Ultimate Hell of becoming Britain’s toughest woman
After star turn on BBC’s hit SAS challenge, doctor reveals the...
ISHOULD have known that a woman tough enough to make it to the final of BBC2’s Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week wouldn’t crack under interrogation. So, Clare Miller, how was climbing into a bath filled with lungs, animal organs, blood and other bits of offal? ‘Fine, I’m a doctor.’ The sleep deprivation for up to 40 hours? ‘I’ve never had a problem rearranging my body clock.’ The SAS-style escape and evasion over Welsh mountainsides? ‘I like running, it’s my favourite thing.’ Being dropped while you were abseiling? ‘I didn’t notice until it was over and then I thought, “Oh, cheeky”.’ How many killer pressups did you do during the aptly named Surf Torture on a freezing Welsh beach? ‘Hundreds…’
Not only is she supremely physically fit, her mental strength appears to be borrowed from the bullet-stopping stuff the military use in flak jackets. It’s made Clare, 31, the breakout star of the BBC2 reality show which took 29 extreme adventure sportsmen and put them through a civilian facsimile of Special Forces selection tasks.
To reach the final six, she’s seen off 18 burly men, five other women and is among the favourites to win.
I try again. The starvation? ‘I never knew how delicious peanut butter protein bars could be.’ The bit where the Australian SAS instructor tried to break you by making you carry more than your own bodyweight. ‘Mmmm, punishing.’ The Israeli counter-terror expert who looked like an extra from the Mad Max franchise? ‘Not the friendliest of people, no.’
In fact you’ve got to get Clare on to the subject of pants before there’s a chink in her armour. Tonight, in the climax to the six-part show, she’s shown changing out of her uniform and into a paper jumpsuit.
‘I’m dreading that being on the TV. I was wearing my own very nice sports underwear at the start of the show and they made me swap it for something less, um, supportive.’
Nor was she keen on the absence of toiletries.
‘No deodorant, I smelled rank, and no hair products either, so I had to wash my hair with soap. And the grey tracksuit which we were given for pyjamas – that was disgusting.’
She’s also a little embarrassed by what is now known to the show’s 1.6 million viewers as the ‘Miller Smash Face’, which shows Clare with eyes shut, teeth gritted and lips pulled back in a big growl.
‘Why,’ she asks ruefully, ‘would anyone who makes a face every single time they exercise, put themselves on television, exercising?’
All of which just goes to prove you can be one of the toughest women in the world and still mind how you look. Clare is, however, being partly serious. ‘I was anxious about how I’d appear in the show – if it would threaten my professional integrity. I was worried that it would not be good for my job.’
For Clare is not a soldier – she’s a hospital doctor. The day after filming ended, she was back on the ward at London’s Northwick Park Hospital, where she cares for transplant patients and people with blood cancers. She entered Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week because it’s her idea of fun.
She’s 5ft 4in, weighs 8st 7lb, and is Britain’s top female obstacle course racer. There are only three people in the country who can routinely beat her and they are all men.
‘Clare’s secret,’ says her boyfriend Pete Rees when she’s safely out of earshot, ‘is that she doesn’t surrender to pain.’
Even so, the TV show fronted by cricket hero Freddie Flintoff took her to the outer edge of her physical abilities. She and 28 other starting contestants were challenged by veterans from America’s Navy SEALs, Russia’s Spetsnaz forces, the Philippines’ Navsog, and Israel’s elite counter-terrorist unit Yamam, as well as the British and Australian SAS. The Navy SEAL Surf Torture claimed six contestants in the first few hours alone.
Clare, however, was ready for it. ‘I trained by having cold showers. At first, I’d just hop in for a few seconds, say “Argggh” and get out. By the end, I was having the whole shower and hair wash in freezing water. I got myself used to carrying an Army bergen [backpack] by running a marathon with one on, and I practised running to work with textbooks and bricks on my back.
‘But I didn’t eat anything different and I certainly didn’t give up my occasional glass of wine. That actually came in useful when I found myself on the winning team for one of the Russian challenges and had to have a glass of vodka to celebrate with the Spetsnaz guy.’
Slowly the field was winnowed by injury, exhaustion and, in some cases, plain fear until only six contestants were l left. How come she was one of them? ‘The minute I start it’s like a switch flicking, the red mist just comes down, the Miller Smash Face appears and I push myself.
‘I don’t compete against other people – I compete against myself. I’m not asking, “Can I beat them” but “Can I do better myself.”
‘In the end I gave it everything. I didn’t want it to be over and for me to have any questions or regrets.’
Clare has always been an elite athlete. She’s a world champion duathlete – running, cycling, then running again – and she has rowed for England and her former university, Edinburgh. But it is only 18 months since she was introduced to the world of obstacle course racing. That’s how she ended up on the show and also how she met Pete, 38, who’s the founder and editor of one of the sport’s best-known websites, mudstacle.com. He can’t beat her. ‘She’s crazy fast, absolutely awesome,’ he says proudly.
Today, four months after the end of filming, Clare is still recuperating. ‘When I came out everything hurt and my body was changed. I’m still resting it. I had veins on my abdomen that I’d never seen before, I popped my first-ever proper sixpack – not that it lasted long. I also had wounds that just wouldn’t heal.’
ONE of them was a scrape about the size of a matchbox with a scar that remains visible still – a bright white patch of new skin amid an armful of freckles. She’s such a toughie that it’s a surprise she’s given herself to medicine and not military service, and indeed she’s now looking into a possible Army career. But she will not be lobbying for it to be with Special Forces. ‘I did not enter the show to make a statement about the role of women – it was a personal challenge. I don’t want to call for the SAS to be opened up to women – just because I can complete part of some selection tasks, it doesn’t say that I could qualify. I wouldn’t put myself up for it.’
Nor will Clare be expanding into other areas of reality TV. ‘I do like to watch The Great British Bake Off,’ she says. ‘But I’d never enter. Now that would be properly terrifying.’
The final episode of Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week will be shown at 9pm tonight on BBC2.
The minute I start, the red mist just comes down