How to be as tough as Britain’s toughest man

Join the Paras then Special Forces ++ Dive naked on to broken glass ++ Be machine gunned by the Taliban ... and NEVER lose control

NExT time you hear someone lavishing praise on the Parachute Regiment for their courage during a war, consider their initiation ceremony as described by former member (and now chief instructor on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins) Ant Middleton.

His fellow Paras smash pint glasses — some empty, some still containing beer — on to a dancefloor, then make him stand at the edge. He has to strip naked and dive across the floor headfirst.

‘The cuts were painless. At first. I was just aware of the sensation of prickling and slicing and skin opening up.

‘As I skidded forwards in the foaming beer river, I whipped my body around quickly, trying to angle my back and a**e at the floor.’

Then a colleague grabs Middleton in a headlock, starts punching the crown of his skull and shouts: ‘Welcome to the brotherhood!’ After this, some of the existing Paras strip off and repeat the stunt, just for fun.

The usual image of our Armed Forces, certainly the elite regiments, is one of soldiers perfectly under control and trained to deploy aggression when — and only when — it is needed. Yet the truth is more complicated.

Middleton recounts his nights out with the Paras in the pubs and clubs of Aldershot. They drink glasses of each other’s urine, have darts thrown into their backs, take off their clothes and stand with their testicles lowered into the pockets of pool tables, so their mates can smash balls at them as hard as possible. John Mills and David Niven it is not.

YETwhat makes the book so interesting is Middleton’s awareness of these complexities. He knows that soldiers can never be dispassionate robots.

Indeed, one of the leadership lessons that form the chapter titles is ‘ Make friends with your demons’.

‘Hatred can be the most powerful motivator there is,’ writes Middleton, before cautioning that you should ‘ tap into it just enough that it serves you, but not so much that it twists you up’.

Middleton’s own demons started at the age of five, when his gentle, caring father died suddenly. The next day, every photograph of him disappeared from the house and Ant and his siblings were forbidden from attending the funeral.

The father was replaced (curiously quickly) by a stepfather who disciplined Ant with a belt and coached the local football team by playing Tina Turner’s Simply The Best at them on a ghettoblaster. He once ordered Ant to punch a school bully and, when this resulted in a week’s suspension, he proudly doubled it to two.

Hardly surprising that this led to what we might term ‘issues’. The story of the book is the story of Middleton trying to cope with them. His colleagues in the Paras reject him when he gets a girlfriend. In Macedonia, he works with the French Foreign Legion, who also like a drink, but ‘when they got wasted they didn’t beat each other up, they sang old patriotic songs’.

Eventually, Middleton quits the Paras and attempts to retrain as a policeman, but a drink-driving conviction gets him thrown off the course. He rejoins the military, though this time, it’s the Marines. The ethos there is completely different: they ‘build on your strengths’, rather than ‘push at your weaknesses’. These days,

Middleton uses that approach in his own leadership roles.

It was needed during Mutiny, another Channel 4 programme, in which he captained a boat full of volunteers recreating William Bligh’s near-fatal sea journey after being cast adrift from HMS Bounty.

At one point, they are told to accept drinking water from the support boat as, without it, they could suffer permanent liver damage. He is proud that the team spirit he has created causes them to refuse: ‘ They were willing to suffer serious health issues . . . just to get this job done as authentically as possible’.

After sleeping on that decision, he relents and accepts the water — but the very fact he came that close shows his singular mindset.

As does his reaction when the Channel 4 executive proposes the programme in the first place. They’ve seen him ‘talk the talk’ on SAS: Who Dares Wins, now can he ‘walk the

True grit: Former SBS operative Ant Middleton

walk’? ‘ Was he questioning my ability? . . . I felt the hatred pour out of me.’ I would not have wanted to be that executive.

Before his TV fame, he’d applied, in 2008, for the Special Boat Service, the Marines’ equivalent of the SAS. It’s ‘not uncommon’ for people to die on the selection course, thanks to tests such as carrying a partner up a 100-metre hill.

Middleton, a mere 5ft 8in, is quickly chosen by someone a whole head taller than him, purely because he’s the smallest.

When it’s Middleton’s turn to do the carrying, the task is correspondingly hard: ‘It felt like a blue whale had landed on my head’.

Half way through one hellish run, the trainees are encouraged to give up — and so fail the course — by a trainer offering them hot tea and cherry Bakewells. Middleton is tempted, but he doesn’t crack.

EVenif you didn’t have issues before joining the military, serving in Afghanistan could provide you with plenty.

At one point, Middleton has to retrieve the body of a soldier who has been blown up by a Taliban IeD (improvised explosive device). The man’s arms and legs are on the ground, his torso on a roof.

The Taliban know that the Marines’ rules of engagement don’t allow them to fire on anyone who is unarmed, so they shoot at him, then quickly drop the guns and pick up rakes, as though they were mere farm workers.

Thankfully, Middleton points out, many of the Taliban are ‘idiots’, so they forget that an AK-47 lifts as it fires, meaning they hit the ceiling, rather than him.

I suspect many people, especially men, will identify with Middleton and his struggles to channel his anger. Life is full of minor irritants — sooner or later, they mount up.

And even if there were no provocations, there is, as Middleton puts it, ‘a primal caveman instinct in all of us’. How well you control it is the real test of your masculinity.

Middleton’s results have been mixed, both during and after his time in the military. Since leaving the Marines, he has done time for assaulting a policeman during a fight outside a nightclub. But, at his best, he gets it right.

In one incident in Afghanistan, he is provoked by an obnoxious superior and feels his right hand curling into a fist. ‘But I wouldn’t let him have it. I was my father’s son, not my stepfather’s.’