The Truth About Princess Diana - Bodyguard Lee Sansum Tells All

you can now follow me and 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 you should wrote a letter to is it paul burrows in 96 and says that they were going to kill her in a car accident was that she ever in fear of her life did you ever feel that she was everywhere you go he's trying to make it as sterile as possible because there was massive threats against uh the family and him he brought down the government with the cash for questions carry on which i was involved with people who are watching you and we did find people watching us doing surveillance on us from um mi5 which was standard and others what you're hoping is they're going to look at your level of security and they're going to go up now it's too we can't get away with this it's too much you know you've just got to see through all the [ __ ] man this is [ __ ] insane [Music] this is going to get everybody killed and i'm not sending my men in there some of the iconic pictures you see of the princess it was one of me and her in a boat where she's whispering to me that made it all over the world some of them sold for a million euros so you can see why why they were so aggressive to get in and get in your face and trying to take a compromising photo and the question is why did everybody love her because people could see what she was like and the media especially the media in the uk the tabloids then uh just destroyed her so i said to the princess i said have you seen the daily papers today because i wanted to just give her the heads up of as to what was in and she said are you meaning the article in that paper and i said yeah like are you okay with it and she said well it's his choice and she turned around she'd obviously been crying and a lot and uh she said have you heard about my friend um and i said yes yeah we have you know it's awful what's happened you know you know i know you knew him and i'm really sorry and and she was crying and she said uh do you think they're going to do that to me because because mr fired one of his big rules was everybody must wear a seatbelt he was really big on it and you can see on the picture he wasn't staggering drunk he was expecting but he was made out to be pissed off his head and trevor said to me and kes has said to me as well he was not drunk we would not allow him to drive there was rumors that she was pregnant is there any um how could i say and today's guest with lee sansom great to meet you brother how are you big man i'm good are you yeah really good thank you first of all thanks for coming on the show my pleasure thank you for having me on yeah no problem just released a bit called the bodyguard great read close protection like you've worked with some of the biggest names on the planet but none other than princess diana yes yeah yeah biggest name probably on the planet yeah you've got to have deep personal conversations with her and your own opinion of the night of the crash that very fascinating read that yeah i get a lot of books and a lot i guess but that one i read in two days wow very intriguing it's always something i've always remembered they were 25th anniversary just passed a couple of days ago but as a kid that's always something that's always stood out and there's a lot of speculation a lot of conspiracy theories but you're the man in the mix yeah how are you i'm good i'm good good busy as always like you dashing about all over the show but so yeah yeah everything's good and everything's good before we get into everything i'll go back to the start of my guests where you grew up how it all began okay right so um yeah the book um the book i wrote with my ghostwriter as a legacy really for my kids during lockdown and and there are some things about the princess in there but she's the big news right everybody especially the 25th anniversary so i uh i was born in lancashire just north of manchester and and lived you know most of my years there we moved in back into a place called salford in manchester which is slightly different than it is today a big big working-class area and mainly around the dock area and and you know my dad used to work there and and my family are all from manchester and so we my parents moved out to a place called rosendale in lancashire and they'd both been there during the war you know they moved the children out so they moved back there they must have had really good memories of it you know so uh yeah born on a big council estate uh what'd you call it in scotland uh a scheme yeah massive scheme thousands of people uh fully employment then in the uh in the the cotton mills and uh it was a great place to to grow up you know loads of pubs um big community feeling as you get and then there's the pecking order of course isn't there as a young man on on the schemes or on the council estate so you quickly established your pecking order as a young man and then your little gangs that you hang out with would have their pecking orders as well so i think that growing up in that environment affects everybody slightly differently doesn't it so uh for me uh as a child i was i think i was you know you look back i was quite thoughtful and um and perhaps a bit too thoughtful on things you know and i was bullied at school uh quite badly uh not not in in terms of uh of you know horrendous acts of violence against me there's a few but i think i overthought it as you can do you know and uh and that played a big part in my life that um on my paper i'm dreading going to school dreading meeting this person you know it affected my life incredibly so i can really i can really relate to people who've been bullied at school you know for me it's more psychological i think i built it up myself you know and so but apart from that i had a really good happy childhood exciting getting up to lots of mischief as you do so um so i went from there to uh karate school so i thought if i could learn this karate i can sort this guy out so uh i went to the karate school in a place called bay cup which is a really interesting place there's a lot of irish people settled in uh in this place called bay cup it was the last um train line to be built and a lot of navies got laid off there so there's friends of mine at irish accents had never been there you know and there was a big there was a big um community there how can i say um supported the ira of course because that's where they came from and that's their belief and there's all the murals on the wall and everything's incredible place you'd only go there if you had a friend there and we didn't have any friends from there because it was just a really rough place but the first karate school i went to was in this place called bay cup so i was so determined to do it so as the bus pulled up i got off the bus ran to the community center because i thought i was going to get battered by the the young people there and i probably was if i didn't run there's a couple of us and then it started getting worse then so first night there was a there was a an instructor there and he delighted in beating you up and he broke my ribs on the first night of my karate so that didn't work out too well for me so um a bit later on in life i uh i started going to football matches and i used to support manchester city which was uh my home team and when i went to roslindale the it wasn't the team to support it was burnley he either supported burnley or no one so i started going watching burnley and i didn't want to but i soon got the bug for it and uh and it became my team i went all over the country watching them get beat generally and then got involved in football violence which was a big kick for me because after all those years of being uncertain about you know your physical attributes and you know psychologically being bullied but um the turning point a big turning point in my life i've had a few turning points as we all have but um just before the the football violence probably about the same time i started figuring out hang on i can fight and i and i can i could find my dad used to teach us boxing when we were young his dad was a boxer my granddad um and he's one of the top boxers in the country and then the war came of course so he couldn't do it so he used to do uh prize fighting and then he would sort people out in the local area my granddad is a real tough bastard um and we used to go down to salford and see him and also to be a knock on the door and he'd and and ted would have to go out sort somebody out come back obviously make a few quid uh so my dad taught us boxing when was young and i didn't really like it my brother was older and i think he bust my nose and you know it was it wasn't a very pleasant experience for me but all of a sudden i found i could hit people and it sounds weird that i look back on it now and your life's your life right yeah and and i just figured out i could hit people and i could beat them and i enjoyed doing it and then i went to this pub probably within a month or a few weeks and this bouncer in there was a right bully a big guy there's a few of them and i'd done something i was young then i was pissed i maybe spilt something and he came for me and i thought here we go and i said right get outside now i'm going to [ __ ] you up why i said it i have no idea because i was [ __ ] in my pants and uh so this guy came out the pub of the whole pub it's like a pub disco type thing the whole pub emptied as well because we wanted to watch this young lad get battered by this guy anyway uh there's some like garages on a little bit of wasteland by this this pub and and we we started going for it and i was just banging him i mean really hard put off my wrists i hit him hard and i remember it to this day and he couldn't hit me and i could just hit him anyway i beat him down he's on his hands and knees crying he says don't hit me anymore right i was like wow and everybody's like wow and then i saw this guy used to bully me and i went your [ __ ] next boy and he went no legally i don't want any trouble i don't want any trouble please and that was a big turning point for me for my confidence you know as young man so then i got into the football um violence quite too much it was um so uh i think uh living for the day living for the fight you know because it was pre-arranged some of it some of it wasn't and i just didn't care just did not care and and quite quickly in the pecking order of football hooligans as they called them then i i started going to the top and uh and then the local karate instructor from the same club who lived across the the estate uh he had a chat with my dad i remember my dad telling me and he said he said terry my dad he's dead now god bless him uh i i held his hand when he died the most empowering thing i've ever done in my life i just felt so at ease it's incredible isn't it and this man i you know that we all loved as a lovely guy and and it made me feel so at one with him he's incredible that isn't it yeah and everyone else was crying and all that and i thought wow this is great i get to do this with my dad mad isn't it so the karate instructor said to my dad you better get your boys my older brother he was into the football violence as well but he wasn't as good as me i was quite good at it you know and so uh he said you better get him in the crate school before they end up in prison and our local prison then was strange ways in manchester you know and i knew a couple of lads that had been in there and and again even like today if you go in prison for a stretch your your social standing goes up in these circles of course doesn't it so uh i started badge of honor it is yeah it is and and that's how it is on you know some of these estates so i went down to the karate school and it was a big fight in karate school all i did was find they were well known all over the uk and uh i went down there and pretty soon i got really good at it in a very short period of time so i think they have four fighting teams and the top team were all black belts uh some of them international players so pretty soon within six months i was on the team on the a team so when we started to fight there was four black belts and me a white belt and i used to go and win and and and when i got into the sport it turned me away from the football violence and fighting in the pubs you know every friday night i couldn't go home without having a fight why do you think that's because of the discipline act yeah it is it is it is the discipline yeah it's a discipline and once you're in a combat sport you get your you get your it fills you up so you don't need to do it anywhere else that's what i felt i remember this one this one time there's this guy in the local area i'll not say his name but um he was a real tough cookie and something happened in the pub and i and uh and he was just a violent very violent guy and i said look i'm not going to fight you in here if you want to fight we'll go out and fight outside because i want to come back in and finish my pints and he's like hang on so we go outside and he's rearing to go and i said right just back off me a minute took my watch off took my shirt off placed it down nice and neat bit of psychology going on here and he said what are you doing i said well after me and you were four irrespective of who's won i'm gonna go with a nice clean shirt back in there and finish my pint and he's looking at my light thinking this guy's off his [ __ ] head and in the end he said i don't want to fight i don't want to fight you don't know why but i don't want to fight you so i said are you done i said yeah i said we're gonna go back in the pub you come near me i'm gonna you know we're gonna fight in the pub i don't want that i thought he was gonna go in and blindside me or something anyway uh a few days later he killed a guy with a shotgun this guy went to prison you know and all the rest of it so um perhaps not the best guy to play this game with but it worked and then later when he came out of prison we kind of become friends you know so uh yeah isn't that mad though that you're being bullied a lot of people have on the show have been bullied end up turning gangsters ses yeah boxing ufc yeah stands from brilliant even that guy has eagles probably so dented with you that he thought he's ever maybe needed to prove something towards somebody else um yeah and i think you know james in the call light of day and and this this has um really served me well in in the work i've done in the course protection industry in the military and things like that that when you're really calm in an incident and you know when people get violent violence grows doesn't it and all the signs of violence in somebody that you know i'm trained to to see that's how we we can spot people in a crowd who are about to do something it's the signs they're leaking and as animals which we are we get that on a very very deep level so you know if you can overcome that and go into these situations not showing any signs whatsoever of anger of anxiousness of adrenaline people don't get that the light hang on i'm doing this you're supposed to do this he's not doing it i'm supposed to he's supposed to do that he's not doing it and and and then in their brain their subconscious starts going hang on there's something wrong here this doesn't add up and then they start questioning it and then once they start questioning it then you can bang them out if you want to yeah because i had friends but i thought any sign of danger or people were taking them when they probably used to get angry loud aggressive and it was scary and people used to think [ __ ] that they're off their head yeah they couldn't fight no they could not fight and like you're safe sure that count then in their mind he's not reacting the way he should be reacting so it throws off whatever they're thinking yeah and balance and i've had many friends it's like acting it's like acting a part apart they're aggressive they're angry and thinking but you can't fight and but it used to think nine percent of the time it scared the people off he does yeah and when you get somebody like that and they're showing these signs of anger and an aggression and and then they're um there's a book called the chin paradox uh professor steve peterson fantastic book he was my son's uh psychologist for for years on the on the olympic team and the when he talks about the uh you know the way your chimp works your anger you know your fight or flight and all the rest of it once you can control that and you prac you've got to practice it like mud once you can control it you know you get a person there who's who's showing you know showing signs of aggression or whatever this is the thing i know exactly what they're going to do because it's telling me then i'm going to clue what i'm going to do i have the power now even if i say excuse me i'm leaving and i walk away i have the power i take it from them you know it's bad isn't it and this this will blow your mind this james right so we were in tripoli uh during the second war and we had to take this really important person down to see one of the prime ministers i think those three then and they were just knocking the [ __ ] out of each other it was a horrible place to be lovely people by the way but very very dangerous the most dangerous places in the world at the time and we had to go into this uh this hotel so we had i think we had about four or five armored vehicles with us and i i was a team leader and uh so i'm looking at this every militia you could think of is in their arm to the teeth and they must have been maybe 200 from different factions and it was very tense and and we we had to do it was mission critical for this organization that this guy got in there to see him and it was against every protocol that we would have but we had to do it so we were outside and we're about to deploy in as a team a protection team i said right i get on the air i said right everybody take your weapons off we're taking no weapons and they're like what are you [ __ ] crazy and i said lads if it kicks off in there there'll be plenty of weapons lying around we can pick them up but and i i had a weapon uh i took my uh my glock in with me in a like a really i used to have this really fancy bag that looked um that you would see in london patent leather and everything was ridiculously not a tactical bag or anything and i used to dress quite smartly so people kind of didn't know who i was you know uh but why did it james was this we had our operators all great operators i thought if anything happened in there they will pull that weapon because it's how we work as human beings in it and if they pull that one weapon it'd be like taking a water pistol to a gun fight because everybody else was so heavily armed you know so i thought if i can get my team that don't have the option to pull the weapon then they're not going to pull it they'll find a different way to defuse any kind of conflict you know and it worked really well and then we were in there and it's have you seen that film 13 hours in benghazi no watch the film if you want to see what libya was like at the time watch that film you'll love it and once you've watched it give me a call you'll call me straight away and you'll see what it was like but there's a scene in there very similar to this and what happened is they open these gates and they let all these people in you know for for publicity but they could have been carrying or it would be such a dangerous place and we get we got out and i had to debrief my team after and i told them exactly why and they kind of got it you know but that takes some balls to do that man so i think you know um growing up on their stage really really served me well in you know various ways and then what did i do then i uh what was i see the adrenaline between the the hooligan stuff and the karate stuff is it totally night and day where did you get your bigger buzz um i think the karate and then kickboxing uh well you're one of the highest ranked then you're eighth dan is that correct eighth done yeah eighth done um that's unbelievable it is it is you know i've spent a lot of my time uh it's my hobby my passion it's our family business you know we run karate schools professional karate schools we have a lot of instructors we have great students but i think with the karate and the kickboxing because there's rules and you have to like any any martial art any standard any any combat there are rules and the rules make it difficult to beat someone and i think that gives you a bigger buzz because you've got to really train hard for it so that's a massive buzz when you're stood in front of somebody and it's it's you and them it's very animalistic isn't it but i think this is what really helped me is that say for example i was stood across from a karate fighter or kickboxing or taekwondo i've done them all at international level i'd look at them in the eye one thing for sure is i trained harder than them and two is if i met you outside on the street i would [ __ ] kill you and i knew it and they knew it too psychological isn't it yeah do you think that's where you are as well a psychological like a little like a chess player like you're taking your clothes off and hanging like putting them right in it mentally [ __ ] some like where did you get that from i think i think i've always had it you know i've always had it i've always looked at i looked after my brother in the pubs than that you know so i think it's in it's in me to to to care for my sound death to look after people i've always had that gene in me and uh and i think because i've studied it so much i've studied the the psychology of violence massively and i now own it i get it i own it i can i can work with it doesn't intimidate me it doesn't frighten me you know so and i teach that yeah how long did it take you to on it obviously when you're bullied and then you start learning how to fight now you start beating people up yeah start beating up your billiards like when did you learn they control that because obviously they've got the buzz for fed their dreams they've had the power something you've never really had as a kid yeah when did you learn to control that and understand that where a man who can kill basically a man who can take life when julian had to control and walk away unless you were tested was that years and years of practice uh i think i've got it pretty quickly with the martial arts because this is the thing um i wanted to be the best in the world that was my my aim you know when i was a young man and uh my instructor said to me that lee this is the score if you get nick doing this you can't train and that was a biggie for me then because we used to have these karate licenses you still do now he said i'll take that off here and that's you done and that was enough for me to say right i've got to stop this and i sorted myself out almost overnight crazy isn't it and then i'd go into the pubs and stuff and even in later life going back to my local pool which my nun and granddad used to run back in the day and and meet people and everybody go oh that's him that's that guy that's that tough guy you know and i didn't like that i still and i don't like it but but it just goes to show how your memory or the legacy lives on it wasn't a legacy that i wanted as i got older crazy isn't it yeah but um but i think yeah it was the thought of losing my sport because i just wanted to be the best in the world you know yeah so what did you do when you started moving through the ranks and did you just stay focused into karate and kickboxing yeah i focused on karate and i was moving up fighting for the best people in the world and doing extremely well you know and then at 2021 i went to south africa so i just got on a flight went to south africa i had uh i had a wife then melanie and we had one child and i went over got myself a job uh got a place to stay and then flew them over and um in south africa i went to this big karate school in johannesburg and um there was uh i went to this this school i think it was called schmutz jan schmutz academy sometime i can't remember and it was massive loads of black belts maybe 30 40 black belts never seen this train in one club and they were good anyway i waited patiently and this guy that had instructed her you could see i was waiting i didn't know who i was and he came home and spoke to me and he said yeah well i think you'll find it different here the the english uh [ __ ] at karate we're the best in the world and he really give me a dressing down like you don't even know me so i never went back and i went to a taekwondo school and then karate and taekwondo like bitter enemies you know and within six months i was on the national taekwondo team you know i just love fighting i just love it it really uh gives me a sense of peace weirdo quieting your mind yeah definitely definitely and life threatening experiences are very similar but a bit more intense but it does quiet in your mind and and going out to the pub on a saturday night the last thing you want to do is fight when you're doing it all week so this is why you know we have hundreds of children training with us in our sans and martial arts schools across the country and i'm hoping and i'm praying that they find that in in the karate as well you know and and if it helps us create better human beings who can contribute to the community in a nice way through the medium of sport that's our job done yeah so what did you do then married kids were you just going to be involved in your friday travel the world fight around the world that's yeah that was the plan that was the plan then marriage and babies comes responsibility and cash at the time cash was short not much money in canada kickboxing and stuff there is now they didn't used to be but now a lot of people make a good living out of it you know our instructors make a good living out of it um and we we specifically look for young martial artists who maybe have been injured or gone on their martial arts journey and they're great athletes great teachers but they don't know the business side of things and and i didn't and i remember going to a big business meeting in wales for the karate when i first got my karate school here in 2000 was kickboxing school then um i went into kickboxing i was quite successful at that as well as my sony's world champion and i went down to this meeting and there were top martial arts school owners from all over the world and i was asked to teach a high energy class which i did and then we went to the business meeting they're all sat around talking about business i hadn't got a [ __ ] clue what they were talking about and now i'm the little boy in the room now and kate was with me my wife kate who comes from a really big business family her dad um got the queen's award for export she knows all about business and i came out that meeting i said to kate never again am i going to look stupid like that and i taught myself business studied it for years so i became a master at it as much as i could be um yeah so the martial arts now with these young kids because of uh because of the internet and everything we can centrally do all their marketing for them we look after their students for them we look after all the admin for them so they can just get up and teach and that's what martial arts guys want to do and i've we've seen so many people up in martial arts schools who think well i'm going to earn a good living out of this and they just fail because you've got to be a business person to run a business haven't yeah yeah so now we're really lucky that we've got a great team we've got 20 odd instructors on my team here um and uh we have great admin support and everything so we've just set a young lad up he's just come off the british taekwondo team uh on the olympic team and for whatever reason he had to leave so we've we've set him up in manchester and he's having a great time teaching he loves it so he's a real good success story for us you know yeah so if you're living a dream about a son over on south africa world champion karate kickboxing got your wife got your kid how did you end up involved in like military and close protection yeah it's interesting my wife didn't like my wife then she didn't like south africa uh and she didn't really get it so i had to come back home so i came back home um a couple years later and i didn't really have any i had nothing i was staying at uh friends of mine stephen and karen god bless them love those people and so we were staying there with a little baby uh and then we had a second baby uh jeanine first one was shimano and then janine came along and i didn't really know what to do but i know i didn't want to go back to the steel factory i was um i worked i got an apprentice boilermaker sheet metal work i worked in the steel factory for you know that's what i was doing in south africa and uh i thought right i met a friend of mine in the pub and he was uh he joined the military police and i was chatting to him and he was telling me how good it was and i thought i'd just get that there's me wanting to join a policing agency having been a bad boy you know and i didn't have a lot of respect for the police um because i didn't get what they did and and when you're in a community that everybody hates the police then you go down that line don't you it's only you know in later you know as i joined the police i understood that the you know what the police do and what a difficult job they have to do not only with the public but with the restraints that are on them and all the rest of it so i joined the military police and i went down for my selection and the the officer there did not want me to join the military police he wanted me to join the engineers because i was i was a tradesman i had a fear i fought to get in and i joined the military police and i had 10 of the best years of my life incredible doing all and i was so lucky that i did such a a different range of things in the military police um that just filled me up you know obviously police normal please so the royal military police is a is an army unit and anybody listening to us who have been in the army i bet the big guy no they'll have their comments on it but the military police are the the army's police force they're the mps who come if people go away while in chat yeah they do also we do all sorts of stuff but uh but essentially we don't have any powers to to discipline anybody really what would happen is the the canon officer of a unit it's an infantry unit if any of their people did anything to contravene military law or whatever you know the military police guys would arrest them and question them and make up a file on that one particular case and give it to the commanding officer and he deals with it a lot of people think the military police deal with it we don't you know that's what would happen if you went to court martial it was a serious offence murder or something really big then it'd go to like a court martial which is like a court but without a jury as such they're just officers that would sit on this and and deal out the punishment you know you must have been hated more than a normal please don't let them i like to replace that there's a lot of boys that like they do go well with the [ __ ] trouble but i wouldn't like to i wouldn't like you coming at my daughter people's door who went hey whoa yes yeah oh mate yeah so i worked i did so many different roles in the military police uh i mean i didn't wear a uniform for about three years three and a half years so um the the absentees and deserters as we call them um generally the unit would have an absentee deserters facility there and they'd pick them up like you say young lads you know people just had enough and they're desperate so they pick them up and then they get processed either back into the military or into civilian life so there's a procedure some of them went to prison depending on what they've done but um i remember in northern ireland i took over the absentees and deserters file there it was just like that thick man so i'm sat there thinking why hasn't nobody ever done anything with this i said well it's too [ __ ] dangerous and i went i'm gonna do this and i nailed the lot mate and it was so exciting uh going into these really tough areas and we call terrorist areas where loyalist or yeah so the protestants or catholics and uh i would go in and get these people out just to get the blood i did it for me i didn't have to do it it's the buzz that you get from doing that [ __ ] man so um yeah i have done that knocking on doors and i've done all sorts of stuff mate how were you treated from loyalists or like catholics upon says were you an enemy for the ira side or were you just military police are just enemy for both yeah i think the british army you you you're not well liked from the catholic side of things and then things then you know it was pretty tense when i was there 89 1991 and it was a dangerous place one of the most dangerous places to serve and i've spoken to a lot of people who've served in iraq and afghanistan and places like this and they still say that was the most scariest place depending on what they did what job they did but uh and then with the protestants um they were obviously pro military but at the real top end of the hardcore loyalists they're always thinking what are you doing what's going on here why you know so they're always looking for people trying to infiltrate them you know to our various special forces people so there was a bit of untrust at some level but uh and i remember once right this is [ __ ] mad so we're in this pub me and this this guy and uh he was kind of working a little bit undercover and i was doing some i was just wearing civilian claws here they're a bit longer and all that kind of stuff and uh there was there was three of us so it was a real hardcore loyalist place in this real hardcore loyalist area so we were just having a drink and i go to the toilet and i come back and they're surrounded by a a group of guys and i look at them and they're [ __ ] themselves and i went back and said to me how you doing father i was like i'm all right and i looked at my mates and they were asking me weird questions i said can we just stop this a minute i said to my mates what the [ __ ] have you said they said i was just taking up the the fatherhood in some and it was my last night out how ridiculous because we all had cover stories you see and i looked at the lads and i said right lads this has got to stop and they said right okay boys we know you're military we know you're not normal normal military you've got two options here you try and leave we'll [ __ ] kill you if you stay you don't buy a drink all night we know you're all right stayed there till about three in the morning got pissed yeah crazy eh yeah mad what did you do then after the military stuff so um after the military i uh there's various reasons why i left but it just wasn't the right time for me i was i was i was due to go back to northern ireland to work for this special forces unit and then i'd got um i was going through a divorce so i couldn't go back and then they said you have to wait 12 months or 18 months you know because you obviously going through a divorce and stuff you know you're obviously mentally unstable also they thought i wasn't i thought was pretty cool um so i left i was determined not to enter security so i got a couple of jobs i just couldn't hold them down you know the story though yeah i just couldn't hold it down so then somebody i think they gave me a call or something said look lee on the muhammad al-fayed team uh it's a big protection team there's a guy called paul hanley greaves who who i'd met before in the military he said he's had the security he's looking for guys so i i give him a call went down to london got the job how hard was i getting the job for obviously it's a big family a little bullying as i must be laughing must be a billionaire i'm fired but how is it well it was quite it was it was paul cut corners with me so what you had to do then is um you had to go down and have this interview with with the head of security and then you had to do all these uh tests uh to make sure you weren't getting any diseases or anything like that everything was tested by the doctors you know so you weren't bringing you know because a lot of military people because you've been all over the world you know you could be carrying stuff so he had the medical stuff to do and then uh there's another interview and then you had to do a handwriting test i forget the name of it you know when they when you do the handwriting somebody looks at it and tells if you're a psychopath or something like that have you seen that yeah you can draw a circle as well if you draw a perfect circle i can draw circles i mean good company love it yeah so um so i didn't do the handwriting test paul said look you don't need to do it you can start next week and uh one of the lads this is so funny you took it i think you took it away with you did the test and sent it in you know so uh his handwriting was really bad so he got his wife to do it so when he came back in he said we're a bit concerned you're pregnant mates was pregnant oh yeah yeah that's mad in it so they can find out things about you with writing your handwriting it's it's a dark art isn't it yeah that is mad so let's say a massive family and who are you protecting then the father of the son so uh you you had the the you know the the head of the family muhammad al-fayed yeah and his wife henny and they had their four kids camilla jasmine omar and kareem omar being the youngest uh who i was chatting to last week actually who kept in touch is such a lovely story in this um he got in touch with me uh i'll get get back to he couldn't touch me uh a year ago and he said lee i'd just like to thank you for you know you changed my life how nice is that only young boy same age as damon so yeah so each member of the family had their designated protection and so when i went there uh i worked in london learning all the routes all the secret passages and everything i needed to learn you know about the family and then at that time i think you spent about three weeks um in their main residence in in mayfair and you never got to meet mr fired for the first two weeks now the first time you'd meet him is you'd open the lift door and he'd just look at you and walk past and this was the the vet if you didn't like you're gone then the next thing maybe two days later you're allowed to speak to him so he's letting you into because i mean when when you're working i spent more time without their family than mine so you you know you get to see everything and and and and so you know can you imagine letting somebody into your family that's going to live with you you know it's it's a big and i i totally get it so i worked in london for a little while and then i got moved down to their their home in uh oxted and then i worked a lot with the boys then i worked sometimes with the girls or with mrs fired uh and then i went on to his team so i looked after him then and that was like the uh it was you got paid more money it was a bit more credibility you know it's great job i love the job and then i was team leader for a little while and uh yeah just had the most amazing experience you could ever imagine private jets everywhere helicopters bolts the whole shooting match how many security was protecting that family well i mean at different stages we had different uh numbers but it was a considerable team um [Music] consider it was considerable setup at that time at any at any one time on the books maybe 50 50 on the books yeah and we all what worked around in rotation but this is the thing james what people don't understand i know you've read the book about close protection operators say for example in northern ireland if we went out as a close protection team or you you know because i worked in witness protection for a little while uh you might have four guys on the ground you might have 150 200 people around you in support of that you know so on the bigger close protection teams you've got your your your surveillance people your counter surveillance uh your drivers you've got your close protection team that work with with the the vip as such and uh and then you've got people around them you know so it's there's layers of security and then you've got people at the residences looking after them so nobody gets in there and and leaves things in there cameras bugs whatever so every everywhere you go you're trying to make it as sterile as possible because there was massive threats against the family and him he brought down the government with the cash for questions carry on which i was involved with um so yeah what was that and so um what he did is he wanted his british passport but they wouldn't give it him the passport because when he bought harrods there was a big legal case that went on with him and this guy called tiny roland's who tried to buy it and what the what they were alleging is he bought it with somebody else's money and it was the um one of the uh the sultan of a man who he used to work with so i think he had his gold credit card and bought it but the sultan went there said no no there's nothing going on here his money's my money yeah i'm okay with this this is fine so i think at the end of that trial he was found not guilty but i think the upper classes put like the death wish on him and said but it wasn't he didn't do it like a gentleman so he couldn't get his busy passport how crazy is that everything he used to do here he was a very generous man you know he'd look for charity um but which he never told anybody for children's hospitals and things like this and for the older people in his town hampers at christmas and everything but he never publicized it and you're thinking we need people like that in our country and i just don't get it you know in the uk so um yeah so what happened was he went to prominent politicians and said look can you ask these questions in in the house of parliament about my passport and there's some money go and stay at my ritz hotel free so he that's what he did and in the end they weren't asking the questions so he says right okay i'm gonna show you [ __ ] and he said right publicly that person that person that person i've done this this this and there's the evidence they brought the government there that's mad in it so they took money expecting them not to just walk away no but he's not that kind of guy he's always had a target on him for some reason even in the news newspaper has always been negative about the man who was an individual he was one of the most intelligent men i've ever seen there's him and this people are going to freak at this alex salmond i work with alex during the referendum what an incredibly intelligent guy is irrespective of his policies and and and what he believes just him as a as a human being hyper intelligent incredible but fired was the same his attention to detail i've never seen it i've learned so much with him about attention to detail and stuff like we walked through harrods you know the size of it and we every day we'd walk the floor with him maybe sometimes for an hour sometimes for 10 minutes but he'd always walk around his store around the shop and you know he'd be walking past something he'd be right stop get me the manager and they would they would [ __ ] themselves all right they come and he's gonna go look at that stand over there and i remember one it was with umbrellas one was upside down i think how did you see that in this massive store with everything going on in your life with all your businesses or we'd find a bit of dust somewhere maddie he had all that billionaire and he was so invested into that store they meant so much to him it's incredible how many hours a day did you used to have to work when you've done close protection how many how was i there um because we're all ex-military uh we're generally in the close protection industry in the area i work in is a lot of 99.9 next military so you're used to working long hours so you don't clock off and it's given you know so if i if i was to go on um on operation you would stay till it's finished i mean the the worst i've done i think it's three days i was standing up asleep because we were just knackered a few hours sleep in three days it was hideous and you you just no matter how tough you are no matter how trained you are there's a breaking point in there when you sleep deprivation and i remember on this one job and the queen came over to northern ireland and uh she had her protection with her and we were the the next ring of protection looking after her and i was absolutely hanging and at the end of it i was doing top cover in the in the landowners you know you stood at the top of the the vehicles we had then uh with the weapons you see in the warzone zone so i was doing top cover and i was i fell asleep in that position there's nothing you could do we were banging helmets we were absolutely knackered so you operationally you're not fit for purpose you know but but generally you know in with the fire team and other jobs i've done sometimes you can put an 18-hour day because what you've got to do is this this is the thing a lot of people don't understand so you've got to do your physical training yourself to keep you you know keep it on top of your game so you've got to be mentally fit and physically fit so say for example you knew the family were were doing something let's say nine o'clock so you'd be ready for eight for example and then you you've gotta prep everything so that might be another hour then you're going to do your fizz which would be another hour then you got it showered changed also and so now you're getting up at five o'clock and so they go out and do their own thing then say for example you go back to the residence or wherever you are on a yacht or something they'll go and have a sleep now you've got work to do then prepping for what you're doing that evening and then they've they might be out in the night club until two three in the morning repeat repeat background checks with everybody with the food obviously because you see the russians people are getting poisoned yeah yeah is that always a question marks for himself like eating the right foods and the waters and everything was that all tested well it's is that about extreme no no no no not at all it is a concern but what we had with the chefs and they've been with the family for that many years they were known to us you know and and a lot of his staff stayed with him for a long time he used to pay the best wages they expect the best and that's what he got so um new people were vetted of course and uh and then let into the fold slowly so they might maybe work at harrods for a couple of years three years so then you get to know them then they might come in and do something on a low level and then once they're accepted by the family and they're trusted and that's that's pretty standard stuff you know was there ever any attempts obviously when you were working there um were there any attempts um how can i say when you have a protection team as professional as that one the the people who are watching you and we did find people watching us doing surveillance on us from um mi5 which was standard uh and others what you're hoping is they're going to look at your level of security and they're going to go up now it's too we can't get away with this it's too much and then put them on to somebody else you know it's it's this is this is this is an interesting i've always thought this so say for example in glasgow let's say on a saturday night in glasgow there are i'm going to make this up 400 attacks against some the person in glasgow let's say for example there's 500 happen on a saturday night you can't change that that will always happen but you can make sure it's not you by taking precautions so the people who didn't like him and he had a lot of people who didn't like him you what you're doing when you're doing your close protection stuff is you're look watching them watching you and and an attack starts the the principles of an attack are the same or very very similar so the first thing is going to happen is somebody's going to watch it they've got to look at you they've got to assess you sometimes it can be over a period of years sometimes it can be a minute you're in a pub somebody looks at you and you know something's going to kick off or in a kebab shop or wherever so there's they're identifying victims and these people who are you know just out for fighting or just that kind of violence they're assessing all the time yes no no yes and they're picking out the victims and then they'll go for one and if you miss the stage where you've been victim selected you're one rung up the ladder does that make sense now if you don't know what's happening the next thing that's going to happen is they're going to approach you they've got to approach you to to interact with you okay now if you so if you at that stage you see the approach you can defuse it at that stage if you miss the approach now the next thing that's going to happen is there's going to be some kind of distraction generally maybe verbal or something something's going to happen and then comes the violence after that now most people react to it when the violence is about to start so say for example you're teaching self-defense you grab me here i grew there you hit me i do this that's that's [ __ ] it's too late so 99 of avoiding trouble as a course protection team is done before the person even get gets there and if you get if you get that right then you avoid attacks so say for example out in libya was a really good example our team i've worked in several teams there all brits very professional great guys and then you see some other countries doing their or the united nations or nato and you'd look at their close protection teams and we would look at them and go [ __ ] they're going to get hit and they did often get hit because the drills weren't good enough they were real gung-ho it's all about me the bodyguard look at me and no one's watching what they're supposed to be doing but when the when the terrorists or the criminality look at this that's what they're looking for because they want to get away with it they don't want a hard target they want something they know we could do this and we can win same same as um street violence you know you're never going to pick on the hardest bastard that you think is going to kill you you know unless you're high on drugs or something so the the if you if you harden yourself as an individual or as a close protection team and you make it really hard for the terrorists to even go nah forget that one we'll go for this one and just push him onto another team yeah crazy isn't it yeah how was it was in speaking terms a lot well fired or was it just a case to do your job and go to bed yeah yeah um with the fired family uh great relationships with the kids um you should chat to his wife quite a lot she hated security he hated security i think it just interfered with her life yeah not but i've heard no and her and eldest daughter they were really good at escaping from the from the security and uh they go into shops put a different jacket on can't try and climb out the window not his his wife would try and climb at the window but she'd try and ditch security and i remember um i got put on to look after jasmine his eldest daughter who lovely loved a girl and she used to run the guys around like crazy and if you lost her you get sacked as you wouldn't if you put somebody in charge of somebody you love and they lost them then you just get rid of them and that's what you do so i said to jasmine said look jasmine this is the score i love my job i like working for the family but if you're gonna try and hide from me or get away from me it's not going to work i'll go home and i'll resign now but if you and i can come to this arrangement that you're not going to do that to me i'll cut you a bit more slack i'll give you a bit more freedom but you've got to be honest with me and she went okay i'll do that is that all they wanted just a wee bit of freedom maybe hang out with our friends i'd go for ice cream without there i think somebody watching over your shoulder i think so yeah but uh a lot of the bodyguards i know i'm not saying a lot i mean it could be a lot yeah the frying to speak to the the clients as we call it um or the person you're looking after because yes ma'am no ma'am you know i'm really formal robots yeah and i get it but a lot of them they just want you to be like we're chatting now yeah okay i'm very professional i do my job as you know but we're going to talk like human beings i'm not subservient to you although you know you call mama or so whatever they want to be called but you know you've just got to see through all the [ __ ] man it's crazy i know on one um operation i was on in libya working for this big ngo it was so dangerous we won the last ones out uh during the second war all the embassies left and we were uh i think with brussels or geneva was headquartered and they wouldn't let us go with this one team of people i was working was about 50 of them and i was running the close protection team we had about 35 40 people in the protection team and it got to the stage where it was that dangerous and and we had swimming pools in this compound we're in and we had the security set up there and we had their set up and we got some direct fire ak and stuff into the compound but uh the the rockets that was landing on the mortars and that the swimming pool would shake and there's loads of peacocks in this place and the peacocks have you heard them when they go after a loud man hundreds of them when one came close all the peacocks would start um making the noise they make and all the pools were shaking so we're in this situation right and we can't get out no boats airport's been the the battle of tripoli airport this smash hits pizza i was in that that was [ __ ] horrendous so we're trying to get out um so uh we went and tried to buy a boat and i knew we're gonna we're gonna get ripped off this is during the war there so i took some some guys down there they tried to buy this boat and i knew we were gonna get uh well you know you said your spider senses start tingling i thought they were gonna just shoot us and take the money so we bugged out of this place it was like a big disused building and that was that was a bit tense so we go back and this one guy he was french and he was a reporter a journalist so he came up with this plan to go to um al qaeda we were not we had isis pushing through we had al-qaeda there and uh we had the the militias kicking the [ __ ] out of each other so it was a free-for-all so he said look we'll go to the al-qaeda make a deal with them i can do this this is what he's saying and um and they'll look after us this is the plan he was a wannabe he wanted to be like us you know the the close protection guys he asked for a weapon and stuff you know and we would never let him he'd run around the around the camp like we used to do with a big bergen on a big back but it was empty we knew you could tell it's empty you know he's just crazy he's still kind of want of wannabe flipping james bond guy so they went for this plan that they were going to do this and and they asked me would i take my team in so this plan has been okayed and they said rightly come up and brief us so when you did any big operations there you briefed you know the the head guy and all these people's big setup and everyone put the temperature in and the head of the commission sat there and and my direct boss he says this is gonna happen despite me saying this is [ __ ] suicide we're gonna die so they're all gonna do it and he said right lee tell me what your take on this operation is and i stood up and i said right this is my take on this operation this is [ __ ] insane this is gonna get everybody killed and i'm not sending my men in there and everyone's like [ __ ] i don't believe you just said that and he said lee that's the most sensible thing i've heard all day everybody get out and we had a chat me and him it went really well and we didn't do that operation you know but um it just sometimes having a somebody somebody would say put it down to all you've got a big gob you you know that's saying or you've got a loud mouth it's not i'm just i'm just trying to be sensible when in utter chaos you know so and that's generally you know i generally get on with a lot of people but sometimes you've just got to say as it is how was your relationship with dordy so dodie dodie was uh he was a quiet guy and he would be around the family quite a lot and you are driving sometimes and he wasn't a very chatty guy but he would talk to you you know he's and because he uh he did a lot of films and so he did chariots of fire executive producer for that so he had his busy social circle going on you know a young man you know going around all the bars and nightclubs and all the rest of it and then had his business that he did so i think he was a very thoughtful guy so sometimes you know he's on his phone a lot so really you know he wouldn't speak sometimes on a car journey or just say hello or whatever so um yeah and again when you get a person who's a little bit introverted like that you just give them their own space don't you i i wouldn't want to speak to him but if you wanted to speak to me i'd speak you know yeah so obviously you've got your team then it's pretty good job you're loving it paid well when did you find out who's with princess diana so um i'd been out to santa pay that year before for a couple of weeks with the family and then when i came back so generally we'd work two or three weeks on two or three weeks off so we only worked six months for the year on that job and um they did sometimes you know seven months maybe um so i knew she was coming out before i went on back back to santa fe was that before it was in the press or the news or anything yeah yeah so we knew we should but she'd been seeing dawdy you know the the various teams we had in all the various locations we'd get fed back all the intelligence would come back to us so so when you went on uh to work we had a book that was everything was recorded in so when you went in to work you get the book and you just read through it see where everybody was in the world what they were doing where the family were because you know these families like the fires i could go into work on a say a monday morning there might be no family there you know i've gone to the airport with my kit for the balearic islands and i've ended up in gesta with your hearts and your shorts and all the rest of you wouldn't even know where you were going to go sometimes you know but the fired family was so generous you know they buy your new clothes and you know whatever you needed very very generous guy so uh so you go in find out where all the family were and and then obviously there was intelligence coming back from our teams that dodie and the princess so we knew they were seeing each other but i wasn't interested i had other things to do you know because there's a lot of pressure when you do that job you've got to be on the ball um so when we knew she was going to santa pay it wasn't a shock to us how was that then that protecting our family and then the most famous woman on the planet getting involved to then never had any security because when she was left the royal family took a security away so the jews have to enhancing security even more or just be more aware yeah we enhance security for that trip and uh the princess came out with the with the boys harry and william and they had a policeman each from the royal protection that came with them two great guys and because it wasn't that busy with the paparazzi you have never seen anything like in your life and because it was such a fast-moving environment sometimes the policeman would be going out with mr fired or they could be going out with the kids so we all just mixed in as one team which was really cool for these guys and and the policeman said you know what a professional outfit we were you know so uh and they've been working in close protection for a while and on the fire team we had some of the top close protection people in the world you know xs air sex military police close protection lads you know so we had some great experience there you know and then we had xml mi5 people working for us and all sorts of stuff so it's a great team what was the first conversation you had with diana yeah the first conversation i had with her uh she was getting off the tender the boat that small boat that came from the from the super yacht one of the super yachts and she comes in and the paparazzi didn't know we were there then this is day one so uh i just lent over and given my shoulder to because you don't want to put your hand out some people don't like touching you you know the high net worth individuals they don't even like touching you you know so i just put my shoulder down to uh for her to lean on if she needed to she didn't she just jumped straight out like a flipping like a flipping dying but uh she's a fit lady and she said oh what more heavies and smiled at me and laughed and i'd introduced myself and that's the first conversation i had so she when she said more heavies she meant obviously more protection mm-hmm you know so how was it you know as a whole there was growing once the media and that started finding out where they were did that sort of give a lot of unrest as well especially cameras could potentially be guns behind that are people trying to attack that is that always a concern yeah yes you know the princess then she was the most well-known person in the world you know without a shadow of a doubt and she was doing all the the d mining stuff she wanted to stop him doing landmines so there's there was people that she was obviously upset in there so and and various things and high net worth people stalkers she had a lot of stalkers and stuff like that that we knew about we had pictures of them and things like this so with the paparazzi they were so aggressive uh i think day two they started and then there was two of them and because we wouldn't let them in into where they wanted to go on on the beach because the beach is in france they're not private so they wanted to go on the beach and we wouldn't let them and um i think we upset them a little bit one of my friends banging one out uh because they had protection with them as well some of them he had a protection because they're so aggressive in what they're doing they they know that people can get aggressive with the the cameraman so they call it backwatch so they and some of them have their own protection so a friend of mine he banged out the protection guy and we we sent them on the way and they said right we're going to tell everybody now and they did and they were hundreds and hundreds of them just you know it was just insane at one stage i was looking and they must have been to our left maybe 100 to our right maybe the same they must have been 50 bolts just off the the beach this small small beach the fight the fired beach and uh there's even a helicopter went over because i think that then some of the iconic pictures you see of the princess it was one of me and her in a boat where she's whispering to me that made it all over the world some of them sold for a million euros so you can see why why they were so aggressive to get in and get in your face and try and take a compromising photo but or airbrush it which they did then i don't know if they still do it now you never know i would house it a guess but there's a famous one of her since she's pregnant uh and it's like a leopard type print and we looked at it and we're going that's not her they they altered the photograph and they made the story up yeah frontline news diane is pregnant it's going to sell all around the world yeah going to make him a lot of money yeah because see when she's like does she have any agreement with the press to say like take photos and try and leave me alone or was it just a case that she had to surrender to what was around her yeah she did and we would speak to the princess in the morning she'd come down in the morning and i would chat to her on the beach that was like a routine and she said look this is what what i'm gonna do this this works she said i'll pose for photographs from we'll tell them they can get the photograph i can manage it they'll get the photograph and then they'll go and they're sort of like mo would be once they got the photograph they're going to santa pay and they'd all get pissed and then they turn up later in the morning that's that's what they did so she would some of the pictures you've seen are sat on various things and just like reclining in the in the sunshine they'd take the photographs and be like look at her lapping it up she loves all this pulls him for the camera bastards eh yeah and and she only did it so that they'd go and the children could go and play in the sea so she couldn't do right for doing wrong can you imagine living in that life yeah she was a phenomenal woman like yourself it was at the halo trust she changed what the land means like she'd walking down this the street what land means to to change it then she was going seeing the kids with aids i know but like you see a lot of these high-end people who don't even touch you they even like to stand close to you you know your peasants yeah yeah the high-end people breathing my hair yeah go away yeah but was she just such a kind so as she as a lot of people say that like you say the most famous women on the planet probably to this day yeah like was she as kind as she was when you've seen a lot yes tv yes she was you know she'd speak to the to the chefs the cleaners she sent me a lovely letter after it's time you know that she wrote with her son's signatures on thanking me for looking after her and imagine how busy she was taking time to do that that's amazing and when you met her she she was a special person you know you meet somebody with that charisma with that with that vibe you know and uh she was and this is we didn't have social media or anything then of course and and the question is why did everybody love her because people could see what she was like and the media especially the media in the uk the tabloids then uh just destroyed her i just find it hard to believe that they could have wrote so many good things about her but chose not to bad new cells in the uk right yeah did she ever read the articles herself um i think she did yeah there was there was uh there was there was one uh with with a picture of her i think it was the sun newspaper or one of them there was a picture of her and a picture of camilla so it was a beautiful picture of her on an awful picture of camilla how can you do that to people and i think it said that charles chooses her over her that that kind of thing is headlines from from page news i saw it in the newspaper that morning and i was like oh my god what a bad position to put camilla in and prince charles and the princess and they've got kids why would you do that sells papers right so i said to the princess i said have you seen the daily papers today because i wanted to just give her the heads up of as to what was in and she said are you meaning the article in that paper and i said yeah like are you okay with it and she said well it's his choice and just change the conversation great that says a lot about a person that doesn't it and you know and seeing her play with her boys what a great mother she was delighting in playing with the boys you could hear her hooting and hollering and you know and she was a lovely lovely woman yeah do you know get your buzz felt though because did they not go dancing princess diana and daughter and you are kinda making a diggity dancing you know someone comes out of your mouth and you go you dick why did you say that and and she was known for dancing she was a good dancer and she she danced with some of the top professional dancers and you know she obviously liked dancing doldy on the other hand wasn't as gifted he was gifted in many things but dancing was perhaps something he needed to pay a bit more attention to so i just made a a glib comment say uh something i i can't remember now you know what do you think about dordy's dancing or something like that she said lee i remember this i didn't even understand what the word meant at the time said lee don't make me tears with you that was it and looked me right in the eye and i knew shut the [ __ ] up late take it too far it bleeds too far like that you know someone comes out and you're thinking because i i would chat to her every day you see so uh yeah i apologized and uh yeah give myself a slap yeah because did that live what year was this 97 so that was the same year she passed she passed a few weeks after that yeah so because she wrote a letter to is it paul burrows in 96 and says that they were going to kill her yeah and i can't actually yeah was that she ever in fear of her life did you ever feel that yeah she was yeah i spoke to paul burrell actually in london the other day and he was telling me about that same letter and he's got you know his own things i don't really read the news or i don't follow media or anything like so you know i don't follow the princess diana stuff but um yeah her friend gianni versace was killed and everybody thought it was a planned hit that you know looking at what happened in the security industry that's what everybody thought had happened it was classic but it turned out it was something slightly different but i bumped into her on the top deck of the boat i was going to look for the security cabin we had an allocated security cabinet on this massive boat so that we could get changed and just hang out you know if we went on the boat and they changed the security cabin and i was trying to find it and i was on this big open deck you know just all glass and there's only i walked in there and i'm almost like as close as i am to you to the princess with a back to me looking out over the uh over the harbour and she turned around she'd obviously been crying and a lot and uh she said have you heard about my friend um and i said yes yeah we have you know it's all for what's happened you know you know i know you knew him and i'm really sorry and and she was crying and she said uh do you think they're going to do that to me do you think thing and i i kind of like say no and look at your team you know we'll protect you trying to calm her down and as she steps closer anybody else you just give him a hug right i think that's what she wanted to feel that but can you imagine if i'd have done that the paparazzi got a snap of that that would have been awful wouldn't it so all your human instincts wants to comfort somebody but you can't you've got to step back and i had to step back and said look i've got to go now i'm really sorry if you need anything just you know give me a call and just walked out and shut the door see letters like that with her saying that she was fearful of her breaks getting cut and they were going to kill her next that yeah do you get briefed on that as well was that just something you hear through the media well at that time uh we were we were aware of it so you do your background when you when you work with somebody you always do your background um checks on them and and you do a pretty profile them so you would profile the person and look for anything like that so you just so you understand where what where they're coming from and what mindset they're in because if you're working with a client who is fearful of their life they're going to be more happy to work with you and your recommendations if you want to protect somebody who doesn't see the need for it they're not going to want it so it helps you pitch where your level of security will be but also it helps you understand their mindset what they're thinking but also it helps you understand of what things they've encountered and what threats they feel are against them and then you've got to try and work it all out and do a risk assessment on that you know mm-hmm were they happy together with the kids harry and william could they enjoy it as a family yeah or was it so difficult because you've got security you've got paparazzi that yeah you've got all the negative press yeah could they enjoy being a family yeah they could yeah and with the fired security because we were all you know we'd work for the family for a while so you change its stance so say for example operating in london you'd be in a suit and a tie and all the rest of it if we went on holiday you know say to i don't know new york or or wherever so now you've got to blend in so your security posture goes lower it's still there but nobody would know you're a security team so you're almost like a surveillance security team um and and you're watching them and you're close but you're dressing up to blend in and and you know when you do it right and i've done this loads of times and you're in a situation where it could be at a meal it could be at a meeting and people come up to you and say uh and what do you do here you know are you a ceo of a company or something like that now you've got it right then because you don't know that your security you don't stand out which is which gives you an advantage you know yeah so it was prince william and harry how were they both as kids great kids yeah yeah harry naughty little boy mischievous boy reminds me a lot of my son damon when he was little and uh william was like a thoughtful more thoughtful boy but we would sit for hours chatting with him on the ball when we were we we tried to sail off to various beaches that we knew the perhaps couldn't follow us uh and they would eventually catch us but you know the boat would go out we'd then we'd say we've got an hour and a half here before they come and then we move so the boys would sit with all the security guys and chat to us because they were fascinated by the military at that young age and everyone was telling stories and they were telling us stories about stuff they've done at school which i would never repeat because some of them are quite quite funny but uh yeah so we were just chatting like we were chatting a chat with kids you know and i get on with kids yeah you know i've got six kids so i love kids so at the end of the holidays is the last time you see princess diana did you ever have a feeling that did you ever worry for her life when she was leaving or was it just good vapes i had a good holding it was just i'll see you soon yeah it was uh yeah it was good vibes it was uh because you know at that time um we were the security team we were uh bolstering up the team in america when dawdy went to america where he lived in uh you know in the los angeles area he used an american security team so one of our lads went over and we thought um hang on why why is somebody going over then and then they said the head of security said i want some volunteers you know i think it's four people five people i can't remember now i put my name down because i wanted to go you know i've got a lot of family in the states so um so we knew before then that something was happening then when the princess told me she was going to live there it kind of made sense you know why mr fired wanted a big security presence there to obviously possibly double up with and look after the princess you know yeah so both of them are going to live in america yeah and you've got to go and protect them as well yeah now um apparently uh the house she looked at was julie andrews old house so although they weren't going to live in the same house or in the same area so it just made sense and it just looked like a young love affair to us to me you know when you see somebody for the first time just getting to know each other i didn't think anything would you know now everybody's got their own opinion on it of it of course but for me and i i generally say as it is they were just a young couple uh he was obviously um a smitten buyer i would say and for the first time in years dodie was like a different guy smiling happy i thought yeah good on you good on you mate yeah yeah so after that then that 19 31st august i think 1997 was that when they were in the ritz yeah before they jumped in again yeah yeah well you're not there that night no no so um when we left that that that one stint in santa pay we knew trevor reese jones who was dodie's bodyguard he was going with dodie and the princess on a med cruise and another person had to go with them dodie won't generally just have one person with him she's quite under the radar daughter dodie uh so nobody wanted to go because we were hanging man i was tired i think i slept for about two days after that one so we drew straws as to who would go about five was drawing straws and one of the lads was on the boat we'd we'd isolated him there because he had the flu so he didn't give it anyone so one of the lads uh he drew his next uh essay slide he drew this the short straw and he went i guess that's kezzy's then his name was kez the guy who had the flu so he said right it's kids that goals then so we told him he was pissed off he didn't know what we'd done but we said yeah you drew the short straw mate so i was thankful because i didn't want to go i was absolutely hanging tired you know without a busy summer you know a month of just really working hard because probably one of the most it's like the biggest death probably ever on the planet because there's so much speculation so many conspiracy theories yeah yeah blood getting tampered with why wasn't the security behind the car i think the driver as well henry paul is that yeah but he worked with mi6 as well there's so many things you know and and i i can only comment on what what i what i saw and what i heard but all these conspiracy theories i think because there's so many holes in it and you know so many things that went wrong you know that car that went in they've never found a car and there was motorbikes that went in that they you know the security cameras are off it just leads for people to go why why did that happen why did the what what's the problem with the blood when they first searched his flat they found two bottles of booze then when they searched it again a few days later they'd enough to stock a bar why did they miss it or did they and i think what i think actually i was reading through the coroner's inquest i gave evidence down there and i think the policeman who was in control of the search said yeah i agree it could have been put there after the first search so even those small things are enough for people to just grab hold of them and go right well if that's wrong what about this they start looking then don't they but i don't think we're ever going to know what happened in that tunnel uh i do say in the book i believe uh the the intelligence services were there and why would they not be lucky enough you know watching what was happening i would be surprised if they weren't you might could you imagine right imagine this so you're the head of the intelligence services let's say in the uk for example and we're at a bit of a meeting and you say to your heads of your department right so where's uh where's princess diana now the the mother of the heir to the throne and they go i've got a clue it's not gonna happen is it you know it's so i think that alone that um they denied and my evidence about that was kind of not thrown out it was the the the barriers to try to belittle what i was saying and it didn't go too well for him actually but you know i think when people look at it and go right well the intelligence services have no idea what went on the cars was never found the security cameras were off there was motorbike scene going in there was this this this this quite easily you can start saying anger on what's going on here and i think that's what's happened really i believe it was a tragic accident but i belie i believe that there are people that knew what went on in that tunnel and i don't think we'll ever know and you know what as well you know james you know the seek our secret people a secret and they don't want to be we don't want people to know what they do because they look after us they look after the country they look after our safety and they do an amazing job so i get it that they that they can't say that they're in certain places and i understand why and and thank god that they're there to look after us all but um i i think it may have been the french but i do believe the people in there and i believe it was the people on the motorbikes that's just my gut feeling because i'd stopped two guys in santa fe so we're whizzing through santa pay and they say wisdom we're not we're not speeding let's just um let everybody understand that they see bodyguards whizzing around in cars and all the rest of it and speed kills and if you speed into an ambush you go into an ambush quicker so you that's that's you know that's for hollywood we're driving down and so we had a convoy of vehicles and we'd sent a couple of cars out before so the paparazzi didn't know you know they might have followed one and said they're not in that one or not in that one called blacktop windows so the convoy goes down this and we've gone down this narrow road just enough to get a car down maybe a foot and a half each side and i was in the last cars my plan my master plan so we were in the back car armored car and as we got down this narrow road we stopped our armored opened the doors so even if they pushed against us they'd push the doors back open on themselves onto the wall you know they couldn't get past i know those two guys came down on on different motorbikes the paparazzi were generally on mopeds and things like this a couple high-powered motorbikes dressed in a way the ex-military would dress in and they spoke to us in a way the ex-military would speak to us yeah you're right lads um are you gonna let us pass muka which is a military term and we said lance you know we can't do that he said yeah we thought you said that anyway cheers anyway lads and just drove off no cameras nothing so my understanding of that was they were obviously watching the princes and the princess and why wouldn't we so am i five mi sex we're watching you as well yeah but i mean you've got you've got the you've got harry and william one of them is going to take over as king as the monarch could you imagine just sending two policemen out into that [ __ ] show do you remain yeah imagine the princeton who's with my boys oh we've got two policemen see when they left the reps why was there only like one bodyguard with them and none of them had seat belts on was that always the case not have seatbelts on in case you were under attack it's quicker to leave or should they've had their seat belts on as well they should have had the seat belts on yeah and uh trevor had his on but is that why he's the only one surviving yeah yeah it's um i think that's trevor can't remember anything about it by the way he's just lost his memory on that and uh that must torment him and remember he said to me lee and i when i carried him out of the golf buggy to see dory's grave he's my size big guy but he just lost so much weight he was horrendously injured and he says this is the biggest thing that's happened in the world he said i was there and i can't remember anything of it you could see it was disturbing him you know it's very emotional and because it's such a fast-moving environment people say you know sending the decoy car out you know was really bad policy but you know and not having a backup car for when they moved but you can only call the shots if you're there right and we did do one vehicle moves we did do one vehicle moves um on occasion for whatever reason because this is this is private security this this isn't uh this isn't police police or military you know so you know you've got to compromise and you've got to compromise with the clients as well because they've got their needs you know they pay the bills so you don't know what happened but dodie didn't like wearing a seatbelt he was known for it he hated putting his seatbelt off and he would kick off and he did that with me once the first time i drove him and um i said to him look um so you put your seatbelt on please and he said no i don't wear my seatbelt i said i'm not starting the car till you do and you're late for your dad he says i'm not putting my seatbelts on i said right okay next thing i wanna do is i'm gonna call your father or you can explain to him anyway and he'd put his seatbelt on because he's because mr fired one of his big rules was everybody must wear a seatbelt he was really big on it and it's so tragic that it was that that killed his son something his father you know if if you were driving the kids without a seatbelt on you get sacked because his dad said just stay here but and then they wanted to leave at such a late time like because the route changed as well even under that bridge it shouldn't have happened yeah but why was that route changed do you know i don't know i don't know it's it's one of those things it's such a fast-moving environment you know james that uh unless you would everybody's got an opinion on it everyone but unless you were there at the time trevor can't remember um kez has got his opinions on things but had the crash not happen we wouldn't be having this conversation yeah you know so it's just it's just an awful thing that happened because when in the bridge i think seven of the paparazzi got to jail they get charged yeah and then they got released because the guy the the driver is at henry paul one report um they then saying that he was drunk and then put the blame on to him like who says him in the house that's as well for the outsider like you says if you're mi5 they're going to cover up everything that nobody needs to know but for the outsider who then blamed him and says he was drunk and then they've done their blood tests and says yeah there's blood in his system otherwise yeah pharmaceutical drugs to then not getting overturned 11 years later i think whatever and says that it wasn't drunk yeah it's i think with the bloods i think the the french weren't i don't you want to prove something about anything you get enough experts you've got deep enough pockets you can change opinion on anything so there's that many experts there and all the rest of it but i think the the way the the police handled that evidence gathering left a lot of questions to be answered i think by the way they did it and without getting into it i know the toxologist and uh you know the car but the carbon dioxide in his blood was a big issue they said it came from the air bag i just don't know i'm not an expert in that but what's interesting is at the end because they took blood from different parts of his body and and it absorbs quicker in different parts and dissipates quicker they can they can kind of say well you know he had i think it was twice the legal limit so what's the legal limit then i don't know i'm not it's not my bag this let's say it was a pie and we had two we've had two two points he had four so he wasn't and you can see on the picture he wasn't staggering drunk he was expect but he was made out to be pissed out of his head and trevor said to me and and kes has said to me as well he was not drunk we would not allow him to drive why would you why would you allow somebody pissed to drive and they were both sober by the way kez was a former police officer a police royal marine police guy so he was used to dealing with drugs and stuff and and i think it was just it was just a horrible accident that i think that our intelligence services or the french were there and they should have been there i wouldn't expect them not to have been there and i think somebody's gone [ __ ] we can't be seen to be here and i think that caused a catalogue of things which allowed the conspiracy theorists to jump on the bandwagon so you think they've had to cover that up because mi5 are going to be watching like you say it's a future king's mama it's diana yeah so they think that they've been following you anyway it's just happened the paparazzi's crashed into them let's get it out they've died they've got out there but then they cover up stuff the speed camera wasn't working the cameras were off and because it was a white fear yeah you know it was a paparazzi man but there was marks on the side yeah but again it's because i think the ambulance was like another two hours to get diana to the hospital and that stopped twice i know so when you put it all together it's not [ __ ] up by that it is it's all [ __ ] up and and and people are far more intelligent than me come up with these conspiracy theories i do i just think it was an accident i think it was an accident i think we had people there at government level whether it's mi6 or french or whoever that saw what happened and just had to bug out there quick yeah because that hangs eric patel as well he was the only witness there but they never used his evidence either it's so it's a lot of question marks everywhere but yeah because i think as alfayet he believes the son was killed yes he does yeah and he was it uh it it tore him apart massively and the whole family and and and living through that you know this is what people don't understand that dodie died his son you know the brothers of these children so we went through with i went through that all the whole thing with the family you know and uh and grief is grief isn't it and then the princess obviously died it was such a sad time for the for her family but uh yeah it was interesting that she told me that she'd gone to the highest level in government and asked them to to create a build to get the pac to to calm this down and and then she was told in no uncertain circumstances no we're not going to do it and she said i didn't cry in front of them i waited until i got back in my car to cry yeah but was that not tony blair that never done that she wanted to take away the paparazzi or get security but tony blair signed it to say no but yet he was speaking at a funeral i don't know that's [ __ ] up and that's why did that happen when i saw that i was like this is [ __ ] up yeah but hey and uh she said to her well if i take the paparazzi off you they're gonna come for me how [ __ ] up is that who said that princess but who said that to her tony blair yeah so he says if i take the paparazzi on you they'll come at me yeah my government [ __ ] mate she was so upset when she was telling me you know and i don't have an opinion on tony blair i don't have opinion on the government i'm i can only say what i heard and what i saw and that's it but um and people are people aren't they at the highest level people are normal people and they're in they're in it for their own agenda what they can get out of it [ __ ] mad men sad as well but there's just so much speculation around that because of still spec especially 25-year anniversary and there's still never been answers but like you say that higher r higher power you're never going to get the answers and that's why they're always speculating because who says what's right or what's wrong you don't really know because there was never an inquest either but it should have been is that not law that if a british person passes away over abroad then there should be an inquest if there's speculation around the death yeah there's so much i've spoken to very very senior policemen about this and and they have their opinions and you know i don't kind of trouble my mind with that it's just like the jfk thing very same isn't it very i know that was you know he was short i get that but i think when when the the criminal trial went on and years and years later he had the coroner's inquest two different things but i think that set the president's that criminal trial that went ahead and then when the coroner's inquest went went on uh i had two people from scotland yard here they stayed here for three days questioned me for three days and they were great guys by the way and i think had that level of inquest had gone on at the first trial various things might have unfolded differently yeah because you'll never know the tunnel as well they don't knock up four hours after the crash jet cleaned it jet washed it and then you've got prince harry saying that he had to leave because he didn't want to end up like his mum muddy you know what i mean and it's sad like there's so much madness goes on but again it's for the human mind that's still you're intrigued by it 25 years yeah i was all talking about that what would your full run down be on it all and your own professional mana yeah i think it's it's an incident that happened and they'll be talking after it long after we've we've gone but uh i think uh some people make their their living out of it don't they to princess diana and and and read good i mean you get i think that's why i've been on so many shows and they started all over the world because people love the princess they still do if they can get her picture on the front of their magazine it sells that magazine like crazy all that newspaper so she's still people you know the people's princess and uh and people just loved her and people you know it's just crazy isn't it yeah there was rumors that she was pregnant is there anything we did a sweepstake to see who she was because we looked and was like she's not pregnant but you never know so we did a bit of a sweet stick but uh no we didn't she didn't show any signs of being pregnant uh but and again if a female was pregnant at that at a young young stages or early stages you wouldn't even know where did you hear the news that she had passed away so i'd i i got where i've been i'd been somewhere i'd gone back i've been i think i was actually back in santa barbara yeah i was i went back to play for a couple of weeks and it was like a walk in the park man because it was just a family there i was like yes this is brilliant and i came back home i think i i think i slept for a couple of days and then i had a barbecue at my house and invited all my family around and on this one particular night i uh i started to clean up near midnight of course which i never do i just go to bed you know i don't know why i did it there now it's kind of news on and i heard it on sky news and i went to my phone i see i've missed loads of calls so i called the operations room the ops room and then i was getting a rundown real time of what was happening you know before i even hit the news because i thought i packed my bag and stuff cause i thought i was gonna have to go back into work you know which i i didn't have to do actually which uh which was a blessing really because i think it was very upsetting for the guys there going over to you know paris and doing all that stuff and i went back about two weeks later when all the funerals and that was going on all that kind of stuff you know it's incredible the outpouring of grief was just insane millions of millions among us millions how was it for you did you ever feel like if you were there you could have saved it from happening as a guy who protects and you'd always feel as if you would protect the person with but did you ever get sleepless nights that what if you were there no no i didn't you know because i just accepted the fact i wasn't there you can't you can only fix what you can fix right so i i know um some people have but i i certainly didn't so trevor reese jones who was a friend of yours he was only surviving the crash how long after the crash did you get to see him so i he he came out hospital and it was weeks later and he came down to the family home and and um mr fired had built like this beautiful thing you know in memory of his son uh and it's probably about half a mile from the from the actual house but in the grounds you know uh so i took dodie you know we used to have a a tennis you know the tennis buggies you know they use on the tennis courts and that's tennis what i'm saying golf golf what we're talking about my head's flipping whizzing uh the golf buggies and i i drove trevor around and you know when you see somebody you think [ __ ] you i don't know you his face was [ __ ] man and he'd lost he must have lost three four stone weight so i i kind of picked him out the car and held him to the thing and he was just like it was like a 90 year old man you know how much trauma he'd had and that's when you know when i spoke to trevor and he's very emotional so was i but uh yeah i've seen him since and uh yeah he's a great guy a real professional guy and you know if somebody was to say look you somebody's gonna look after your family i would choose trevor because he's such a good bloke you know how hard does that see her brother suffer like that like on a job try to protect people but then the effects it has on people who do protect it is it's it's it's the more you see it james the more you're okay with it you know a lot of my friend you know quite a few my friends have killed themselves and and when you're trying to help them through it you know they're self-medicating with which we all have with various things and it's so sad that really proud men men's men can crumble like that and kill themselves how [ __ ] up is that yes i don't know yeah so after that the day for diana and daughter you're supposed to go america change your life looking after the princess and unmanned but after that happens and what's the steps for your life then did you totally transform it in a different lifestyle or did you just stay close protection yeah that was one of the biggest changing points in my life so what happened then was the family you know they were in mourning um some of the security guys left some got posted to different places and i went back out to santa pay for a few months to look after the villa there the guy who was looking after i think his dad had died or something and he had to go so i volunteered to go there and it was it was good really it was just a couple of months of just um chilling out really so what the the the rich people of the world in all their places all over the world they'll generally have a security person that they can trust you know just keep an eye on it so after that there's a place a vacancy came in um a place called a village called rose hall which is near lag in the middle of scotland the middle it's in the middle of the country this tiny little village because mr fire there he's got his castle and he's got all his hunting and fishing estate about another hour north of that and uh the lad that was there the security lad he had to he was moving somewhere london or something so i spoke to my mate paul hanley grieves who gave me the job and i knew he was leaving and i said paul send me there i want to go there but not only that i wanted to get my boy damon because he was struggling with his mother uh he was getting a bit out of control she couldn't handle him so i thought right if he can come with me i can look after him and sort him out square him away and so he said no um the boss won't like won't let you do that i said he'll never know will he i've been out in santa fe now i'm off his radar just send me there and i badgered him and then he said for [ __ ] sakely right go so i went there my boy came to live with me but uh damon was probably about 11 then and uh i was living there you know tom selleck you know the magnum i was like the magnum of the highlands mate hunting fishing it was great just getting into the community there's just one pub few houses doing things in the community and um obviously look keep an eye out on his estate and then we had a security team in the castle which i didn't go to and then uh so i'm just living the life of riley there having a great time and what what happened then was i went down to the castle um i think the family were coming up to stay we had a big meeting like we always did and i then there were some members of the guinness family coming in to come up to the estate where i lived and the security team used to ferry vips about you know but they were too busy preparing for the fired family coming so i said look i'll do it i'll do the trip so i go down to pick uh um the guinness family up and i met kate there who's now my wife and the plane was delayed and we got talking in the airport tiny airport in vanessa and tiny little airport we got chatting and i got the guinness team in and one of the ceos of one of his companies was there mark he was called and i've gotten together and i said mark i says i hope you don't feel like this is unprofessional i said see that lady over there he went yeah i said i've just got to go and get a number is that okay anyway yes he says come on go for it son so i got kate's number and then we met uh then and then we started seeing it went to ibiza had a great time there came back and then and then mr fired visited so he came up to rose hall and he had a little shop there they gave the village rent-free so they could have stuff there and people could make some money and i thought [ __ ] i've got a kiss out of the way so he was there my cottage was opposite and one of the boys came over said lee the boss wants to see you and your boy okay we go over he buys my boy everything in the shop and he says to me uh he says uh lee what are you doing here and i said i've been here for like 18 months and he went no no you're coming to come down to london and work with me and my family the boys like you and i said um i said i've got my boy here he's in school so no i'll get your house we'll put we'll put him to school sort all that out and that was the change then because i didn't want i didn't want that for him i didn't want him to grow up in that lifestyle and i was happy there and i just met kate so i left i left employ the employment with fire family then so is he going to put your kid through a private school if his own son's in a big house in london did you see though your son your son struggling because the father figure wasn't around yes yeah that's why i brought him back because he's a very strong minded guy then you see the stuff he's done in sports and like the highest level uh you know he's he's one of these guys he's get something in his brain he's going to do it man so is yourself though sorry same as yourself yeah yeah pretty much pretty well and we did that when he was 17 18 big style because i didn't know what i know now you know and we often talk about it and uh bringing up boys you know is difficult and kate she she did a lot of research about bringing up boys and and you know the testosterone through those years and once i began to understand it as a father i sometimes think to myself you [ __ ] that right uply but you only know what you know right but now knowing what i do know with with my boys now my twins who are 11 and my boy who's 17 i can manage myself better and see to their needs rather than mine you know so it was a great lesson but damon and i were like best friends you know so it was a tough decision but not a tough decision because you know you had your family here like to leave the alpha yeah because you've worked really not what tom cruise in that as well well during the fight the fire years and after i've worked with quite a few celebrities but uh because dodie was into the film production we'd have these people coming through all the time and we'd look after them and take them about and you know that kind of stuff and and that scene i just don't like it's not my bag some of them are very needy extremely needy you lots and lots needed but the best one this is funny jean-claude van damme right [ __ ] hell mate i have nothing against the guy i think he's actually quite good fun but i've looked after him a couple of times with uh fired when he came down and he screwed the nut with us because we would like fire his bodyguard team and most people [ __ ] themselves when they came into our because we're so professional and most guys were about my size you know six foot two or something and all fit and uh with bearing you know so it's quite quite a good team and so he just sit quietly in the car put his makeup on do whatever he had a big cocaine problem which is which is a problem a lot of people haven't uh and it's well documented so i'm not kind of sort of saying stuff out of turn here so people have got to have their own space something to put the makeup on to take the cocaine to do what they got to do and you've got to work with them rather than put your opinions on them that's why a lot of guys struggle in this and they can't cope working with these people because they have opinions on their lives and i say to my teams now and i train teams all over the world now and and you know i still work in security operations but managing it now that you know i say to people how dare you have an opinion on anyone we're here to keep them safe not some opinion on their life just make it right for them so uh van damme was coming over to do a fly on the wall documentary right and there's a friend of mine that was running it and he was going to various locations doing various stuff and i got a call and he said lee i need your help and i says what do you need john he says i need some close protection for the van damn documentary i'm doing i said okay i can help you when's he coming and he says day after tomorrow and i went [ __ ] you got problems mate so i says right find me the itinerary i'll see what it was it's about a week so i looked at the itinerary and i got an i said right mate he's not going to get in that helicopter he's only got one engine he's not going to go there he's not going to go there he won't go there and he won't do that he said well he's got to he's contracted too i said no he's not mate he's a superstar he'll do what the [ __ ] he wants i said so you're gonna have to take that out and and take that out and i said it's a bit of it's gonna be a bit of a nightmare for you so he says right i need security so i've got one guy i knew god bless him very good friend of mine rock and if you listen to this rock i love you man so he's one of the hardest men i've ever met in my life he's [ __ ] nails great cp operator not the best at organizing right so i put him on the job i put my friend jack morley who's died god bless him ex uh scotland international foot uh rugby player he played rugby for scotland cricket for scotland and he did kickboxing for scotland great guy huge monster of a man very intelligent he's done some great stuff um in in his life and in his career so i put jack down to look after rock i put rock there to look after van damme and then and i put a team around them okay so he's the waiting at the airport in birmingham for him to to fly in he's not on the flight he's flown from hong kong he's not on the flight rocks on this well you can't lose him we've not even picked him up yet [ __ ] find him in the airport he's not on the flight plane i've checked the itinerary he's not there i've been outside he's not here like [ __ ] what am i gonna do nobody could contact his pa because she was in the air flying on a different flight so that so rock stood outside the airport thinking what the [ __ ] are we going to do all of a sudden this car pulls up van damme gets out goes cheers mate it hitched a lift he'd gone to the wrong airport his flight was the wrong airport he hitched a lift from london to birmingham check that how funny is that so he gets out and and the show goes on and it's drama after drama because he wouldn't change the itinerary so he's gonna get a shower in between appearances doesn't it he's got to take his flipping cocaine he's got to put his makeup he's going to have time to do that and in the end they're in this big show in london and he's just come from this event and my mate's there's about his size and he's got his tux on all the rest of it van damme walks in maddest bollocks with his sweaty shirt on that he's just been doing a some kind of martial arts demo goes into this place and he throws a shirt at my mate he says give me the [ __ ] tux so he had to give him the talks and he sat there at this dinner with a sweaty t-shirt on a pair of joggers laughed my head off but uh but i think it was about three days in jack my friend he says lee we've got a big situation down here i said well he says van damme's been an absolute dick rock's gonna [ __ ] kill him he's going up to his room now to [ __ ] smash him i'm like stop him now we won't get paid i said get him on the phone i talked him down he said hey i'm gonna [ __ ] come say no you're not i will not pay you if you [ __ ] smash up the vip and i talked him down and thank god rock thanks mate that's not good [ __ ] so what is life like now working with the biggest names on the planet like being through about a trauma yourself about a pain from being bullied to being a native band like it's unbelievable career and stories but how's life like now yeah he likes really good life is really good we've got our martial arts that we do that's our passion i've got various um things going on in in in somalia we've got some stuff going on in saudi we've got some stuff we're waiting for um marley to quiet down a bit we've got some some work there i do um organize course protection for vips and i'm very choosy who i touch now so they've got to fit my criteria as well as me fit in theirs so i've got some great people i work with to look after people i've got a course protection training school that we're just about to launch in spain which is super exciting so we've got all that going on and uh we do a lot of work with the community here we work with challenged children we work with kids who have opted out you know some of it we do for free uh some of it my team get paid for so that's nice looking after some of these kids they've just been forgotten by the system i could cry for them you know and you look at them and you think [ __ ] huh what's happened to you where where are you gonna go i know where they're gonna go some of these kids and so it's it's really fulfilling working with them you know i think i'm going down to birmingham to work with some kids who are in gangs i love doing that because you know if you're going to see some of these kids as a tough guy a kickboxer bodyguard all that you can speak to in a different way say look i've been where you where you have been i went from school i didn't take my exams or anything i took a couple of exams whatever hadley went to school in the later years and and a lot of my friends know some of my friends off the council stay you know died of drugs and all the rest of that kind of stuff so i know what it's about so when you can talk to them like we're chatting now and say look guys come here there's a different way there is a different way to do this and i'll tell you my story and if it just inspires some of them to go you know i'm big on affirmations i write it in the book you know meditations and affirmations and it can change your life and for some of these kids you know there was one kid and and uh he was one of the last physics i did and uh we'll do six at maximum because some of these kids they can't even speak to you and you know they've all got issues and one kid he had this really deformed leg and he had lots of issues and i said to him like well let's well i'm going to show you how to do affirmations now so you can be the best that you can be at whatever you want to be one kid wanted to be a joiner but he knew [ __ ] everyone told him [ __ ] he was thick he you know these kids are lost so so we start to turn to look right let's make a little life plan for you let's set some affirmations that you can say to yourself because you are good you are special there's only one of you in the world one of you and you can be whatever you want to be and this kid they were so they're always kind of saying what kind of jobs they want to do or what they'd like to do or maybe go to college but they don't got the they've got nothing so this kid says i want to get married this kid's only 16 15. and i said well what what's the issue mate and he says everyone told me nobody will marry me look at me look at the [ __ ] state of me mud yes i don't know some kid's mean set yeah so i i i spent about i don't know half an hour with him telling him all the good points he had all the good stuff he had in his life and you mean you you see like the cloud lifts and this kid goes i can't get married [ __ ] like you can mate no let's what else do you want to do try to clean them but i believe anyone yeah yeah where can people buy your booklet so uh you can buy it online amazon how was it right in the book it was it was it was interesting uh and it it took me back to dark places that i didn't really want to go back to you know because in the book there's two occasions when there's lots of occasions where it's been closed where i nearly died and you make peace with yourself and i know we were talking about it earlier in those situations um the the smiley one was [ __ ] horrendous but the one in libya just took it to a next level one of them and so we're standing too on the roof of this [ __ ] place and everyone's in the stand two positions because we think we're gonna get attacked and you're speaking to your mates that you've worked with closely you know there's i think it's four or five of us and we knew that uh isis wanted to grab grabbers and obviously be headers like that's normal format for them isn't it you know putting the orange jumpsuit and [ __ ] you up and that would be worse nightmare wouldn't it so we're we're talking to each other we're talking rationally right guys the guy who's in charge of the ammunition the dick didn't order enough ammunition so we only had about three magazines each for our rifles maybe two magazines for our pistols went to the armory and said right break out the ammunition he says that's it you [ __ ] [ __ ] so we're on the roof deciding who was going to shoot who with your last rounds but but but not in a frying way in a real cool clear way because in those situations [Music] you know you're worrying about yourself your ego your bilge you're this then you're worried about nothing everything is clear the clarity of mind is insane you've said goodbye to everybody yourself yeah obviously i didn't say it's okay or phone anybody up but you've made your piece you've left your video you've done all that now i can get on with this [ __ ] now i can start working and it's that and that feeling of clarity is very similar to combat sport times by about a million and once you've felt it a couple of times it's it's a comfortable place to be in that's bad in it yeah crazy so see if you're under attack and you know you're going to warzone do you have to do a video before for your family to say you love them uh i don't but what i do is when i go i always do a journal so i'll do a video journal or i'll do a journal and i write my stuff in there and uh one day i'll sit and watch them with kate but um but what you do on some of the well a lot of the jobs is you do a proof of life thing so i i write down everything about my my life and kate writes as well you know what the different different things that we know only she knows i know and will have our things that if they have to prove i'm alive they will come to kate and go through my proof of life and they'll ask questions to establish if i'm alive so imagine kate going through that just that alone is [ __ ] nails in it yeah it's madness just before we finish up brother for anybody i know you're big on mental health and i know you've lost friends through mental health and all your battles yourself sometimes with mental health for anybody that's maybe struggling themselves what advice would you have for them it's it's tough it's tough james you know the government saves us help out there there's not enough um but it's a start it is a start now people with mental health issues this is what i would say to a lot of people is look you can turn this [ __ ] around there's there's books out there you can buy and it might sound a bit crap but you can take ownership of it you can go in search of things read about inspirational people who've been in the same situation as you look how they've done it and take be proactive you don't have to lie back and say the government's [ __ ] they're not helping me well yeah okay we get that now what are you going to do about it as a person come on [ __ ] get out there as dark as it may seem just try one thing and see because there's not a lot of help out there people are lost aren't they when you you know when you're down that dark place where you don't give a [ __ ] whether you die or not you just really don't care and you can't get out of it and you you want to get out of it but you know what's happening and you just go down that [ __ ] tunnel right and and it's got to be at some stage you've got to go [ __ ] stop let me get something positive in my life now whether it's a video whether it's a song whether it's something and just start that proactive thing of you standing up there and going you know what i can [ __ ] beat this [ __ ] yeah that's the name lee for coming on the day brother the foreigner i'll leave the link in the description for your book as well but great story mate i wish you all the best for the future thank you god bless you great seeing you

Channel: Anything Goes With James English

Views: 674,963

Keywords: #podcast, #Royal Family

Id: CkO_2e4rKao

Length: 128min 4sec (7684 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 11 2022