Touchdown

You know you're in for a weird time of it when the man in front of you in the Ryanair queue is Shane McGowan, the one time lead singer of Irish rabble-rousers, The Pogues. Truth be told, I'd signed up for bodyguard school not thinking too closely about what it might involve. Checking in for my flight to the UK, all I could think of was what it might involve. Was Shane and the famously bad state of his teeth an omen of what I faced at an army camp in Wales?

While I was sure some of my fellow candidates might harbour fantasies of chaperoning Britney Spears around Hollywood, I was working on the assumption that the people taking this course would be seeking employment as PMCs (Private Military Contractors) in Afghanistan and Iraq. So the profile would, I imagined, be men in their twenties who were extremely physically fit and a few sandwiches short of the full picnic. In some respects, I would be proven right.

As it transpired, the candidates ranged all the way from a middle-aged American, who resembled Harry Potter a good thirty years after the films had dried up, to an ex-German special forces sniper fresh from service in Afghanistan whose only words of English were "Fuck the Taliban!" And here I was, a man at the wrong end of his thirties, who made a living writing television, about to embark on the same journey.

The course was advertised as very much 'hands on'. Rather than just sitting in a classroom we'd be putting the theory into practice. Some of the highlights from the course syllabus included:

CQC (unarmed combat) including Krav Maga and other systems of appropriate natures.


Advanced / Defensive / Offensive / Anti-Ambush Driving. The entire weekend is spent at out (sic) driver training area where you and your fellow candidates will go through (literally) many different vehicles, in a variety of ways!


Firearms training - to include Team drills. Use of 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 person teams, live fire & movement, mutual cover & evacuation drills.

So, ageing Harry Potter look-alike?
Check.

Ex-special forces sniper who's wired to the moon?
Check.

Writer wondering what mayhem lay ahead of him?
Check.

And we weren't even the strangest candidates, as you'll find out next post, when I introduce the rest of a very motley crew, along with one or two beacons of sanity.