Grand move by detective
A POLICEMAN has transferred to his great-greatgrandfather’s former force.
PC Richard Foulkes chose to see out his career with West Mercia Police in Worcester after learning Dave Evans had been a PC for 25 years from 1885.
He sought the help of Worcestershire Archive Service and even found out PC Evans’ collar number, which the force is letting him wear too.
The former Met Police detective, 52, said: “I want to walk in his footsteps.”
WHEN it comes to tough tests, the selection process for the SAS is among the longest and most punishing. It lasts for five months and has a 90% fail rate – and this year, in a landmark and controversial moment for the British Special Forces, it is open to women too.
Female candidates will face physical tests such as the almost 15-mile “Fan Dance” across the highest mountain in the Brecon Beacons, and the top-secret mental assessment carried out as part of a 36-hour interrogation process.
In the new season of hit TV show SAS: Who Dares Wins, which starts on Sunday, women will also compete for the first time, providing a snapshot of what would be needed to join the elite unit.
In no-holds-barred scenes, for the first time on TV in a non-dramatised programme, a man is seen punching a woman in the face during a fighting task.
I joined the show’s first female recruits on a training day at a military base in East Sussex, and spoke to the stars about the addition of women.
TV tough guy Jason “Foxy” Fox, an ex-Royal Marine Commando and Special Forces Sergeant, says: “Everyone was individual. There were some weak women, there were some strong women, there were some weak men, there was some strong men. It wasn’t about gender.
“Well, it was, but it wasn’t. We didn’t want it to be about gender, we wanted it to be about whether you could get to the end of the course. We knew there would be women who couldn’t do it but we also suspected that there would be women who could.”
And if anyone thinks women would be treated differently, think again.
In the first episode, the entire team is punished because some of the women keep their wet undies on rather than go braless after diving into a freezing river.
Chief instructor Ant Middleton is seen telling the female recruits: “I thought you f***ing women would be a bit more switched on, a bit more f***ing smart, obviously not. I didn’t want to do this, have this men and women thing, but