 South Pacific, a new kind of mercenary is stalking the globe, but these are not the traditional dogs of war, more an advance army for commercial interests. It was an outrageous plot that ended in humiliating capture. Simon Mann, of the privileged English background, would spend five years, some of Africa's most notorious prisoners. And you might have to think because you can't take a prisoner because it's your risk of error, that everybody takes their own charge. You don't have security, you don't attract non-investment. Your economy doesn't, and your economy and your industry infrastructure doesn't develop. Simon, how are you, sir? I'm good, thanks. You're in Joberg, did you say? I am in Joberg, yep. Wow. Lovely weather, no lockdown. It's fine. Oh, wow. Yes, I was there when I went to work in Mozambique. We stopped, obviously our flight came into South Africa, and we stayed at a lodge there in Joberg called Brown Sugar. Have you ever heard of it? No, no. Oh, it was, let's just say one night in Johannesburg, it's as good as one night in Bangkok. Okay, really? Maybe not so many girls, but well, not where we were. But yes, it was quite a memorable occasion. Well, as you can see from the background, I'm in a very nice house in Santon, so. Yes. Yes, I had a great time there, and I'm of that age. I grew up seeing the, I don't know what you call it, the uprising on television. So the Zulus reacting against the security forces. Yeah. Our young people listening might be surprised, but our news every night was filled with people running down a road with spears chasing after the police or in the police firing off their, firing off their baton rounds. Yes, incredible. So when I got to Johannesburg, Simon, it was quite, I don't think emotional is the right word, but it was certainly a special moment to see a place that had been so much in my history and my youth. And to see the big mind dumpings just incredible. Yeah, well, I'm actually half South African. So my mother was South African, and I have a South African passport. So I'm very familiar with what you're talking about. And yeah, quite amazing. I mean, you went to eat and that's right. I did. Yeah. It was a great day, funnily enough. Okay. I never thought in my life I'd be talking to eating students but they seem to appreciate the realism in what I said. I mean, I know a bit about Africa's colonial history. You had some vicious fighting. I think obviously Angola. Yeah, I just wondered how is it, you know, if you're half South African, does that throw up issues or do you notice a sort of lack of. I mean, the first time I came to South Africa, I was six. And it was 1958. And we came by sea. My parents obviously were living here. And so it's always been a part of my life. And I mean, I tend to find that some, you know, all sons of the empire to a certain degree, one, you know, more or less, very few English people have no connection with any part of the old empire. You know, cousins in Canada, cousins in Australia, this that something or other. And I think probably not so much now, but certainly my generation was very much the norm, I think, you know, the people born in India, their fathers and served in the Indian Army or God knows what but there were loads and loads of that sort of those sort of connections. And it's actually a bit of a hobby horse of mine because what I find in Africa is an enormous residual goodwill towards the UK. And funnily enough, that is as strong sometimes stronger in the non British colonies, because they had the misfortune of being colonised by somebody else. Yes. It is such rich history in Africa. I've read a lot of Wilbur Smith's books. I don't know what his reputation is over there, but certainly gives you a flavour of the depth of history that there is that. Yeah, I'm a big Wilbur Smith fan. Yeah. I actually thought that they were some training manuals for a while. Yes. Yes. Were you were you living in England when you joined the army? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, so we never, well, actually, no, that's not true. I mean, but as as in terms of how I was brought up, I didn't live in South Africa. I think the longest I was here continuously was 18 months. And in fact, went to live in South Africa in 1997. And we lived there for six years, which was great. We lived in Cape Town. So I didn't live here as a boy. Yeah. And you were Scott's guards, is that right? I was, yes, Scott's guards. Yeah, absolutely. With a bit strange because not even slightly Scottish. But my grandfather joined Don Scott's guards in the First World War, and that's why it became family regimen. I see. Is that usually if you come out of Sandhurst that you can go to any, I mean, you could go to the Gurkhas, right? Well, yeah, I mean, certainly in my day. So now we're talking quite a long time ago. So 1969. I mean, when you went to Sandhurst, it was your idea because in those days there was Sandhurst and Mons. Sandhurst was regular officers. Mons was short service. I wanted to go to Sandhurst, become a regular officer. And you kind of pretty much sort of booked your place with your regiment probably before you went to Sandhurst. You knew where you wanted to go and you would have had an interview with them before you went to Sandhurst. And so they would sometimes reject people and they'd say, well, you know, good luck at Sandhurst, but we don't think you're what we want. That obviously didn't happen to me, but that could happen. And so it was a whole sort of jockeying, you know, and also even then there were only a limit. There were a fixed number of places that the regiments could fill. So if they had too many people wanting to come in, then, you know, they couldn't take them all. Although that definitely wasn't the case with the Scots guards in my day. We were very badly recruited for officers. The SCS for an officer, I'm assuming the selection is the same as the men, is that right? Yeah, you do the same. You have to get a better grade than they do on Test Week. And then you do Officers Week, which is an extra sort of bolt on, especially for you, which is Officers Week was hard. What's hard about it? I'm guessing physical. Well, no, it's because you're, well, in my case, we've just finished Test Week and come straight off Test Week onto Officers Week. So you're tired anyway. So they've achieved that. You're absolutely knackered. The difficult part about it that I found is that on Test Week, it's purely objective. I mean, you've just got to make the times, you know, you've just got to make those times and get the grade. And that's on the watch and on the paper. Officers Week is much more about whether they like you or not as an officer. And so it's quite hard not to start trying to second guess it, you know what I mean? So they ask you a question or they throw something at you and you're, instead of just reacting, you're thinking, what do they want me to say, you know, what am I meant to say? Which of course is potentially fatal. Was it always on the cards you were going to go on selection? Was that your goal from the beginning? Yeah, it was actually. My cousin, Lockheed McLean, was in the SAS in the 60s. And I mean, he went to Borneo, served in Borneo, he's Garza Independent Parishing Company then SAS. In fact, he was one of the founding crew commanders of G squadron for SAS historians. And so I was at school and hearing about my cousin's exploits and I thought, right, this is what I want to do. Wow. And I've seen pictures of you in the Northern Ireland conflict, haven't I? Might have done. Yeah. I did a lot of tours. In fact, I did the Santas, I did what was called the Edward Bear course, which was the, you basically did the parachute course as an officer cadet. So I did that for fun, basically. I mean, you volunteered for it. And then, of course, you do parachute training in the SAS, everybody does. Yeah, you do a lot of it, don't you? Quite a bit, yeah. Because if you're a free-faller, if you're in free-fall troop, each squadron has a free-fall troop. And so obviously, if you're a free-faller, then you do a hell of a lot of it. The rest of us sort of muddle along. The funny thing was that the one thing that the free-fallers absolutely hated was static line, which is what we all do. You know, they were fine jumping out at 20,000 feet at night with oxygen and a berg on their legs. And oh my God, I don't know how they did it. But you say to them, OK, we're going to jump at 600 feet on a static line. They say, oh my God, no, we don't want to do that. Yes. I did two parachute courses. The first one we got as far as the balloon jump. And then it was cancelled because all the Hercules went out to the first Gulf War. Right. But I shared my room with two SES guys. And they were probably like the two most humble people I've ever met. I think that might surprise a lot of people, but you just would not know that these guys were the elite of the elite. No, some of the guys are very surprising. There was one time where they were bumbling along. I think we'll go into what you guys would call scoff, what we call scran. And the RSN came out. He went, you two, put your effing berries on now. And these two troopers just went carried on walking. Is he talking to us? They were like, nobody talks to us that way. Sorry. Yeah. I remember when I did my parachute course the second one time I did it with the, which was with the SES. And obviously, I don't think I need to say that, but as a young officer, you're pretty nervous. And the parachute course is at the end of your SES selection and continuation. And it's almost like a sort of holiday, really, because, you know, being through the whole thing. And now you've got two weeks away from camp and you're just going to, you know, do these do these jumps, which we'd all done before anyway. So we were with, I don't know, 40 or 50 parachute regiment recruits. And they really were parachute regiment recruits. You know, they've just done P company and now they're going to do their, their jobs. And so I think we're about eight or nine of us SES guys on this course with these 40 or 50 parachute regiment guys. And I think we've done the first jump from the aircraft. And the, the SES guys formed up to me as the Rupert and said, right, boss, listen, we want you to go and talk to the commandant of this place, because we're not going to jump with those beep, did he beep, beep, beep again. And I said, well, what do you mean? They said, well, they're just dangerous because they're so gung ho. All they want to do is charge out the back of that airplane. There's no thought of timing between the doors, you know, left, right, left, right. And we don't want to jump with them. So I thought, God, now what, you know, so anyway, have to go and form up to the REF commanding officer. Tell him the situation. He looked at me and he said, you know what, Simon, I don't blame them and I don't blame you. It's fine. You will all jump as your own stick. It was quite funny. Yes. As a Marine, I always had to make sure I was the first one out because we, we had a load of baby paras in with us as, as well. You know exactly what I'm talking about. And one time in the balloon, they say, right, number off. So I'm like, one, you know, just my arm was straight straight up. So basically for friend, our friends listening, that means you're first in the door. And he said, right, number one to the door. And I step forwarded arms across the reserve. And I just turn around and said, I'll see you guys on the ground. And then when I caught up with them in the hangar, I said, yeah, did you think it was funny when I said, I'll see you guys on the ground. And he said, actually, Chris, we were just shitting ourselves. Didn't really didn't really hear what you said. Yeah, gosh, great experience throwing yourself out of airplanes. Yeah, I preferred airplanes to the balloon, actually. So there was something very clinical about the balloon jump. Yeah, it's like, it's all, it's a base jump technically, isn't it, which is kind of, it all seems so much more serious if it's going to open or not. If it doesn't, you haven't really got much height to rectify it. And in the airplane, you've got all that noise and the smell and the shouting and the, and the sort of the whole stick going out and all of that. Whereas the balloon, it's very quiet. There you go. Off you go. So kind of thing. And very different. And then of course you're going to fall straight down. You're not going to go sideways with the movement of the aircraft. They took the balloon up to four or five commando. And the guys were just giving their mates that their woolly pulleys with their power wings on and gone gone you go for it. There's guys going out doing backflips and some assaults and the PGA PGI is a saying, you sure that guy's power trained. That was quite funny on the, what they used to call stud splash, you know, jumping into Studlen Bay. And we used to do that because I was a boat troop. And so we were quite a lot of water stuff with pool actually. And in those days, they used to allow non power trained civilians to jump off the tailgate of the C 130 into the sea because why not, you know, what, what can possibly go wrong. And it turned out that actually quite a lot could possibly go wrong. Because one guy dropped his reserve. You know, so when he released one side of the reserve, he didn't release one side of the reserve. He released both sides of the reserve. But I mean about 500 feet up. So this reserve comes down. And the booties in the in the Gemini's. So laughing to have to make sure they land on them. And then the next guy that came out misjudged the distance completely. And I don't know what highly was when he fell out of his harness, but quite high, high enough for everyone to go. Yeah, the things you do when you're young. It was pretty good fun. I loved it. Has it been a help or a hindrance Simon being you. I mean, you're tagged with mercenary everywhere you go. Well, obviously, throughout social media is is how have you found that. It was a pain. Because, you know, mercenaries so fairly pejorative word among for most people. And it's, it's a sort of pointless debate because you know you can talk about what is a mercenary all day long. And some people would say with any professional soldier surely is a man. And then you have well no, no, because that's the Queen and country. Really, well, Garko isn't, you know, he doesn't come from here. So is he a mercenary. And that whole debate is completely pointless really. And so I sort of avoid it. And in fact, on LinkedIn, for those who follow LinkedIn, I've been arguing that we ought to be called com dot he airy, which is the Italian for mercenary and it just sounds so much better. It's, it's, it's kind of funny to place you even in that scene because I mean I've had guys I was in the Marines with they've gone out and they've done, you know, security on diamond mines in Africa or Angola and it's not unusual for guys to come out of an elite force or a special force and go and do that line of work isn't it not not really caring what the parameters of the, the, all the politics are but if there's a big paycheck at the end of it. But you, you, am I right in thinking you were more trying to do the right thing. Or was there an element, was there a met element of, I'm going to get paid a lot for this as well. No, I mean, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's, you know, I've written a book, you know, I've got a book called I have. Actually funny enough, it's behind me. This is my friend's house, but the books actually somewhere up in there. I'm going to put a link for it under our video Simon. Okay, cool. Yeah. And so, I mean, basically, I rejoined without telling you having to tell a whole story again, but I mean I rejoined the British Army, because of the first Gulf War, and I was on the staff of Peter killer Billy air. And that all came to an end in February. In 1992. And I was offered a job back in the special air service actually arranged by Peter, because I was on a TA attachment to do my service with him. And they would convert it back to being a regular commission, blah, blah, blah. And then Tony Buckingham at the same time started heritage oil and gas which I actually helped him a little bit with. So come on, you know, you've done the whole army thing it's time you made some proper money. Come and join me in heritage. I said, okay, I really actually probably ought to try and do that and make some proper money. And lo and behold, what was it about seven months later, I was a general in the Angolan army at war. So my attempt at becoming a civilian was an abject failure. And the reason we got into we were in that position was because basically, you need to, who will be gorillas. Having signed an agreement and having made all sorts of promises went against their agreement and against their promises and they went back to war. They lost the elections of November 92. It's a really big deal because I mean that was, that was what the Russians and the Cubans and the South Africans and the Americans all out of Angola, all in the lead up to that election. Long story. Anyway, they went back to war. And the first thing they did was they attacked our operating base, which is a place called so you on the mouth of the river Congo. We decided that we would fight back that we wouldn't just say okay we're going home and pack our bags. We thought no, you know, these guys are committing a huge crime against humanity going back to war they signed an agreement they made a peace treaty they've got no right to go back to war whatsoever. And they're attacked, they've attacked us, you know, our men, our kit, our livelihood, to hell with them. So we pitched the pitch the idea to the Angolans, they liked it, and that was effectively the beginning of executive outcomes I mean executive outcomes existed before that, but hadn't done anything of that sort at all. And the next thing we're in a pitch battle to recapture Sawyer, which is all quite well known, quite well documented. And so, you know, it wasn't like a deliberate decision to go and fight or become a security guy it was actually the opposite I was hoping I was going to become an oil and gas. But it wasn't that wasn't going to it wasn't to be. And so the whole mercenary thing there is quite annoying in a way because you know, how are we mercenaries you know we we firstly we're acting almost in self defense we're acting in on behalf of our company and our livelihood. And secondly, we're like girkers because we were all signed up into the Angolan armed forces, you know I had an ID card badges of rank for the rest of it. So that doesn't normally fulfill the mercenary, you know, definition. Yeah. My gosh. So yes I see. And how did you go from there to the equatorial Guinea situation. Oh that was much later so that the Angolan stuff all happened in 93. So that's when that's when executive outcomes really started as a mercenary company. And I think it's important to actually differentiate between you know private security company private military company and what executive outcomes was because you know a lot of these what they call PMC's what are they actually doing they're doing an embassy or their escorting VIPs around. And yeah if they get shot at they'll shoot back. Fine, but they don't go to a government and say will help you win your war will come and fight this war with you and will help you win it, which is what executive outcomes did. And that is a rather different thing. Well Angola was going on we started Sierra Leone and shortly after that while that was going on the Papua New Guinea happened that big mess, and then the arms to Sierra Leone scandal, which resulted in the resignation of Robin Cook, all of those dramas happened. And that was basically when I thought I think I'll take the family down to Cape Town and relax in the vineyards of Constantia, which is what I did until 2003. And that was when I was recruited to do the Equatoria Guinea failed to attempt. Am I right in thinking you were tricked into or just was it double crossed. No, it's again it's a long story but you know now I was recruited to do it I thought I said yeah I agreed to do it. I wanted to do it. And it went wrong, you know, and my mistake, my fault I should have called it off, but I didn't. And Lord arrested. How did Mark factually get involved what what what did he, what was he looking to get out of this. And how he got involved was that basically the guy who should have been backing the whole thing, and driving the show. Who is the guy who recruited me. The guy called Ellie Khalil, who's now dead. And he wasn't backing us properly and basically the whole thing was going to fail. It was just going to be, it was just going to fall apart, not going to happen. It was going to be $200,000 to keep the show on the road. And I thought well who is crazy enough to just, you know, right out to check $200,000 to be a part of this and to make this happen. And Mark was, you know, a friend really I mean more of an acquaintance and a friend but he was a friend in a way down in Cape Town. He had dinner parties together and all that business but I didn't really know him that well but I thought yeah well I hope Mark would love to do this. So he joined in, signed up, paid his $200,000 and then when the shit hit the fan, wow, he got absolutely clobbered. Yes I bet. When you were arrested in, was it Harari Airport. So you're on your way to Equatorial Guinea. Yeah that's right. And you were going to pick up your weapons in Zimbabwe. Harari, yeah. How did that play out and at what point did you think, oh shit. Well actually I'd been there for a few days because what we were doing was collecting the arms and ammunition as you say, and the airplane came in my lovely Boeing 727 which was just bought. And with the men on board. And the idea was, you know, they were just going to stop load the stuff on and away we go. So I went to collect actually check over the weapons and go on to the back of a truck and there was, there were very few weapons there and I thought oh something's really wrong here. And then I heard this voice saying get down from the truck. And that's it, we were under arrest. Oh my God, did they arrest all of your men? Oh yeah, yeah everyone went to prison. For 18 months. A year or 18 months in depending. In Harari, Chigurubi Max, Chick Max, they call it the Harari Hilton. Yeah. These places get the tag Hilton don't they? Not a good place. I'm guessing ironically. And where did you recruit those guys from? Were they a, you know, were they a rag tag bunch of bandits or were they all? No, no, they were all from executive outcome. Almost without exception. Yeah. And where did executive outcomes recruit from mainly? Was it ex-Paris and Marines? Ex-executive outcomes was almost exclusively ex-South African defense force. Either Parachute Parabat or Recky, which is their equivalent of Special Forces. But many of them were from the notorious 3-2 battalion. Because I mean 80% of executive outcome for Black. And these guys came from 3-2 battalion. Who were basically people who the South Africans recruited in Angola to fight for the South Africans against the MPLA. The then Angolan government. Actually, still the Angolan government, but yeah. It's a complicated and long story. I mean Angola was the worst. Angola was the worst and most intense proxy war of the entire Cold War. And it was real war. I mean, you know, heavy artillery, fighters, dog fighting, tanks, etc. And most people actually in the UK pretty ignorant of the whole thing. They didn't even know where Angola is, most people. But it was a major war. Yes. Well, they saw that, I mean, they had it bad, didn't they? Back in, I mean, originally Portugal didn't want to give its colonies up. So there was a brutal fight there. Then they had all the civil war again. It's just... Yeah, well, the poor old Angolans. I mean, actually, this was one of the reasons I was so angry when UNITA went back to war. I just thought it was outrageous thing to do. Because as you say, they'd had this incredibly long war. They fought against the Portuguese. There were about three or four different factions and fought against the Portuguese. Portuguese packed it up and ran away in 76 when they had their own coup in Portugal, if you remember. And then the civil war started, which was MPLA backed by Russia and Cuba against UNITA, the guerrillas, backed by the United States and South Africa. And I knew Zavimbi. I mean, I actually spent four hours with Zavimbi talking about the whole thing, the whole story. And he promised I was with Lord Steele, the leader of the House in Scotland. David Steele is a very good guy. And he and I went and saw Zavimbi. We spent four hours with them. I mean, the only reason I saw Zavimbi, because I was with Lord Steele, because Zavimbi wouldn't have seen me otherwise, that I was sort of David Steele's bag carrier. But actually I was a little bit more than that, because we wanted to make sure that if Zavimbi won, the oil company that I was by then working for would be still regarded as friendly. The whole thing there about him, and he looked in the eye, I actually don't think UNITA intended to go back to war. I think they were pushed back into it. I don't think it was their decision. Well, there's massive wealth in that part of the world, isn't it? The massive, massive natural resources and... Well, I mean Angola is just the most incredible country. I mean, it's three times the size of France. Oil, copper, gold, diamonds, fish in the sea, fantastic farmland. I mean, it's just the most fabulous place. Yes, and destroyed by years of civil war. I mean, how many land mines must be in the ground there? Yeah, I mean, you know, they are working their way through it. They're sorting it out slowly, but surely. Simon, I'm conscious of your time here. Can you just give us an idea of what was it like in a foreign prison and what mindset you have to adopt? Yeah, the mindset thing is pretty important. But, you know, people come to me and they say, well, you know, it doesn't compare with you, but I actually spent two weeks in a jail in, you know, wherever, Burkina Faso or something. And of course, that's nothing like what you had to do. I said, no, no, no, it's fine. One day is a day too many. You know, your two weeks would have been hell. So I understand exactly what you're talking about. And I mean, one of the sort of weird things about it is that it's almost it's a double punishment or even a treble punishment in a sense, because, you know, I'm sure UK prisons are not all that pleasant. Although some of them look pretty good. But your family can come and visit you. Yeah, my family couldn't come and visit me. And also if you make a joke with your fellow prisoners about, you know, what a load of rubbish a certain football team is, they will understand it. If you're in Zimbabwe, they don't. And so you're in a kind of exile. You know, you're hot. You're in a cultural exile. And I think that makes it much harder. And then of course, when I got to Equatoria Guinea, because United two, so I did four years in, in Chikurubi, in Harari. And then I was kind of kidnapped out of that prison. And I was smuggled to Equatoria Guinea, where they put me in Black Beach there. And in Black Beach, I was in solitary confinement, strict solitary confinement for 18 months. God, that's like that's either character building or character breaking, isn't it? Yeah, probably. But I mean, you've got no choice. So you just got to. What did they feed you? Well, in Zimbabwe, they just feed you SADSA, which is, you know, boiled up meal. SADSA in the evening and what they call BOTA, which is the same meal, but cooked a different way. A porridge in the morning. And that's it, basically. Luckily, having a super wife and family, I had extra food. Oh, they could subsidize you, could they? Yeah, so, you know, I get some tins of sardines or something like that. And Simon, if I may say so, you look remarkably healthy for, are you 70 now, would that be right? 68. Yeah. My God, you're out doing, well, a lot of guys in their 50s, I'd say. Well, I try and run every day. I really try and keep fit. Yeah. What are your times like? Do you find them slipping as you get older? Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, of course, yeah. I try and stick to this thing that you should be able to do 10Ks in the same number of minutes as you are old in years. Okay. Now, obviously, to 25, that's going to be extremely difficult. But it's quite a good benchmark as you get older. Yeah. I'm not particularly good at doing mass on the spot, but I'll have to work that out. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm running 200 miles this month. Oh, my God. Yes. One of these silly things that I do, I've got this project called running homeless for Christmas. Okay. And I'm just going to hit my running track and just run 200 miles. And if I can do it in two days, great. Then I, then I get home for Christmas Eve. If I don't, then I'm, I'm out for the, for the long run. I want to just do what I can to highlight the veterans plight, the amount of our service personnel that suffer with trauma and subsequently housing problems. Yeah. But yeah, I hope that day doesn't come when, when I can't keep pretending on 21. Yeah. No, well, it will. I mean, I'm very lucky, but I find now, you know, you get an injury, you pick up a minor injury, like a tweak knee, you know, which back in the day would have cured quickly. And now it sort of stays with you. You can't run for quite a while. And then that, that means, you know, when you do start running again, you want to be very careful. You don't pick up another injury. And, you know, it just, you know, you just got to be quite a lot more careful. Yes. I bet body management. Yeah. But I think it's also the same, you know, with the whole mental health thing as well. And I think the guys, some of the guys have a real problem with asking for help and sort of, you know, understanding that they can't do what they used to be able to do, you know, because we all, you got your background, my background, we all such such an incredibly high. We set very, very high standards for ourselves, a fitness of mental toughness and all the rest of it. And I think, you know, that becomes dangerous, actually, as you, as you get older, you don't want help. You don't want to tell anybody you're not feeling well. And that is a real issue, I think. Yes, very much so. Anyone out there struggling, there's phone numbers at the bottom of my YouTube video that you can reach out and talk to somebody. Yeah, you've got to do it, you know, I mean, I get asked on, you know, well, how is your mental health, you know, 18 months in solitary confinement? I mean, that's meant to sort of send anybody around the twist. And I say, well, you don't ask me. I might be thinking I'm Napoleon and everything's fine. But I did a talk actually to the SDS Regimental Association just before Christmas, actually. And I knew that the Association wanted me to talk about the whole business of sort of, you know, asking for help. And I thought, God, I cannot stand up in front of them and tell them they've got to ask for help. You know, that's not going to work. So I turned it around completely. And I cited two people who I knew were here as to the audience, you know, all of the SDS guys. David Sterling, who I really knew quite well. And Peter de la Bilia, who I also really knew quite well and worked, well, I worked for both of them actually on different occasions. And I said, you know, the amazing thing about both those guys is that anybody feels felt with them that they could go and talk to them. Considering who they were, they were fantastically approachable. So if somebody wanted to ask for help, they would accept that 100% and they would welcome it. And I thought my idea was that by turning it around, I got the same message across to the guys without sounding patronizing, you know. Yes. It's true, though, because both of those guys are incredibly approachable. Do you know Damien Lewis? No, I don't. Damien writes a lot of SDS type memoirs, not personal memoirs, but about the regiment. Okay. And yeah, we were just, he came on the podcast the other day. He's a very famous author. And... No, I've seen his book. Yeah. He was saying how much, like the amount of trauma somebody like Paddy Main must have accumulated during their service with the, you know, the untold acts of warfare that he was involved in and how back then you just had the drink and you didn't have this thing where you could reach out to people. Yeah, it's quite nice. I agree with you. And I was actually quite... What was that book called? SDS Heroes, the one... It was a big success two or three years ago. I can't actually remember the name of the title, but it was the official history of the SDS in the war. And I was shocked how much they were drinking at the time. Never mind afterwards. Yes. But Paddy Main, in fact, actually at the dinner that I did this talk, I just talked about just now, mentioned just now. There was a guy there who had served in two SDS in the war. And he said, well, I was lucky. I didn't have to do selection like you all did. He said, really? You didn't do selection? He said, no, we didn't do selection in those days. I just got interviewed by Paddy Main. And I said, well, I think actually probably selection would be easier than the interview by Paddy Main. Yes. I got a feeling a bottle of whiskey came into that interview. It's a benchmark. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I must admit, I've thought, legislately, people have asked me about the lockdown and all this, the whole COVID-19 thing. So what do you think about it? What do you think Colonel David would have thought about? I said, well, I don't think he would have regarded stay safe. That's a very good way of saying goodbye to people. Stay safe. Yes. There's nothing safe about him. It's amazing that you know him. He's obviously legendary David Sterling. Totally. Absolutely amazing guy. I mean, just incredible guy. I was very, very lucky to get to know him actually quite well. It wasn't entirely luck, actually, because I sort of blagged my way in and got to know him and started working for him. But I kind of cold called him, which was an interesting moment for anyway. Sounds like you can get away with that sort of thing in the essay. I appreciate the normal thing. He really was very approachable. And the first time I met him, I was absolutely terrified. I knew who he was. I was a very young officer in the Scots Guards and I was very bored. I'd been to North Nile twice and that was pain in the arse. I knew he was up to all sorts of interesting things. And I went in and see him in his beautiful office above Goods in South Ordley Street. 22 South Ordley Street. So it's 22. The address is 22S there. And lovely office. Went in. It was evening with no lights and it's a great big desk. Beautiful office. And he's sitting there. He said, oh, come on. Come on. Sit down. I'm just about to light a cigar, but it's the last one. But I haven't lit it yet. I'll tell you what. I'm just going to toss you for it. And it's just, it's just a super small thing, but he had the gift that he could put someone at ease. You know. Yes. A leader of men. Absolutely amazing guy. So thank you ever so much for your time. It's been a fascinating chat. I'm going to put all your links. What should I put your LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Page I can put. Because I don't really do the others. Yeah. And you can mention the book if you like. Yeah. Long, long gone. And will you send me the. Send me the link so I can put them on my. LinkedIn as well. Absolutely. Yes. Thank you. And let's chat again. If that's okay. That would be. That would be my pleasure. Sure. Well, that's fine. I enjoyed it. My pleasure too. Yes. Take care. Speak soon. All right then. Thanks. Simon. Cheers that. Bye bye. Bye bye. Hello friend. I hope this finds you well. My name is Chris. I'm a former. Royal Marine's commando. And I fought my way back from chronic trauma and addiction to live, work and travel in 80 countries across all seven continents, achieving all of my dreams and goals along the way. Now I pass my simple system on to other people, but I can only help you if you like and subscribe. So please do so because you get one life. And if you live it right, one is enough.