OF ART, ALGORITHMS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Geddes, who sounds uncannily like the late Sir David Frost, is hugely entertaining company, no doubt one of the reasons why he’s so popular with the people who pay him to stay by their side for days, weeks, even months at a time. He once spent two years retained by one individual, “available day and night”, but generally agrees with the Kevin Costner line in The Bodyguard that if you remain with any one principal – or client – for too long, “you become complacent”.

However, even if you can afford his fees of £350 an hour or £3,000 a day (though he does a lot of work pro bono), you won’t necessarily procure Geddes as your bodyguard, since he tries to match clients with characters “simpatico” to them: women with women, parents of young children with parents of young children and so on. “When you’re in Iraq and protecting a principal moving from Basra to Kuwait, you’ll use some fairly war-torn characters, but if you stick a grizzly old businessman with a young buck, there’s going to be an incredible gap,” he says. “It’s all about soft skills; hard skills can be found on any street corner.”

TARGET LOCKED

“Ninety percent of this job is boredom, but 10 percent is really exciting – one of our chaps was with clients at the filming of Oprah Winfrey’s final show. Every world leader and megastar was there, hugging him and saying, ‘Lovely to see you, Mark. How’s the family?’ But I always say, ‘Whatever events your clients invite you to, remember you’re the help.’ I had one Hollywood actress who solicited me. I said, ‘I’m so sorry, but I can’t.’ I don’t think it’s anything to do with my dashing good looks, but – I don’t want to sound really misogynistic – I think a protector is one thing a lot of women look for.”

You can almost hear the #Metoo lobby’s cries of outrage, but I can’t see that bothering Geddes, 52, who’s defiantly old-school. Both to me and on social media, he constantly refers to his wife (his second) as “the Long-haired General” and despairs of men who don’t give up their seats to women on the Tube. “It costs nothing to be a gentleman,” he fulminates.

Surprisingly, Geddes is not ex-army, ex-intelligence, ex-police; he’s a civilian. Having left school with four O levels and a passion for martial arts, he started running self-protection courses for female employees of big organisations. Some pupils approached him asking if he could organise their security for business trips to dodgy countries. Twenty-two years later, he runs International Corporate Protection, with a core team of around 30 in London and 600 or so more worldwide.

Along the way, he’s evacuated, “by hook or by crook”, dozens of panicked American businesspeople from Indonesia during the 1998 riots that followed the fall of President Suharto. He doesn’t say it in so many words, but you can work out that he organised the repatriation of Sunday

Times war correspondent Marie Colvin’s body after she was killed in Syria in 2012. He’s negotiated with Al Qaeda and Islamic State, and worked constantly in Afghanistan and Iraq. “In most hostile environments, you’ll probably get shot at, although you should be navigating the principal away from those kinds of risks,” he continues. “I have a scar on my back from some lovely person who chose to stick a knife in it. Who was it? I can’t remember. Probably my first wife.” He laughs uproariously.

Delightful as Geddes may be, his is a harsh world of realpolitik. “In our business, we get asked all the time, ‘Have you killed anyone?’ It’s such an indelicate question. One of my colleagues has come up with the best answer, which is, ‘Well, I served in the catering corps, so it’s highly likely.’”

So has he killed anyone? “Moving on to my next story,” Geddes barks.

ACCEPTABLE RISK

He’s spent a lot of time helping western companies establish themselves in formerly communist countries. “What happened after the Berlin Wall fell was a financial services company would open its offices and stick a brass plate outside, and within a few minutes, a man mountain in a leather trench coat would appear at the door, blocking out the light, saying, ‘You need to pay fire protection insurance.’ They’d tell him to go away, but a few days later, the knock would come again from another insurance company.”

American and British laws forbid businesses paying bribes, so Geddes would be enlisted to negotiate. “You ask, ‘Which is the biggest, baddest organisation in town?’ and then you meet their leader and say, ‘Right, we appreciate that my client is going to have to pay some kind of insurance, but in return, you will have to ensure all the other companies stop asking for payment. Otherwise, my client is going to pack up and go away and nobody gets anything.’”

Right now, there’s much talk in Geddes’s circles about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by compatriot agents in his country’s consulate in Istanbul. “I know some details about what happened that you don’t want to know, but it was as barbaric as it gets. Horrific,” Geddes says. Anyway, Khashoggi wouldn’t have been murdered under Geddes’s watch. “There’s mitigable risk and unacceptable risk – we sure as hell wouldn’t have had him going onto diplomatic grounds where no local laws apply. It’s like parachuting into Riyadh – you’re a lunatic to do that.”

In general, he says, the world is no more risky now than at any other point in his career. “The proliferation of instant news means nasty things just come to public attention much more easily.” But social media has made the prevailing atmosphere more poisonous. “There’s this horrendous air of bitterness and hate. I do think we’re going to hell in a handcart, though to a certain extent, it’s probably going to help me in terms of my role assuaging people’s safety.”

Certainly, the Internet has opened a whole new avenue for Geddes, who’s just co-written a very useful book called Parent Alert! How to Keep Your

Kids Safe Online and launched an app, Tacticson, featuring security tips and a gizmo that allows you to track your children, have them alert you when they’ve arrived somewhere, trigger a panic button and contact the emergency services in 80-plus countries. Clients are always asking him to set up laptops and phones so their communications are untraceable. “In certain circumstances, you think, ‘That’s obviously for the mistress, but you know what? You’re not breaking the law, so I don’t care.’”

Meanwhile, there are constant extortion issues. Only this week, he had to calm an influencer – “I don’t really understand what that is.” – with hundreds of thousands of followers who’d downloaded a virus while looking at porn. “It told her, ‘We’ve switched on your webcam and seen what you were doing, and we’re going to circulate the footage to your

“JAMES BOND AND I MIGHT SHARE THE SAME TAILOR, BUT THAT’S THAT. I PREFER RAY DONOVAN” — WILL GEDDES

friends unless you send us one bitcoin.’ She was so worried, but I said, ‘It’s a hoax, nothing to worry about. Just stop looking at naughty websites.’”

Recently, a “prominent” pop star called, saying her ex-boyfriend was asking for £50,000 not to publish intimate photos she’d sent him. “I get a lot of these kinds of issues. I solved it without her paying any money; I retrieved the phone and ensured there were no duplicates. I highlighted to this individual that extortion is a criminal act and that because she had taken the photos, she owned the copyright – which she didn’t.”

The easiest celebrities to handle are usually the ones at the very top of the food chain. “It’s the same with ultra-high-net-worth individuals; they’re the most charming people as they have nothing left to prove. It’s the ones who are worth up to £50 million who are really difficult.” By the same token, “the most dangerous people I’ve ever met are generally the nicest. I’ve looked into the eyes of a few people and seen consummate evil, but – not to depreciate the power that they’ve got – there’s a saying in our business: ‘The empty can rattles the most.’”

Geddes lives in Knightsbridge and drives a flashy car (he refuses to reveal the make, but his last one was an Aston Martin). He doesn’t have children (“I’ve never had the paternal urge. I have two cats. They’re my kids.”) and says happily he’s not sure what his wife does – “She’s busy.” – but that she’s “very understanding” of his lifestyle.

“I told my wife at the very beginning, ‘I may need to run off. I can’t always say where I’m going. And though I’ll communicate when I can, it won’t always be every day.’ And even when I’m back and we’re sitting down with a beautiful bottle of chablis, I’m not going to tell her about the task I’ve been on because it makes her more anxious. What she doesn’t need to know, she doesn’t need to know. Though if I’ve been working with a celebrity, she’ll say, ‘Tell me everything.’”

Does he? “Of course not!”

She was unimpressed when “a name you’d know straightaway” sent her a video message begging her husband to stay longer with him, saying, “Well, it wasn’t George Clooney.” Similarly, a “very senior” client was bemused when Geddes, from the hotel room next door, accidentally sent him a text meant for his wife, saying, “Night night, sweetheart. Sleep well.”

Of course, neither of these men would probably acknowledge Geddes in a public place. But next time they have a problem, they’ll be picking up the phone. “I say to everyone, you’ve got my number – save it. If you’re even thinking of calling me, you should already be dialling.”