13
CELEBRITY PROTECTION
BY JOHN BADLY
Before the story starts,
I must stress that just because my name happens to be Badly, it
doesn’t mean that I have lived up to it in my professional life.
But I hesitate somewhat when it comes to categorising my personal
life in a similar vein, as it has not always been good; in fact,
‘badly’ is probably quite a good word for how my personal life has
unfolded since entering the business of celebrity protection 15
years ago. You see, celebrity protection is very different to
corporate protection. The challenges are different, as are, of
course, the risks, but mainly it is the environment in which we
work that makes family life and long-term relationships almost
impossible.
I first started in close protection as a bouncer in
a nightclub in London. I had just left the army, where I’d served
in the Parachute Regiment, and I really didn’t know where I was
going or what I was going to do. I thought about truck driving –
lots of ex-Paras obtained their HGV licence as part of the
resettlement programme and drove trucks for the rest of their
lives. Driving is good because it gives a sense of freedom that
many ex-soldiers crave, plus if you are an international driver it
takes you to the Continent for days, sometimes weeks at a time,
which is another thing ex-soldiers tend to like and are used
to.
A good friend of mine and fellow Para gained his
HGV licence and ended up transporting goods for a charity – aid,
medicines, etc. – in and out of Bosnia during the first couple of
years of the conflict, which he thoroughly enjoyed. It would take
him three or four days to get to his destination, followed by a
couple of days turnaround and, strangely, a seemingly quicker
journey back home. He would then rest in the UK for a couple of
days before going back out to Bosnia. Although he didn’t go
directly into the war zone, he loved the job, as he felt he was
doing some good whilst getting a little bit of adventure at the
same time. He would take his truck almost anywhere that the aid was
needed, from a warehouse on the Italian–Croatian border, where it
was then unloaded and distributed into the war zone by the Red
Cross, to towns and villages recently bombed and desperate for
aid.
I was lucky enough to join him on one trip. He
called me and asked if I wanted to sit with him for a week or so
while he took his truck to a place called Lipik in northern
Croatia. He said it would be good to have some company, and I
agreed. The bombardment of Lipik, along with the nearby village of
Pakrac, was started by the Serbian forces at 5.30 a.m. on 19 August
1991. The first building to be destroyed was the orphanage, which
was home to around eighty children between the ages of three and
sixteen. For seven days, the children cowered in the cellars while
the building above them, as well as most of the rest of the town,
was shelled. In a lull in the fighting, the children were quickly
evacuated to the coast.
My friend and I were one of the first convoys of
private humanitarian aid into the town. The charity my colleague
was working for had arranged for us to be met in Lipik by their
local representative. We had a map and were able to find the town,
although finding the warehouse that we were supposed to deliver to
was a bit of a problem. However, an English truck in the middle of
war-torn Lipik caused a great deal of interest, and we were soon
found by the charity worker and directed to a shelled-out
warehouse, where the aid would be fairly divided between the town’s
inhabitants. Half the truck was filled with baby food donated by
Cow & Gate, and the other half was clothing, toiletries,
bedding, blankets and other much-needed sundries. Many people who
survived the shelling remained in their burned-out homes, and the
aid was a godsend to the majority of people who had found
themselves with nothing.
As a Para, I had been to some very interesting
places and had met some wonderful people, but nothing had quite
prepared me for the destruction a continuous mortar bombardment can
bring to a town and its inhabitants. Every single building, without
exception, was in ruins, and it amazed me how people could have
survived it.
After we had unloaded the supplies, we found a
small bar in the centre of Lipik that had been hastily set up once
the Serbs had moved on to destroy another village. It was an
improvised establishment, using the living room and garden of a
partly bombed house next to the original bar, which had been
completely destroyed. Although makeshift, it was nevertheless
somewhere for the locals to meet and relax.
As foreigners, we attracted a lot of attention, and
the evening was spent listening to the countless stories of
atrocities and carnage perpetrated by the Serbian Army. We were
also introduced to Colonel Mark Cook. He was the commander of the
British contingent of the United Nations Protection Force. He vowed
to the mayor of Lipik that he would help rebuild the orphanage.
Mark went on to raise over £1 million and a few years later rebuilt
the orphanage as he’d promised. He asked us if we could bring in
our next container some children’s clothing for the orphans who
were now living safely on the coast. The children got their
clothing a few weeks later, and Mark Cook went on to form the
charity Hopes and Homes for Children, which has helped thousands of
children worldwide.
Having experienced the conflict, albeit in a very
small way, I felt I had been part of it and wanted to do something
more to help. But, sadly, I knew that unless I could quickly find a
job with a charity based out there, I wouldn’t be coming back. It
was just a one-trip deal for me.
Although the experience was wonderful in many ways,
I knew I couldn’t drive trucks for a living. I needed to be more
active. Sitting down all day, every day would have sent me crazy.
It was also very unhealthy. I have kept fit for most of my life and
have trained every day more or less without fail, but truck
driving, whether in the UK or abroad, affords you little chance of
keeping in shape.
Spending over a week in the same cab as someone
gives you the opportunity to talk about anything and everything. My
friend and I spoke mostly about trivial things but with the
occasional gem thrown in. At one point, he mentioned that he knew
another ex-Para who had gone into personal protection. I didn’t
know much about the industry, except that it was a business
populated mainly by ex-SAS and RMPs (Royal Military Police).
However, the idea was a good one, and once I got home I made some
enquiries about training.
At that time, there was no standardised training
and no SIA licence. You had to shop around, make lots of enquiries
and find the best privately run course you could find. There were a
few training companies run by ex-SAS, but not many, and they were
quite hard to find. Of course, the Internet was up and running, but
many companies still did not have websites, so my research was
mainly via word of mouth and advertising.
I looked at a few companies but eventually chose to
train with the WFB. Back then, the organisation was based just
outside Manchester, near to where I lived, so it was a simple task
to visit them and get all the relevant details. The WFB had not
been going long but were accredited as a training provider by
Manchester College of Arts and Technology, an accreditation most
other training companies didn’t have.
A month or so later, I paid a deposit, and a month
after that I was on my way to Wales for my first-ever close
protection training course. Luckily, my resettlement grant covered
most of the training fees, so I really had nothing much to lose,
apart from a hundred or so pounds of my own money and my time, and
I had loads of that.
We met in a car park in the village of Llandrindod
Wells, mid Wales, which I thought was a bit bizarre. According to
the organisers, the reason for this was that the training camp was
almost impossible to find, and it was far easier for everyone to
meet at a specific location at a specific time, rather than us all
arriving in dribs and drabs or getting lost. There were supposed to
be ten of us on the course altogether, although only eight arrived
at the car park. Maybe two pulled out, or perhaps they couldn’t
even find their way to the town centre! We nervously waited in more
or less silence for thirty minutes after the arranged time, then
the eight of us made our way in convoy behind the instructors to
the training camp – a huge farmhouse down a tiny, muddy lane in the
middle of nowhere.
On arrival, we were given 30 minutes to find a bed,
unpack and pour ourselves a cuppa. Then we all met downstairs in
the living area, where we were introduced to our instructors and
talked through the days ahead.
In the army, we did some crazy things and went to
some crazy places. The training was tough, and I thought I was
fairly hard, but, fuck me, the training these guys put us through
over the following ten days was definitely some of the best I have
ever had. Initially, I think we all questioned what was going on,
as sharing a room and training in a farmhouse was not what any of
us had really expected, but realism was the name of the game, and
everything we did during those ten days was based upon us being out
in the field – literally – and on real operations.
One of the instructors was a Russian ex-Special
Forces officer, the other was an instructor with the Lebanese
forces, and our fitness and martial arts instructor was an
ex-Scottish boxing champion. I have never seen a pair of fists move
so quickly.
Every day started at 6 a.m. with a three-mile run
and an hour of unarmed combat. We then showered and had breakfast,
and the rest of the day was meticulously planned: 9 a.m. to 10.30
a.m. – theory of convoy driving; 10.30 a.m. to 11.30 a.m. –
planning a convoy; 11.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. – first convoy practice; 1
p.m. to 2 p.m. – lunch; 2 p.m. to 3.30 p.m. – building search
theory; and so on throughout the course. After the first six days,
we used what we had learned and put it into practice with a ‘real’
operation. The WFB team had arranged for someone to fly into
Cardiff International Airport, and we were to look after him as if
he was a real client for two days and two nights. Those two days
were probably even more difficult than the training we had all just
gone through, as everything was thrown at us. But I believe we
learned more during those two days than we had done during the
previous six.
Going to meet the principal (the person who we
would be looking after) was easy, but coming back was one of the
most fraught and difficult situations I have ever found myself in.
We were all nervous but didn’t expect what followed. First, the
principal was with his girlfriend, which was not part of the plan,
so we had to adapt to looking after two clients instead of just
one. And then he fell ill, so we had to divert to the hospital. On
the way, we had a call from the operations room to tell us that the
route to the hospital had become compromised, so we had to
frantically work out a secondary route. Then his girlfriend wanted
to buy a new pair of tights, so we had to stop and find her some.
Finally, after the principal miraculously recovered a few hundred
yards from the hospital entrance, our communications were
compromised, and we were told we could no longer use our
radios.
Of course, all of this had been planned by the
instructors, but what hadn’t been planned was that once our
communications were out of action we lost the rear vehicle and had
to embarrassingly drive back to the base individually and not as a
convoy. Luckily, the instructors were fairly patient with us, as it
was our first client pickup, and we were bound to make some
mistakes. However, as the course continued, we were allowed less
and less leeway, and we were bollocked more and more if we made
fuck-ups. We had been told at the beginning of the course that if
we made the same fuck-up twice, we would be on our way home, which
only increased our stress levels.
While the client was in our care, none of us slept,
which made battling our way through the plethora of planned
emergency situations and events even more demanding. The principal
went for a walk and got shot; he and his girlfriend had a major
bust-up and darted off in different directions; he became ill; a
fire started in the house; he wanted to go out for an unplanned
evening drink at a minute’s notice; and in the middle of the night
we had to arrange residential patrols while infiltrators tried to
breach the building and attack the principal. Packages were
delivered, improvised explosive devices were found on the premises
and a team member crashed one of the vehicles.
Those two days looking after the principal were
definitely among the longest and hardest two days of my entire life
– not because of the lack of sleep or intense physical and mental
stress we were under, but mainly because of the knowledge that if
we got it wrong out in the field as a protection officer, we would
not have a second chance and could be coming home in a body bag. It
was a great way to learn.
The last two days of the course consisted of a
complete debrief with long conversations and discussions about the
mistakes we’d made, specific operations, protocol and operational
procedures. But we still started each morning with a run and
unarmed combat training.
It was a shame that the WFB was later sold and
disbanded, as the systems they used and the standards of training
were certainly pioneering and original within the close protection
industry at that time. Now I believe it is all namby-pamby theory.
I have seen overweight, unfit muppets pass close protection
courses. Back in my day, the industry was for the elite.
After the course, we all went our separate ways,
although many long-term friendships were made. Two of the students
went on to work for the United Nations, and many years later I
actually saw one of them on television standing behind Slobodan
Milošević in The
Hague, where the former president of Serbia was on trial for crimes
against humanity. Apparently, after a time spent taking judges to
Kosovo to investigate war crimes and looking after them while they
were there, he was tasked to keep an eye on Milošević during his court
appearances – a boring but steady job! Another of the students went
to Australia, where I heard he was arrested for supplying drugs. At
the time of writing, he is still in prison! I didn’t hear from a
few of the students again, but a couple of the others are still
working in the protection industry and currently serving in
Iraq.
After the course, I went back to working the doors
in London and found myself a cushy little number at a club with
nice clientele. For six months, it was great, but it became a bit
boring, and after having been in the army and doing the close
protection course I knew that I liked excitement and not comfy
stability. I also thought that it would be a waste of time and
money if I didn’t do anything with my protection training. One
night as I stood pondering these things, Errol Brown, the lead
singer of the band Hot Chocolate, came into the club. Surprisingly,
he stood making idle conversation with me for a few minutes,
although I was not sure why, as he had a small entourage with him.
It was then that I made a decision: I would use my new-found skills
to look after celebrities.
I first applied for a job with a famous bodyguard
called Jerry Judge, who looked after many of the celebrities in
London. Although getting on a bit now, his face was often seen on
TV behind someone famous, and he was (and I think still is)
responsible for the security at most of the London film premieres.
I started off ushering vehicles at these one-off events, and I
progressed to actually opening the car doors for celebrities and
keeping a close eye on the crowd as the film stars wandered around
signing autographs. To be honest, we were all pretty insignificant
in the grand scale of things, but it was certainly great fun.
I did this for a couple of years and continued to
work the doors before I was asked to work full time with a very
well-known male pop star. What a life I found myself leading! I was
surrounded by glamour and beauty, and thoroughly enjoyed every
single minute of it. I really didn’t mind that my client was a
complete nob at times and frequently drunk. However, although it
could be great fun, looking after a celebrity could also be really
hard work, especially when my client was drunk or high on drugs,
which sadly was often. He would go from one extreme to the other.
One day, he would be the life and soul of the party; the next day
he would be sobbing to himself that his life was worthless, that he
was crap at what he did, that no one liked him and that he was a
failure. They say patience is a virtue, and that was certainly the
case when I provided security for this client. It was sometimes
very hard work.
The pop star’s manager would plan events or
appearances, and my job was to get him to the locations safely,
look after him while he was there and get him home again. It was a
full-time position, but there were days when he didn’t leave his
house and I did nothing, and there were other days when he would go
from studio to studio, from TV and radio station to TV and radio
station and from gig to gig, so over the course of the year it
generally evened itself out to around 100 hours a week – or so it
sometimes seemed!
Much of the time, though, it wasn’t really work. I
went to the Caribbean with him about four times, where I spent my
time sitting in a speedboat or cooking burgers on the barbecue. I
would patrol the grounds of his rented villa while he had long and
noisy parties, trying to keep my eyes on the area in front of the
house and not the naked arses and tits happily bobbing about in the
pool behind me.
Over time, we became quite good friends. Some
people say that it is not professional to become friends with the
person you are tasked to protect, but I disagree. It is human
nature to protect more the ones we care most about, even in the
security industry, in which we are supposed to guard everyone in
the same manner and with our life if need be. I was always dismayed
and saddened by my client’s occasional despair, when in fact he had
millions of adoring fans. I was also saddened by his loneliness.
Being famous but lonely is an appalling way for anyone to
live.
A couple of years ago, he moved out of the UK,
seeking a better and more settled life in an environment in which
fame is more accepted and expected. Although I was asked to
accompany him, I couldn’t. Not because I didn’t want to, but
because it would have been very hard for a Brit to get the licences
required to provide proper security and personal protection and
because after many years working for someone else in an amazing and
unique environment I needed a life of my own. With two failed
marriages and hundreds of one-night-stands behind me, I found
myself in the same situation as the person I was protecting: in a
wonderful place but desperately lonely – and I didn’t have the
consolation of vast amounts of money!
Over the years, I earned enough money in celebrity
protection to buy a nice place for cash somewhere warm. I met some
great people, including many big names from the pop world and other
celebrities, and I had some very good times. Although there were a
few unfortunate minor incidents – which were all resolved very
quickly – nothing major ever happened to my client on my watch. I
still speak to him, and he often asks me to work for him again,
perhaps as part of his management team rather than in a security
role – I don’t think he really sees me as his protector any
more.
A life in celebrity protection can be a great life,
but be warned: it can also be a lonely and difficult life. A life
protecting a pop star can be amazing and luxurious, but it can also
be exhausting and uncompromising, and a life protecting a drunk and
drug user can be fraught and infuriating. But would I do it all
again? Too fucking right!
BIOGRAPHY OF
JOHN BADLY
John Badly can be found at his small villa on the
Costa Blanca with a whisky bottle in one hand and a gorgeous girl
half his age in the other. He occasionally has holidays to the USA
to see his old client and friend.