Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Former SAS soldier and author, best known for leading a covert mission in Iraq and writing the bestselling book Bravo 20.
On the island
Eight records
The story of should I stay, should I go was for me was quite personal because I had the decision on that last night in Iraq trying to escape. Should I stay in Iraq for that night before trying to cross the border to Syria? Or stay and hide up to use the best of the following night? And I made the wrong decision because I got caught.
When I came back after the First Gulf War, I was given this RAF video and they were playing this song In the Air Tonight to all the target acquisition pictures that we all saw on the news as they were doing the nighttime bombing raids and this song just really sort of reminds me of the Gulf War.
Sweet ThingFavourite
It was the very first album that I bought, and I must have been about 13 or 14. And it was all about trying to go out with a girl that I fancied called Fame or Call. I didn't have a record player in the house anyway, you know, the family didn't have one. But it was very sort of hip to have this new Dave Bowie, who's he sort of thing.
it reminds me of the Army, a lot of the Northern Ireland tours that I'd done in the infantry battalion, but also at the same time sort of the if you like childhood and it's you know, it's a rosy view of childhood, but yeah, it's it's not far off the mark.
it wait just really reminds me of all the times that I've spent in August. And in fact I bought this this C D and I thought it was great and I've been playing it ever since.
I just love Bollywood. Coming back from New York, a lot of the late night flights were Air India and so all of a sudden you sit there and you watch these fantastic films. I haven't got a clue what's going on. I don't know, there'd be gunfights and people getting stabbed. Then all of a sudden everyone's dancing on top of a mountain somewhere. But I just love them.
Now, this, if you like, the second part of my life now being involved in in film and part of the The deal that you get when you get involved in film, well you get the limo, you get the hotel and I was just sitting in the limo with this guy who drives Clive and he's putting all the different C D's on and this song came up. And I'd just be happening going over Sunset Boulevard as it goes down to the coast. And the sun was setting. I thought, Yeah, I like this. This is okay. I like it. I like this job.
My wife plays it all the time. She's she's played the cello ever since she was a child and it's just for pleasure, nothing sort of serious. And it's quite a slow song. But if I come in and it's being played fast, I know that it's time to make a cup of tea'cause I've done something wrong and sort of go upstairs and find out what's wrong.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:53If you hadn't joined the army, you say you'd be in prison now. Is it as simple as that? Your natural talents could have taken you either way?
I think so. I I certainly living in South London it the the horizons were always quite limited. You know, it wasn't about getting to school, getting an education, it was about sort of short-term gain. And uh the way to do that was was just to get into crime because you tended to look up to the people in the estates that were involved with crime because they, you know, they had the second hand car, they were sorted out.
Presenter asks
1:54What are the two things in common then? If it's the life of crime and then the life in the army, it's the same thing, is it?
It's sort of an aptitude and taking advantage of situations. Because if you've got the aptitude to do those things and to learn and to blend into environments, which normally it's sort of the people like myself who've come from sort of housing stakes or whatever found quite easy, they can fill you up with all the the information you need and the skills to actually do your job, but blend in. Because the way that Special Air Service works is that you're left on your own to get on with the job and that you know, and that's what all selection is about, trying to get it.
The keepsakes
The book
Charles Dickens
Do you know, I think it would be any Dickens book. I read Great Expectations this summer. So I'm I'm sitting there reading this book and I'm saying to my wife, do you know this book? It's so funny. She said, Yeah, I read it when I was twelve. You know, so I'm going through that phase now of reading all these things. So any yeah, any Dickens book.
The luxury
I think what we certainly in the regiment call is a gallock, which is a machete. And the fact is with that you can build, you can defend, you can kill.
Presenter asks
2:43But just going back to when you first joined the army, what you liked then, I get the impression anyway, is that sense of camaraderie and that sense of routine, 'cause it was not something you'd ever had in your life.
Absolutely. For me it was it was the simple things as well. Um clean sheets every Tuesday, constant hot water and your own bed space. You know, by army law there's a certain amount of area that you get. You get your own locker, you get you know, the whole... Baths, showers... I used to undo the nozzle on the shower so it just used to come down as a as a complete sort of lot of water and uh get one of those fold away plastic chairs and just sit there for an hour.
Presenter asks
5:39When [the young boy herding goats] did see you, should you not have killed him?
No, it doesn't it doesn't work like that. It's um you can look at it in two ways. You can look at it from the the moral point which one of the patrol members, Dinger, put it right, he says, Well, we're the special S or it's the SAS as opposed to the S S. But actually if you look at it from a tactical point of view, um if you shoot him, you you give away your position anyway... if you kill him, what happens is that everything we take in on an operation we take out because you might have to go back there again. So we would literally have a dead weight to take with us.
Presenter asks
7:09What part does fear play in all of this? Is there time and space for it?
Yeah, very much so. And it it's a it's an important component. Everybody is scared. They say they're not scared, they're liars or they're mentally deficient and they shouldn't be doing that job anyway. But the things that get you over the fear is being a professional soldier. So there's your experience, your training and certainly the knowledge of, you know, you know your own capabilities and even more importantly the capabilities of the enemy.
Presenter asks
9:30How does that make you react then when you've heard more recently about these accounts of American cruelty to Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib?
Well, the same as everybody else. I think that if you're going into a situation like that, you've got to be better than uh the people that you're replacing because otherwise you lose credibility. And that is what's happened. These... Images have become the the the militant's best recruiting campaign ever and uh it just becomes totally counterproductive.
“If you've got the aptitude to do those things and to learn and to blend into environments, which normally it's sort of the people like myself who've come from sort of housing stakes or whatever found quite easy, they can fill you up with all the the information you need and the skills to actually do your job, but blend in.”
“Everybody is scared. They say they're not scared, they're liars or they're mentally deficient and they shouldn't be doing that job anyway.”
“I think any profession that you get in, you want you want to sort of achieve the the the the highest level. It is all about proving yourself. No one pushes you because the argument is is well, if you're not pushing yourself, you don't really want to be here.”