractured inadvertently ruptured my colon my large intestine internally lacerated one side of my liver also internally which was now bleeding and but the worst of it was the life changer and the showstopper for me was the fact that I was so for the record I was 63% third and fourth degree burns fourth degree burns means that there was exposed bone so remember I said where the fire breached in the lower part of the cockpit so when my feet were operating the rudder pedals my shins took the longer period of exposure to the flame and hence the exposed bone with the tibia bones on my shins so I was a massive trauma all in all and I was very lucky that I got airlifted from the scene within probably about 15 minutes I had an ambulance on the ground so a vehicular you know small ambulance they must have hit me with a bit of morphine because suddenly the pain was kind of alleviated somewhat because just before that the pain was kind of off the charts it was absolutely hideous indescribable it's the only word that I could you know kind of honor it quite frankly because it was that hideous and I didn't think I was going to be able to hold on so when they gave me that little serret of morphine life was pretty damn good and but I knew in my subconscious in my mind that it was really bad it was exceedingly you know bad for me and the likelihood was I wasn't going to make it so I got airlifted a very short time later there was probably a helicopter on scene within about another five minutes airlifted me to um Orlando regional which is a very premiere hospital traumas facility in in florida in that part of the USA and the rest is history so I was lucky I had those medics those doctors those nurses um interventional radiologists physiotherapists all manner of surgical specialists working on me 24 7 around the clock for the next six months of my life the bill the medical bill it's not a boast but just to give you an indication of what they had to do for me and that was 2007 so 14 years ago now but the bill was more than 2.6 million US dollars so that gives you an indication of how much work they did for me and um yeah the rest is history I mean I was luckily god knows how but somehow miraculously able to pull through the trauma but it took me a long time so six months drug induced two years in the hospital so they flew me back to the uk I was on the burns unit in Chelmsford in Essex for a couple of months I was in stoke manderville for about 16 months or so for a very long period in the burns unit in Aylesbury stoke manderville so two years hospital I had 62 operations under general anesthetic and we talked about the need to fight and the need to hold on so I mean that's testimony right there two years in the hospital 62 surgeries under general and that to me was the hardest thing that I ever had to go through I mean you know you know I kind of talk a little bit about that history and the build up towards getting injured in the in the flying incident in in florida but to be fair all of that paled into insignificance in terms of what I inadvertently was forced to pull out of the bag in order to survive the burns tell me that's jamie with the pain you went through the two years all the operations everything is a part of you ever think that you wish you'd have died on the plane sure so I mean I make no no bones about hiding this because I think it's important from a mental health kind of perspective and I think it can kind of kind of inadvertently help others so that's why I do partly what I do now as a speaker and I go out there and I do a bit of public speaking and talk to all manner of different audiences but and I have been doing that for a number of years but I honestly believe that look if I can come through that gravity of trauma and that gravity of injury and go on to make a relative success of life in terms of active health and active recovery you know I mean you don't I've learned that you don't have to be a superman but it's good to be somewhat active to get on right to feel better about yourself and to promote your self-esteem so I feel that I feel that you know it's important that I share it and and as you touched on you know I reached the very lowest ebb of humanity frankly so in my own journey in my own testimony what I mean by that and I'm going to quote a very tiny aspect of my story as it's written in the book as is published so I became the adjunct of machinery a living receptacle for machines tubes wires and powerful pharmaceuticals now if you can picture that that was me when I was laid up in intensive care for those six months you know I've got a machine breathing for me I've got a yellow tube they call it nasogastric feeding me into the stomach through the nose I've got you know renal failure going on so I've got dialysis machines kind of filtering my blood 24 seven you know I've had you know pneumonia you know where the lungs have been infected I've had septicemia so blood poisoning and all these very powerful antibiotics of the pharmaceuticals keeping me alive for those kind of those for those former years of the trauma and the truth is I got to about 18 months down the road and I ended up you know at my lowest ebb because frankly the truth is I just didn't want to fight anymore so to give you an analogy I felt like the box are in the ring right if you can picture that but I wasn't on round 12 you know kind of fighting and kind of taking a few knocks and a few punches still and getting tired after round 12 like a boxer I was actually like on round 4127 after 18 months and you know what I was just tired of being in the ring if you can understand I was tired of being in the hospital tired of being in the fight of my life tired of the open wounds tired of getting taken down to theater sometimes twice a week even you know it was just ridiculous and the wounds weren't healing the wounds weren't closing up and I just thought what life is this how can I possibly go on I mean having had the life that I'd had gone from being an elite soldier you know up here to sort of ground zero what life is this and I couldn't see the future and I could see couldn't see the light so I made a concerted decision that I wanted to check out and I considered going down the road of you know getting that assistance to do so with with dignitas and assisted suicide yeah that was the journey that I've that I kind of thought was the logical way out you see I didn't want to do something daft I couldn't sort of be one of these guys that I don't know on the black market picked up some dodgy firearm or took a bottle of pills and drank and drank like half a bottle of whiskey or something that just wasn't me you know I'd come this far in life I couldn't just end it through some messy sloppy sort of ordeal that that wasn't me I was always a kind of an orderly type of guy and I needed to check out in an orderly fashion but for me dignitas was a viable credible kind of neat option should we say and in my logical mind that was the way to go because I didn't want to be here remember I was 18 months in tired of being in the fight I couldn't do it any longer every day was a mission and I was in a very very dark place mentally and really really just did not want to be here anymore but luckily I managed to turn a corner so I had some let's just say external kind of influence and assistance in the form of a gentleman from the ministry so a guy came from a church parish I believe it was over Oxford Way and this gentleman was from sort of deeper Africa I think he was on some kind of secondment so I remember they said you know would you like this visit and I said well whatever I couldn't care less at that stage quite frankly but they kind of taught me into having this visit from this guy he just said he wanted to come and visit me and he was from the church over Oxford Way and to my kind of astonishment I was expecting some white guy and a dog collar to rock up you know from the church and it wasn't it was a black guy in like civilian clothing and it with an African accent and he got chatting to me and I just you know in a way there was something about this guy that that sort of resonated with me and maybe because I'd spent time in Africa myself and remember I'd worked with some of those guys down in Cape Town and we got chatting and we kind of just talked about life and we shared snippets of our former life and our history and blah blah blah and I told him I'd been to Africa and he was quite impressed by that you know and anyway we got talking and somehow he managed to tap into my sort of psychology a little bit and he was listening to me that was the important thing he was listening to me and when I said look look mate this is what I want I don't want to be here any longer because of the you know the kind of grotesque position that I find myself facing in this life having ever having been through what I've been through and I just want to check out that's where I was and he was listening he was taking it all in and he turned around and said to me you know what he said I understand it I get it he said I tell you what I'll help you and I'll take you and I'm like what are you for real he was the first bloke that actually said to me yeah I'll basically drive you out to Switzerland and help you do and achieve what you need to do and you know me or perhaps you get the sense of me you would I would have done it yeah 100% all I needed was some bloke to effectively hold my hand help me out put me in a motor vehicle drive me down there and I would have done the deed because that was the logical way out and that's what I was looking at that's what I wanted and if you like quite cleverly he gave me an ultimatum and he said to me look he said you know I'm willing to help you out but I want you to do something for me okay okay what is that you know and he said I want you to hold on for one calendar month you know just hold on for me and I was pretty mortified at the time I was like you know horrified at that statement because I couldn't do it like another month just felt like an eternity to me given the situation given the condition that my body was in and the very very lowest ebb state of mind that I described I didn't want to hold on any longer he said look if you hold on for me he said I will help you so what what choice did I have and that was the deal take it or leave it so his friends if you like almost as business associates we shook hands and that was it anyway life started to take turn a bit of a corner not overnight might I add but life started to turn a bit of a corner over the course of the next month and I start I mean I remember going for surgery during the course of the following week and my consultant who was an Indian gentleman came in one morning he was sort of wagging his tail saying look guess what we've got a new we've got some some skin that's some fresh skin that's been harvested and basically I knew where that comes from it comes from like cadaver or some sort of proceeds of some kind of surgery where they harvest the skin and then basically I received the skin as the burns victim and they can do that specialized grafting to put it on to my wounded areas to give me kind of cover to allow my own cellular structure underneath to try to knit together in the hill and that was the idea behind all these kind of skin grafts and I had many such operations and he said he came in wagging his tail the Indian burns consultant and he said he said you know I'm really excited he said we've got we've got the skin that we need it's coming in like two days time so I'll take you back to theatre and we'll do this big operation on you anyway we did the op I went down again did the op and where I remember coming to in the recovery room in stoke manderville and you know what for the first time in many you know all those months my skin my wounds didn't feel so painful it wasn't so uncomfortable and I wasn't sort of screaming blue murder like I normally was you know kind of like begging for more kind of painkillers or analgesia and and I and I felt somewhat better I couldn't quite get my head around it but I felt better I felt stronger so something was happening right in in the body in the healing and indeed about four five days later 100 or so hours until the nurses are kind of compelled to take the dressings down for the first time post these skin graft surgeries because they need to check on it need to clean the wounds clean the like fresh dressings they took all the dressings down and did the visual kind of observation of all my body and the wounds and and they were all of a sudden they were like really animated and excited saying wow this is amazing and your wounds are like starting to show real visible signs of healing here that surgery that the consultant did on you was was had has had a tremendous result he said you know you should be you should feel proud about this you know and indeed in my mind there wasn't so much pain there was something going on so the healing was starting in body and mind and that was the start of me turning the corner so with big trauma they talk about the point at which you start to turn a corner for the better and you start to recover it's not easy to put a handle on that and to put a finger on it exactly but for me that was the start the turning point but for the record i want to make it clear that it wasn't like a right angle that i turned and then suddenly all was good it wasn't like i went around that street corner it this was like it felt like the curvature of the earth process remember that journey was a two-year kind of turn for the trauma is that we all go through trauma in life everybody's traumas are different from everybody else's is it take set to trauma first understanding okay it's happened do you think that's the moment that you need to accept to then heal i think there was a number of things going on so i think probably fundamentally the process of the physical healing because remember this was medically for the record i was 63 third and fourth degree burns massive open areas across the total body surface area of jay me hull so the physical healing was crucially important for me if i could see progress or learn of progress through the doctors and through the nurses that were observing the body and the wounds etc and looking after me you know 24 seven in that in that burns unit then if i was receiving that kind of positive information then for me that was having a knock on effect and i was the kind of guy remember logical thinking mindset i needed to see results i needed to see progress i needed that development because that was kind of who i was what i was all about remember i was always about self development self progress and trying to get on in the world and even being a burns victim i just needed to heal i needed to progress in that department to enable me to take the next steps in you know tentatively in the new life if you aren't if you're with me looking for a better hope to then progress do you think because things weren't working for the first 18 months because you weren't believing in yourself when you weren't believing that there was any hope that you wanted to die so it wasn't really yeah affected but then as soon as that man came into your life and then as soon as you get a glimmer of hope then you started believing then you start getting further then you start getting stronger then the confidence starts to come like it all comes down to the way we think the way we see the world that's what i always try and promote is everything you are what you see and you are what you think you are what you speak that when you're down and out man it's easy to jump and go for sure i'll want anything but when you start getting glimmers of hope and then you start getting that self belief shit man that's the golden key that's where your inspiration comes in that's what people will be watching going fuck me what i've actually got to complain about yeah because we're all loving luxury majority is loving luxury we just love to complain and moan about it it's pretty shit i mean just for me to be sat here now all these years later just thinking about you know i've got my back to the the high back of this this chair you know it's a comfortable chair granted but given the condition of my body back then i wouldn't have been able to sit against the back of this chair because the wounds were so painful so just to be living life in kind of abject sort of comfort should we say is an absolute luxury a blessing and i learned these things when when you're on fire i was waiting you inside the plane or was it when a plane crashed no no within the within the confines of the cockpit before i managed to exit so you still managed to think of all that while on fire yeah so for me it was a case of falling back on my training because it was a drill that i was taught just an emergency drill an emergency protocol for for that type of aircraft and it sounds complex but it was actually relatively simple basically following the dashboard i just was able to turn everything off in sequence so it was a key to the ignition the magnetos the red switches so alpha and bravo off off master switch off lights off strobes off fuel pump off fuel selective valve rotate off everything off off off in sequence that was the emergency drill so shut down procedure and then glide in to and scrub off the air speed as i said headset off unbuckle harness open door and then that enabled me to to exit did you have any thoughts before you went on that plane was there anything to say that something's going to go wrong today did you have any gut feeling always everything just not necessarily so at the beginning of the flight you know i was pretty happy you know by that stage i'd sort of i was used to the routine you know i'd had a fair few hours under my belt solo you know i'd yeah solo and and i'd been solo for indeed for about eight days so um you know in my mind i was in good shape and the weather was good it was a blue bird day by all accounts a few puffy clouds in the sky so i felt pretty good about you know what i was doing like any other day but as fate would have it it sort of took a very different turn and little did i realize that i'd end up um facing what i faced i mean um unfortunate but then when i look back frankly you know now um i've long since learned to accept it so you know bottom line for me it took about three years of healing that what i was describing earlier on in the physical sense until i was physically healed it took about five years mentally healing and acceptance and over the course of time sort of with great will and determination i was able to take those tentative steps into a new life and then challenge myself in all kinds of new and perhaps unconventional ways that i hadn't kind of considered so i did all sorts of things lots of challenges events um i did a lot of expeditions i worked in the expeditions sort of field in the expedition world led a number of experts around the world for different teams and groups did a lot of scuba diving again sort of climbed the ladder in the scuba diving world and went on to qualify as a as a very senior instructor with the the the diving organization paddy that i do a bit with and you've climbed Kilimanjaro as well yeah i climbed Kilimanjaro unbelievable jma honestly it's fucking unbelievable man yeah i mean it's not an easy mountain and it's about nearly so it's i think from memory it's just shy of 20 000 feet or about just shy of 6000 meters um but yeah these things inspired me and of course you know i got to um benefit if you will as a beneficiary for certain uh charities that i was on the receiving end of help for heroes blesma pilgrim bandits and these charities were um inspirational to me i got to work alongside like-minded um wounded servicemen and women and i got to go on various challenges and events in different locations around the world and having that kind of camaraderie and that banter you know as teams as groups we kind of in the in you know together we learned to sort of believe in each other and what we were capable of what was it like jma from being then pulse of kid to then traveling the world and trying to make something happen with your life and then with all the buns what was it like the first time you'd you'd looked at yourself after everything you've been through in the hospital was it a week six months up when you looked and what were you thinking too it was it was pretty awful actually i remember um the nurse in essics and uh i'm not very good at the accent but she was like um gotta get you moving now jami gotta get you moving gotta get you set up and i'm like what is going on and this was like the beginning of the the real journey because remember before that i'd been six months sort of drugging cheese i wasn't really that aware of what was going on in fact the only thing i remember from america frankly after the original airlift and being taken to the hospital and talking to doctors there the only thing i then remember is like one female american accent and that was my nurse in america my sort of lead nurse but um you know this essics nurse so six months on she's talking to me and sort of bending my my ear and perhaps i shouldn't say that because i lost most of the year anyway but she's sort of chewing it off maybe she was responsible and um she's basically yeah bending my ear and sort of saying gotta get you moving now gotta get you set up in bed and there's this real fog and i'm kind of like what the hell what's going on and you know it was really confusing for me anyway no sooner had um i sort of realized where i was and suddenly it dawned on me and i'm now back in the uk this nurse is speaking to me and uh and i mean i just thought oh my god this is just horrendous and the next thing she said to me was okay we're gonna get you a mirror now jami you know you're gonna get you um gonna get you have to you gotta have a look at yourself because there's been a bit of change you know because you've been burned and she was quite a matter of fact you know quite frank about it she brought me in this uh handheld mirror and i basically had to take hold of it and look at myself for the first time and i remember seeing myself and and back then you know this is uh sort of uh what 13 13 and a half years ago my face was really quite swollen and i remember being pretty horrified looking at myself in the mirror for the first time face the scars were really red and blocky and swollen i mean there was still kind of like scabby bits on my face where i'd been recently kind of had a bit of surgery and whatnot because i had a lot of skin grafts and um it was a tough that was a that was a tough thing to swallow yeah and because i wasn't a bad looking lad you know i mean much like yourself james you know i was a pretty smooth looking operator thank you you know back in the day that's all real fucking skin grafts right enough how many skin grafts in your head maybe it's the uh scottish jeans who knows but um you know that uh but yeah i was so i wasn't a bad looking lad you know in my younger years and you know the burns did do a bit of a number on me and a lot of skin grafts it visibly changed my appearance and of course in the early years i had to get used to all of that and that that that real visible change of appearance and yeah that was tough for me and like i said it took about five years to properly accept everything so body the change of facial appearance and not an easy thing yeah because in the day society absolutely we're all um we're all judged by appearance we're all judged but when you actually connect with somebody's soul when you actually understand that everything's within then it's just a mirror it's just but it's so difficult especially for yourself because annual girls who are models who still struggle to walk around the streets have still got to be getting botox and fake tits and fake lips to try and feel some sort of to keep up with society's needs so for yourself who's got burns and stuff like that how hard was it then to be walking in today's society with people looking all the time there's the eventually get used to that or do you ever feel like what the fuck are you looking at are they just kind of okay i understand i've got burns because we date well we are nosy we do want to second glance ago you want you want to know what's happened or you want people who are curious they are is that difficult then to be walking at the start or do you get used to it now yeah i cannot deny that in the in the very early stages for me it was it was bloody hard i mean i felt very self-conscious and for example you know it wasn't so bad in the hospital because in the hospital kind of like you almost you're kind of institutionalized in a way and you almost feel that you know you're permitted to look the way that you do as a victim of trauma of of injury because you're in the hospital right and that's where people are there for for all manner of wounds injuries and so it didn't really dawn on me so much in the hospital remember i lived in the hospital for the first two years you know it might as well have been my residential address stoke manneville burns unit um but it wasn't until i got home um so back to um so back to my mother's in in latin buzzard in bedfordshire initially and um and i ventured out into into the local cul-de-sac and sort of managed to start you know learning to walk a bit further and then suddenly i'm walking down the street and i'm suddenly feeling pretty self-conscious because people are looking at me and um and that was pretty tough and i'd sort of shy away you know i'd sort of be sort of head down just do my walk in and i didn't really want to look at anyone i remember that and um i couldn't go down the high street you know where it was all going on with the markets and everyone coming and going from the banks the shops and supermarkets i didn't want to go there you know it was a tough thing for me and it took me probably a number of weeks of just slowly you know very tentatively getting out there back in society and walking a little bit further and a bit further again before i kind of felt comfortable with um being out in society again and it was all weird you know i mean um you do notice people looking at you and people staring it's almost doing a double take when you walk down the street i've joked i've joked about it over the years but it's kind of like you feel like you're a b-list celebrity you know like uh people look at you and look again in the street because like clearly they see something different and um but anyway i mean you know over the course of time i learned to accept it things happened a couple of examples you know think little things that i remember i remember going to a doctor's surgery and i'm in the waiting room you know we've predominantly adults like men and women waiting to see the gp and all of a sudden there was this young girl and she's probably only three or four years of age and she's with her mom you know just sort of i think she was like it stood in between her mom's legs as she sort of sat on the chair and she kind of bleeds out in the public and you know how these doctors waiting rooms are quite quiet and she sort of makes a remark and says mommy what happened to that man and her mother was clearly sort of oh my god she was like mortified you know her daughter should say such a thing in front of me in front of the whole doctor's waiting room and i just thought i just felt compelled to sort of break the ice a little bit and i just sort of sort of lent forward on my chair and sort of looked at the girl and looked at the mum and i just sort of said look i said um i said it's okay i said uh i said i had an injury i got a burns injury um i was in a fire and i just kind of kept it brief and i didn't give her the long-winded version but um but i remember sort of just breaking the ice in that respect and telling the story very vaguely and briefly to the little girl and she was kind of like oh like this and kids are kind of quite interesting they're great like that because you know they're kind of innocent yeah they're listening they're just taking it all in and they don't really understand that did they overstepped the line kind of thing by asking you whereas all the adults are like scared again they double take but they're not necessarily going to ask me that question you might get it in the pub or something some guy's had a couple of dutch courage and he leans across and says hey mate what happened to you if you don't mind me asking you know he's feeling a bit confident and i've had that before you know depending on the mood that i'm in sometimes i tell him for real what happened or sometimes i just shrug it off and i just say yeah whatever i just had an accident no big deal it's gonna move on i think that shows your character man like there's not many people to come through what you've come through brother like it's fucking unbelievable mate i'm inspired like i like to moan and complain about certain things i'm a workhorse like we just don't know what's around the corner we don't know what kind of circumstance if we don't know what anybody's going to throw in front of us to then learn from to grow from to become that individual just so happens you've been through what you've been through but you've not let it fucking quit man you've not let me say okay i'm just going to forgive and then go to switzerland like how close that was the question your whole journey from everything you're through told now to then think why did the why has this happened to me what's the reason for it oh mate i mean honest to god literally when i said like three years of healing five years mentee so when i was on that journey i questioned a lot i mean i was constantly grieving the old me so call it jay me hall version 1.0 you know that guy i was constantly grieving that guy but it took me years to properly understand that he was never coming back that i had to learn to accept version 2.0 you know the new me and work with the new toolbox yeah because i thought jay me whole yeah yeah and my new appearance and whatever the yeah there'd been changes you know i've got some physical disability you know with the the walking or got a bit of nerve damage or whatever i've got some change of appearance you know and but you know eventually i learned to properly accept it all and and i pinch myself now in a way that you know that thing happened to me and that i was able to survive that gravity of trauma and pull through like i i still don't really understand how an earth i was able to pull through that and you know because it was such a massive trauma and you know but there was a massive grieving process that i went through questioned it an awful lot took me a long long time to accept i mean for years literally every time i looked in the mirror i'd stop virtually if i looked in the mirror too long i'd feel like i'll start welling up you know it was a terrible thing to kind of come to terms with and but you know none of that really bothers me anymore it took me it took me a long time but eventually and it's miraculous thing but as the old saying time is a great healer and it really is so with the passing of time i truly learned to accept the new me and that new version yeah and that was what enabled me to really get on in the world you know yeah it's unbelievable like i said people would be watching thinking fuck me man like it's unbelievable story from what you've been through to what you're achieving now climbing mountains not quite and doing inspirational talks right writing books like i always say this shit but as long as you've got air in your lungs you've always got something to give not matter your appearance no matter how fucked up yeah no matter how old you are or what you've done in the past that people can change people can make changes adapt to the situation and then kick on and still create an amazing life like life is just it's true it's true james but what i will say on that is no matter who the individual no matter what the journey no matter what the the issues they face if you want to get on in life you've got to fundamentally want to help yourself and you've got to be hungry for that kind of process to to nurture your your path it doesn't just happen you've got to want it and that's the things that i learned in life i think looking back at perhaps my military service there was a reason that i was able to achieve and perhaps get to some of those parts or points in in the service where i got to do you still get any pain or anything medication stuff like that i'm not so much pain no fortunately things are pretty good in that department but you know i you know i'm still believe it or not under a consultant now so even after all these years i'm under a laser doctor so they're still doing a doing a bit of work on the face and tweaking some of the scars are you excited though for the future that the new technology that's coming out things i think somebody's just got a fucking head transplant there and brain transplants and like the future that there's hope for me yet then head but new things are coming out because i've seen people getting like with skin that it's just attaching and everything's are you planning for the future do you look at your stuff like that to see what's there for yourself well it's to god i mean it's quite interesting i mean even a few years ago now i was offered like full ear reconstruction but when i looked into it i think it's a japanese technique called negata named after the japanese surgeon that kind of pioneered this but what they do is they actually cut into the rib cage and they do something because they scoop it out the cartilage from the rib it's called cookie cuttering to scoop out that cartilage they can then maliate it and and sort of it because it's got a cartilage is quite sort of malleable they can then form it into an ear and then basically in terms of the plastic surgery they can reconnect and then you've got a more aesthetic ear but when i ask the questions okay because my hearing is a bit dodgy from the where the aircraft piled in in the distance and then exploded and that blast damaged my ears somewhat and i've got this permanent tinnitus i said to the surgeon is it going to help the pickup you know in the audio sense am i going to enhance my quality of hearing and he said no not really he said it's only going to help like the aesthetics outwardly in terms of your appearance and i'm like i'm not that bothered then what about stem cells um yeah there was a lot of talk about stem cells but i think believe it i'm not things are happening in the world of stem cell surgery but i think they're a long way off you know you know making sort of uh real practical gains with all of that at the moment i think it's still very much in in its infancy but i do think that there's huge scope for that in the future having looked at a few documentaries and even talked to a few surgeons over the over the years and it's likely that you know they're going to be able to possibly you know grow complete organs for potentially for for complete sort of stem cell organ transplant so there's going to be probably no end to what they can do in the future who knows but i mean listen they've come a very long way i mean the reality is my injury was 2007 so i was in hospital till 2009 and let's say that injury had happened even 10 years before there's the likelihood what would have been that perhaps in the acute phase of the intensive care they may not have necessarily had the expertise to to kind of keep me going and bring me back from that so that's why you've got to give a lot of massive thanks and appreciation to the nurses the doctors what they do for individuals is unbelievable like they don't get enough credit they're the ones who should be getting footballers wages are the ones who should be getting looked after the most like my mom's a home help as well and the stuff that they need to do and cleaning up shit and piss every day and night and helping people and just try to be there and comfort people it's honestly unbelievable that's why i always believe there's so much goodness in the world because there is so much goodness and that people doing it's it's a great thing oh there's a lot of great work that goes on there really is and you've got to see that and not necessarily look at like look it's easy to look at the negatives in life and look at perhaps the darker side of life i mentioned and focus on that because we've got the media kind of propagating that kind of information regularly but there is an awful lot of good that goes on in the world and indeed yeah a lot of medical staff are doing tremendous work out there for so many people we have to go from here now brother so from here you know there's bits and pieces going on i'm still doing a bit of speaking work and there's a bit of demand from that and i'm still trying to gently sort of promote the book as well and you know meeting people good people like yourself doing these big podcasts so there's a bit more of that that will go on and then i'm kind of interested in possibly you know taking further steps perhaps with the kind of corporate world and and perhaps you know utilizing the story but in the in the sort of corporate world a bit more and perhaps but maybe diversifying a little bit as well and and perhaps side stepping with it as well so maybe if there's a role that i could perhaps tap into where i could perhaps help to connect the corporate world with the charity sectors a little bit more and help with that then that might be something that i'll look into if you've got a lot of people who go through a lot of trauma maybe it's been burned reaching out to you for to speak and look for inspiration to then there's bits and pieces yes so there's all kinds of weird and wonderful things that i do so i've spoken to i mean all sorts of different audiences from from younger students in schools and sort of youth groups like young farmers like women's institute to you know through to small businesses right the way through to some of the bigger corporates you know for like their annual general meetings as guest speaker and so on so it's quite bizarre you know some of the stuff that i've been subject to you know doing some of the speaking work that i do to help others i mean just this week i had the the the privilege of being away and speaking to a team of serving police officers which was quite interesting because they've come from all different forces around the country and they were on like a sort of an interesting kind of adventurous kind of respite weekend for want of a better description and i was kindly invited along just to come and share the story about you know because obviously i had some service back in the day and talk about the trauma that i'd been through and how i was able to kind of hold on and sort of nurture my own development and come through all of that and i think that perhaps helped some of those guys and girls that i was talking to so yeah lots of different audiences and and it's an interesting journey i mean like if you just said to me you know 15 years ago you know one day you're going to be you know you're going to be kind of out there talking sharing your life experience and being a public speaker i probably would have never believed you but um it is uh it's interesting how perhaps where one door closes if you've got the ability to embrace a new life as it were um then other doors will potentially open up yeah i think we've always got to and also put your best foot forward you know i think we've always got to embrace new life though we've also got to brave new circumstances like doors always close but you've got to be the person who fucking goes and opens other ones because they ain't going to open themself you've got to kick those fuckers down and say look i'm here no matter what you went through no matter the circumstances for myself or anybody watching or listening you've got to go and make it work do you know what i mean there's plenty there'll be plenty people as well because going through the same shit as yourself went through that sort of trauma that's just quite gave up i thought i had it bad because i had a few addictions i think people give up for far lesser reasons perhaps i mean i don't want to necessarily compare and contrast yeah a million percent no yeah you know people may face you know lesser hardships and give up you know and and that is quite a tragedy when you think about it because there's always a life to live and there's always um you know perhaps uh blue skies around the corner when you've had like abject rainfall and sort of foul weather you know remember it you know the heavens will open up and and and you know and and the clouds will part and there'll be blue skies again life will get better and you have to believe that and but i was going to say it pays to sometimes have the courage of your convictions to if you've got a little bit of ambition even no matter how kind of small and how trivial that ambition might seem if you've got the courage to perhaps put your best foot forward in life you can surprise yourself and you can often pull things out of the bag and really get on in the world i mean i know people that have managed to pull themselves out of the gutter you know they've had perhaps a drink problems or or drug problems for example they've acknowledged that they've got a bit of help and they've thought oh perhaps there's no opportunities for me because i've got a bit of a criminal record or whatever but i've known such individuals that have then volunteered and they've got involved as a volunteer with various organizations and by volunteering sometimes they do a little bit of voluntary work even you know half a day a week or a couple of sessions per week and it's enough to meet people and connect and join the dots and then through meeting other people as the old saying sometimes it's not what you know it's who you know other people can help you then open some doors and create opportunities and so i've known people that have gone from being in a pretty dark place through kind of putting their best foot forward perhaps doing a bit of voluntary work and then that leads to whatever and then the next thing you know they're in paid employment and they're really cracking on with life yeah and they're you know so i know of a few examples you know great positive working people get a hold of you Jimmy so i mean i'm i'm contactable through social media so i've got you know verified accounts and a page with both facebook and instagram facebook is just jamie hull and in instagram is i am jamie hull one and i've also got a website that i'm contactable through for mainly sort of the the the element of speaking work that i do and that is simply jamiehull.co.uk For anybody watching this maybe you can throw some trauma just now that think that they can't get through that what advice would you give for them? Simple advice you know fundamentally to not lose hope completely because remember i was virtually there i was right on the borderline of of being that guy that was losing all hope you know and i mentioned that in the sort of the testimony of what i went through but you know you know from my own sort of humble experience not to lose hope entirely no matter how difficult or dark life can seemingly stoop understand that you know there is light potentially around the corner you just got to kind of keep working and kind of keep kind of moving towards the you know those better days and hold on and if you work towards your objectives and hold on you can really surprise yourself and the biggest thing that i learned was to believe in yourself and to understand that ultimately through great will and determination all of us can overcome life's obstacles and that's what it's all about. Love it jamieh listen brother for coming on today and telling your story it's been unbelievable you're a true inspiration and so many people get a lot from this can't wait to see what you do for the future mate i'm a massive fan massive supporter and i can't i'll be keeping a close eye to what you do but honestly brother unbelievable and keep fighting a good fight. Cheers James. God bless you brother. Check out more of my podcasts on the right and be sure to like share and comment your thoughts on this week's podcast thank you