As fate would have it, in strode a brave soldier – or rather a French Army conscript in his drab-olive tenue de combat. Immediately, he was slapped on the back, and the host of the bar and its patrons showered him with bière and offers of stronger alcohol. Lucien and I watched this with interest – it is not a bad thing to see those who provide service to their nation feted and appreciated by the citizenry. Within the hour, the conscript, who was by then a lot less steady on his feet, had gained some confidence and started to tell tales of gruesome combat and war in the darkest parts of the ‘Dark Continent’. Although it entertained the audience of lounge lizards and bar flies who eagerly sought the conscript’s approval and company, it had the opposite effect on Lucien Ott, who detected a strong smell of bovine back splatter (bullshit).

‘Ce n’est pas une pucelle qui va t’apprendre à baiser,’ Lucien said, his voice carrying across the bar and interrupting the scene of theatre. (Lucien’s comment could be loosely translated into English as ‘Virgins can’t teach you to fuck’.) The conscript probably knew the insult was aimed at him and was about to unleash a torrent of foul-mouthed abuse when, with one hand raised, he was stopped short by our host, le patron, who, in a subdued tone, informed the conscript that he was addressing Major Lucien Ott. Beside being the personal bodyguard of President Charles de Gaulle during the OAS crisis, Major Lucien Ott was also a veteran of the 8th BCCP, the famed second demi-brigade of the French SAS, a survivor of Dien Bien Phu and a ‘warrior’ born into the home of a Foreign Legion senior non-commissioned officer of the 1st Legion Cavalry. The conscript’s gaze focused on the miniature ribbons that were pinned to the left lapel of Lucien’s suit jacket. Any Frenchman worth his salt would recognise the ribbons of the Médaille Militaire, the Croix de Guerre and others received for combat operations in Indochina and Algeria. What the ribbons did not reveal was that Lucien had been awarded the Croix de Guerre four times and the Médaille Militaire five times.

In 2007, the IBA, which I have led since Lucien Ott’s death a year later in 1990, celebrated half a century of activity. As an international non-governmental organisation, the IBA is registered in Brussels with the Union of International Associations (UIA). The IBA is the only bodyguard organisation that has consistently met the UIA’s criteria as an international association.

Besides training people of nearly 100 different nationalities, the IBA operate some 80 registered offices around the world, and over the years I have personally trained individuals from most special-force units and government organisations worldwide, as well as individuals from some of the elite warrior nations and races, including Tartars, Mongols, Zulus and Gurkhas. What has made us different is that we have not blindly imitated government protocols, such as those employed by the US Secret Service or UK Royal Military Police, but rather sought to construct our own standard operating procedures and immediate-action drills that are both effective and easily used. These are based on inductive training, as opposed to deductive training. For us, the difference is that inductive training looks at what works, establishes why it works and then creates a theory to support the observations. Deductive training starts with a theory then tries to make the observations fit it, which we believe to be a fundamentally flawed method in close protection, creating the need to make attacks fit the defence. Inductive training is more natural, because the theory has to fit the facts.

The bottom line in our training is your physical presence, followed by the protocols of walking with a principal (escorting), getting them in and out of a vehicle, and transporting them safely in that vehicle. All else is extra.

However, it must also be said that in the world of bodyguarding there are still plenty of people who are not fit for purpose – from practitioners to trainers. They are not bad human beings, but in our world of protection they seek to take short cuts where none exist and operate beyond their capabilities. They only survive on protection details because they fill a space in environments without any real risk or major threat. When they teach, they are the equivalent of swimming instructors in the Sahara: with no water and no possibility of drowning, they can teach any and all forms of swimming without the fear of failure or contradiction. The problems only become apparent when their students ‘take to water’ and step foot into the real world of close protection. It is a fact that in most countries there is sadly still no legal requirement for close protection training. Unfortunately, in our profession, bluff and bullshit and occasionally outright deception are still heard more loudly than the wise words of the real professionals – men and women who are the genuine mainstream of our profession.

Even supposedly well-trained and experienced operatives should sometimes know better, like a former squadron sergeant major from 22 SAS who thought it a valuable and helpful training aid to shoot at his driver with an AK-47. He might have got away with this piece of ‘Hollywood’ had the location not been Iraq and the driver an Arab with no knowledge of the ways of the ‘Hereford Jedi’. Result: one convoy vehicle in a drainage ditch in an extremely hostile environment. Or take the former British Army soldier who set up his own bodyguard security service company in Germany, even though he had no formal bodyguard training other than reading a couple of books on the subject from Paladin Press. Everything went well until he was asked to protect Whitney Houston and her husband Bobby Brown, plus members of their family and entourage. After an evening out, Whitney, Bobby and the family were transported back to their hotel for the night when the former squaddie decided to ‘borrow’ Whitney’s stretch limo to show his girlfriend the sights and sounds of the city. Enter St Murphy, the patron saint of bodyguards, whose motto is ‘To fail to plan is to plan to fail’. On this occasion, St Murphy came in the guise of Whitney’s dad, who got up and went to find security to take him clubbing because he was unable to sleep due to jet lag. But neither the driver nor the squaddie were contactable. Furious, Whitney’s father woke his daughter’s manager, who immediately sacked the entire security crew and ‘yellow paged’ a replacement team.

The vast majority of celebrity principals are not interested in the details of their security. They simply wish to get from A to B with minimum difficulty and for someone to keep the fans at bay.

In his biography Let the Good Times Roll, veteran Australian bodyguard Bob Jones tells a number of stories about incidents that arose because of a lack of proper training or experience. Bob is a friend of mine, and whenever I am in Melbourne we get together over a few whiskeys and ‘shoot the breeze’. Bob was once the bodyguard for most of the ‘big celebrity names’ that visited the country, from the Rolling Stones to the Beatles, and from ABBA to Bob’s long-time drinking buddy Joe Cocker. Bob explained to me that when it all started for him he was just a martial artist who worked some of the harder doors in the Melbourne suburbs. ‘There was no training, just thinking on your feet and learning from mistakes,’ Bob said. In his book, Bob describes how the Rolling Stones considered cancelling their first-ever tour of Australia when Joe Cocker was arrested in the country for possession of drugs. The Rolling Stones’ manager struck a deal with the promoter that would allow the tour to go ahead but only if they hired security, and the promoter turned to Bob Jones.

Bob breathed his first short-lived sigh of relief as the Stones were ferried safely from airport to hotel. Security had been put into place and limousines organised. However, he was rudely woken very early the next morning to deal with his first real crisis. An angry woman with an English accent phoned the hotel and subjected Bob to a torrent of abuse: ‘Where is my fucking limo? I was promised a limo would be waiting for me. I am Keith Richards’ wife, and I have just endured a shit flight from London.’ Bob quickly organised the limo, sped to the airport and found a very pissed off Mrs Keith Richards waiting. Once placated, she was taken to the hotel and deposited in the lounge bar while Bob sought out Keith. Luckily, he met the Rolling Stones’ guitarist in the lobby and explained that his wife was waiting for him in the lounge. ‘Impressive, Bob,’ Keith said. ‘I have just come off the phone with her. She hates flying and is still in London.’

Discreetly, they both peered around the corner at the mystery woman. ‘Fuck. It’s my stalker from South Africa. I had a one-night stand with her there, and now she follows me about everywhere.’ Bob quickly moved into action, explaining to ‘Mrs Richards’ that the band had moved to another hotel before breakfast, to which she would now be transported by limo. Six hours of fast driving later, and she was deposited with her luggage at a cattleman’s kip hotel in the Australian outback. ‘We learned from that one,’ reminisced Bob, ‘and not just about liars and stalkers.’ Bob told me to always have a plan and a back-up plan for every situation and to always remember that nothing is as it presents itself.

The life of a bodyguard can be a bit of a circus. Whilst I was looking after Patrick Swayze in Sofia, Bulgaria, during the filming of Icon, the actor confided in me that he didn’t usually employ professional bodyguards at home in the US. Instead, he brought a pair of Rhodesian Ridgebacks, also known as lion dogs because of their ability to bring down adult lions in a hunt, with him wherever he went. The two dogs would sit by Patrick and his guests during his meal, and fans would keep a respectful distance. ‘In some instances, a couple of good dogs are infinitely better than a couple of bodyguards,’ he would say with a sly smile on his face.

During the circuit (May–October), there is a flood of bodyguarding jobs across Continental Europe protecting Arab royalty, who demand very different operational procedures and exacting protocols, which can be a nightmare for the untrained or inexperienced bodyguard. For example, Arab royalty will not have bodyguards in their vehicle, and there are no formal embus or debus procedures; instead, the escort team ride in vehicles behind the principals’, and it is not so much of a controlled convoy than a dangerous mad-dash pursuit through traffic. Search is always the best weapon of deterrence in the protection officer’s armoury, yet there is rarely a search for improvised explosive devices or electronic surveillance devices of Arab royalty’s accommodation, venues or vehicles.

Since the creation of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts by the US administration, it is common for bodyguards to become involved in high-risk protection roles in which competence with firearms is a must. That competence starts with safety and not with the purchase of the latest designer sunglasses and beige 5.11 Tactical gear. Although procedure and policy say otherwise, common sense says that if you are right-handed you should move to the principal’s left – but countless principals in Iraq have been shot not by insurgents but by their own bodyguards, who have nervously stroked a round from an AK-47 or M4 carbine whilst standing to the right behind their charge. Apparently, the favoured site for shooting a principal is in the right leg.

Perhaps the most dangerous feature of our industry is the ‘illusion of competence’. A few years ago in a European capital, a high-ranking Arab diplomat approached a very well-known blue-chip security company, which openly boasted of employing the cream of the British ex-Special Forces. The diplomat was worried about his daughter, who apparently led an expensive life of abandon in the company of a rogue of North African origin. The diplomat not only feared for his wayward daughter, but for the scandal in his kingdom should her lifestyle become public. A plan was hatched to place a professional surveillance team on her, and a contract was signed for many hundreds of thousands of pounds. ‘Professional’ implies people knew what they were doing. The company in question secured the contract by telling the Arab diplomat that they were able to utilise the skills of MI5’s A4 department – the surveillance department of the UK security service that taught the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s E4 surveillance department. However, an elite ex-member of A4 was not assigned to the case; in fact, it was a female Territorial Army soldier with an acid tongue and ongoing desire to get into the Guinness Book of Records for bedding the most UK Special Forces soldiers, both serving and veterans. When she was not playing in the barrack room, her surveillance vehicle was instantly recognisable by the vast amount of ‘surveillance debris’ she left behind, especially the pile of discarded cigarette butts on the pavement by her window and a dashboard littered with empty polystyrene coffee cups and McDonald’s burger bags.

On any surveillance detail, it is always helpful to have a team member on a small motorbike who can get through the congestion in city traffic, but not when that bike is bright yellow and stands out like a sore thumb, as was the case on this operation. Despite all of this, and the glaring incompetence of many of the team’s personnel, I hear that the operation is still running.

Close protection is not a game. Instead of celebrating because nothing has happened, you should use your outsiders’ eye to ensure that nothing can happen in the future. When constructing your protocols and procedures, look at the situation from the point of view of the terrorist or attacker, and actively seek out your weak points instead of covering them over. At the end of the day, it is not what you know that will get you killed – it is what you do not know or forget.

James Shortt is also a lecturer in basic bodyguard skills at the University of South Africa (Pretoria) and has trained the Iraqi Police, United Nations bodyguards and US Army Special Forces for deployment in South-east Asia, Iraq and Afghanistan. He has trained Mongolian government bodyguards and has worked with the Australian Institute of Public Safety to create state and federal courses for close protection officers. He has also trained Russian Federation GRAD and SOBR forces, Ukrainian Alpha, Titan, Manguse, Berkyt and Sokul units, the Zulu Regiment of the South African National Defence Forces, the 1st United States Homeland Security Unit, and more recently the Royal Thai Police and Royal Thai Navy SEALs in bodyguard skills, close protection and counter-terrorism.