‘I snapped when a troll said I had bingo wings’
Former SAS hero turned author Chris Ryan doesn’t often lose his cool, but hardmen get angry sometimes too, he tells Guy Kelly
Throughout his more than 15 years in the British Army, a decade of which was spent in the Special Air Service (SAS), Chris Ryan was defined by extreme discipline, controlled aggression and mental fortitude. It was this temperament that meant he was able to escape and evade capture from the imperilled Bravo Two Zero mission in the Gulf war in 1991, walking almost 200 miles with minimal water – an ordeal that resulted in post-traumatic stress, blood poisoning and, eventually, the Military Medal. I imagine it was also this temperament that helped when he scratched a bite on his leg while jungle training in Brunei, only for 15 spiders to crawl out.
All of which is to say it takes a lot for Ryan to lose his cool. That was until he posted a video of himself at a shooting range on Instagram, “and some spotty little Herbert said I had bingo wings,” he says. “I just snapped. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. And I found it so irritating because I was having such a good day.”
You can have all the training in the world, I say. “I know, I know. And my daughter had told me not to respond to trolls…”
Ryan has a reputation as a hard man. He tells me he once jokingly berated a boy his daughter had brought home on account of his trousers being “halfway down his arse”. The poor lad sprinted out, never to be seen again. But settled in a hotel snug in central London, speaking with his gentle County Durham accent and wonderfully expressive eyebrows, Ryan is far from fearsome. At 58, his hair is ashen grey. Paired with an outfit composed exclusively from shades of khaki, it lends him the look of a genial explorer.
As it is, Ryan has spent most of the last 25 years as an author, producing more than 50 thrillers and non-fiction titles – including his latest novel in the Danny Brown series, Black Ops – that have sold in their millions. He was, in fact, the 47th bestselling author of the Noughties, just behind those two great literary rivals, Carol Vorderman and William Shakespeare.
“Chris Ryan” is a pen name, and many details about his life are kept from the public even today – but he is happy to admit he lives in Tampa, Florida, with his wife and their two rottweilers, Bella and Erin. Caution is understandable. His daughter, who lives in London and works in publishing, was once targeted by Islamists after a photograph of her and Ryan at a book signing was intercepted online, revealing her identity. Scotland Yard called him in Florida to tell them she was in danger.
“I’ve had some frights in my life, but that was on a different level of fear,” he says. “She ended up with two policemen on her doorstep for a very long time. And all from one picture.”
It’s one of the many reasons he hates book signings. “It’s so alien, to have my head down and not knowing who’s around me. I’m still not used to it after 25 years. In the SAS I was perfectly happy to walk down the street rigged up and loaded with weapons, but put me in a room now when I’m defenceless and everyone’s looking at me while my head’s down, and I panic.
‘You always have this survivors’ guilt… It makes you think, “did we all die that night?” ’
I come out with my shirt drenched in sweat.”
Ryan has lived abroad for a number of years, and left the Forces in 1994, but his brother, who is still in the Army, keeps him up to date with military matters. It allows him to craft elaborate, detailed plots for his novels on vast whiteboards at home. He keeps a keen eye on the news, too, even if some topics are awkward to broach with his Trump-supporting neighbours.
“It’s so divided over there, people are very aggressive if you’re not singing from the same hymn sheet. I think, sadly, that he’ll get re-elected,” he says. “There’s still an underlying bed of racism, and it stuck in some people’s craws that the last president was who he was.”
The same crowd are also fervently pro-guns. Ryan, once a sniper commander, went to dinner with two friends recently who told him, “don’t worry, we’re packing” – meaning they both had weapons clipped to their belts. He was agog, and thinks US gun laws are “idiotic”, but claims British people will never fully understand the US love of the Second Amendment. I wrongly assume this means he doesn’t personally own a gun.
“Oh yes, I’ve got a pistol in the house, just in case anything happens. But I’d never carry it on me.”
Ryan was born in a former coalmining village in Gateshead, and joined the Army as soon as he was old enough. He was selected for the elite 22 SAS aged 23, and spent the next decade conducting often covert operations around the world. But Bravo Two Zero, the tale of which would inspire his first book, The One That Got Away, came to define his career.
Ryan was one of eight SAS men sent to the infamous “Scud Alley” in northwest Iraq in January 1991. Their mission was compromised early on, leaving him in a group of three close to an Iraqi camp. Two of the men died from hypothermia, while Ryan made military history with “the longest escape and evasion by an SAS trooper or any other soldier”. He shed 2.5 stone over eight days, suffered sores all over his body, lost toenails, drank water contaminated with nuclear waste, and his gums sunk in.
“You always have this survivors’ guilt. I don’t mark an anniversary or anything, but sometimes it just appears to you, these memories and feelings,” he says. He acknowledges that’s a primary symptom of PTSD, but doesn’t seem eager to diagnose himself. He goes quiet. “It just makes you think, ‘did we all die that night?’”
He perks up again when I mention the role of the military today. Despite having no plans to return to the UK, I wonder what Ryan thinks would happen if there is a Corbyn government. He doesn’t believe the SAS would be affected, but as for intelligence services, “I don’t think they would trust him. I think he’s got issues with authority and national security… Put it this way, wherever he went, somebody would be listening in to that conversation.” He looks alarmed for a moment. “But he won’t really get in, will he?”
Like most veterans, Ryan worries about Army recruitment, and while he’s enthusiastic about the idea of having women in the SAS, should they pass the tests, he thought the controversial “Snowflakes! We need you!” adverts targeting the perceived soft youth of today were “disgraceful”.
“Kids are kids – I complained to my parents when I was that age. But when they get in the Army and have a task in hand, they perform. [The adverts were] a waste of time and money. How dare they… Why would you want to join if someone says you’re a snowflake? I’d like to see the war record of the guy that wrote those ads,” he says, seeming surprisingly het up again. “Kids are exactly the same as they’ve always been.”
It’s true. And today’s kids can even teach a grizzled SAS veteran about Instagram trolls, too.