TV’S hardman goes back to Afghanistan
Special Forces veteran Jason Fox tells Guy Kelly how a chance remark took him back to Kabul
Late last summer, Jason Fox was asked by one of the heads of Channel 4 where in the world he would go if he could travel anywhere. “In hindsight,” he says now, his giant hand gripping a mug of tea, “I probably should have said chilling on the Maldives or something.”
It seems reasonable to assume that Fox – a former Marine and Special Forces soldier who has found a second career making documentaries – was never going to ask for a beach holiday. He had just returned from months staring down drug lords and assassins in the Americas for a series about “the real narcos”. The year before that, he trekked to the North Pole for charity. Before that he rowed to Venezuela, setting a record.
“Instead, I said I’d love to go back to Afghanistan. I didn’t quite understand why and I don’t know whether I’ll ever know, but there’s something about the place. I love the country and people – well, I hate it as well – but I thought it would be a good thing to do. It was a throwaway answer, really…”
The channel commissioned The Final Mission: Foxy’s War within two weeks. Almost a decade after his last visit to Afghanistan – one of numerous tours during a 20-year military career that ended with him being medically discharged with post-traumatic stress disorder – Fox was to return to the scene of some of the most upsetting events of his life.
“Stability-wise it’s worse out there than it was when I was a soldier, and I wasn’t entirely sure it was a good idea. I was anxious, it’s a scary place to go back to, but it was something that needed to be done,” he says. “It’s given me a lot of closure on it.”
“Foxy” will be a very familiar face to viewers of SAS: Who Dares Wins, the series in which civilians are put through the SAS selection process. He works alongside fellow Special Forces veterans Matthew “Ollie” Ollerton, Mark “Billy” Billingham and Ant ( just Ant) Middleton as one quarter of the world’s most terrifying boy band, pushing recruits through the punishing training regimes they
know well. If they are a boy band, and Middleton is the Gary Barlow – leading on screen time and breaking away to try some solo material, in the form of his own documentaries – Fox is the Howard Donald: more sensitive and thoughtful, but harmonically essential.
It’s reflected in their views. Last week, Middleton said he doesn’t allow his son to cry at school, as it shows weakness. Today, Fox shrugs and says he’d let his children cry, not least since he’s an ardent believer in vocalising worries. Similarly, Middleton once said he doesn’t “see any benefits that women will bring being in the SAS or SBS”. Fox, on the other hand, reckons “women would only be for the best”.
The pair were acquainted in the special boat service (SBS). They’re good mates now. “It’s a good relationship. We’re all our own people and that’s what makes it work, I think. It’d be f------ boring if we were all the same.”
Sitting on a roof terrace in south London, he is tattooed, sweary and built like a double wardrobe, but wonderfully laid back. (He’s a good mix of contrasts – in his book, Battle Scars, he talks of sitting in a Chinook in Afghanistan, ready to drop into a ferocious night-time gunfight, with Kylie Minogue playing on his ipod.)
Fox, 42, is now “his own therapist”, having spent the better part of six years working through his PTSD – which culminated in suicidal thoughts when he started a job as a project manager shortly after entering civilian life – with professionals, but he was still nervous flying back into Kabul and Helmand Province. “It’s dangerous enough going there as press, but as an ex-special Forces soldier there’s an extra price on my head. I’d have been a meatier target.”
Fox and his convoy were followed by armed locals, and he knows his former enemy were aware of his presence, not least because he met with a former Taliban commander for a testy interview. The British Army’s combat presence in Afghanistan – Operation Herrick – concluded in 2014 (under the name Toral, the few remaining troops help keep NGOS secure), leaving many veterans unsure of their impact on the country. Fox was among them.
“I’ve put stuff up on social media about Afghanistan recently, and people have commented, ‘there was no point to it, I lost friends, family’ all that. But you can keep going through life seeing it as a negative, or you can move forward,” he says. “When it came to the end [of the war] people were obviously very tired of it, having sweated and bled, and wondered what it was all
‘As an ex-special Forces soldier there’s an extra price on my head’
about. That’s why going back was a good thing for me, because I could see improvements.”
These included the sight of women working at Kabul airport, and others in Western dress laughing in the city – something Fox had never seen. He also encountered several Afghans he’d personally trained, all of whom were thriving in positions of military or political responsibility.
“That’s what I didn’t know I needed, but gave me some closure. And the British troops we have there now are probably doing a far more important job than I ever did.”
The eldest of three brothers, he grew up in Luton, with a Marine for a father and only one career in mind, so joined up at 16. These days, despite having a lot of friends that still serve, he’s happier with his adventures, gym sessions, and living quietly with his partner in south London (he has two daughters from a previous marriage).
He has also described himself as becoming progressively more liberal since he left the military. I wonder if he thinks we could do with more politicians with experience of battle.
“There’s a couple, but I think it died with Paddy Ashdown [once a member of the SBS], who was the last one in any position of seniority,” he says. He doesn’t seem interested in Rory Stewart, one of the few serving MPS who has worn combat fatigues, but Johnny Mercer, a former Army captain and now MP for Plymouth Moor View, occasionally tweets him fraternally. Is he a friend?
“I don’t… actually know him.” So, has he that overdue beach holiday planned for the summer?
“I’m actually going out with a mate to kayak the Yukon river for a couple of charities – it’s 1,980 miles, but we’ve always wanted to do it,” he says. Oh well. Whatever gives him peace.
The Final Mission: Foxy’s War is on Channel 4 on Thursday at 9pm