Bodyguard

by Craig Summers

  By that evening at a Chinese, I also really began to get a sense of how the pundits like to operate when they were out in the same restaurants and bars that the fans were in. The mob clocked their heroes straightaway. I feared the worst as they headed over to our table – each of them wanting a picture and an autograph. I asked if they could give the lads some peace, but the boys overruled me saying it was not a problem, even though Gary thanked me for putting the fans on the back foot. The rule of thumb was established. They didn’t mind any of that, but when the food came they would want their privacy. I didn’t want to be too heavy-handed but didn’t know if I was being heavy-handed enough. Once the alcohol was flowing among the travelling support, you could never really know.

  On the way out, there were more cries of ‘Shearer, Shearer’ and more requests for photos. I could see that the best way to deal with all of this was to take the photos myself and move everyone along. Of all my roles that I had played for the BBC, I was now acting bouncer-cum-paparazzo! The boys were grateful. They had seen all this before and fans often think they were cleverer than they actually were. It wouldn’t take much for one of them to be offended or for someone’s reputation to be slurred by seeming to be stand-offish.

  So far, so good.

  All was not well in Johannesburg, though. I got a call that two BBC 5 Live producers had been mugged the previous night.

  Liam Hanley and Jacques Sweeney had been eating and drinking near to their accommodation at the 7th Street Guesthouse in Melville. For some reason, they decided not to take the usual taxi, and walk the 200 metres down the street lined with bars and restaurants up to the locked security gate and then down into their guesthouse. When they were around fifteen metres from the security gate, a black hatchback pulled up alongside them. A white Eastern European man in his thirties jumped out and pointed a handgun at Jacques. Three other men stayed in the car, shouting in a language that was neither English nor Afrikaans. The gunman rifled through Jacques’s trouser pockets, removing his wallet, taking the cash before returning the wallet. He also took his passport but gave it back. Without being asked, Liam too took out his wallet and two mobiles and laid them on the street. The assailant ignored these, jumped back in the van and sped off.

  He had followed my briefing to the letter. Jacques, however, got lucky. They didn’t need their passports on the streets. I had made it clear that if they felt they needed their documentation, to take a colour photocopy out. We were back in the land of the schoolboy error – plus they shouldn’t have changed the habit of a lifetime and should have used a taxi. It could have been a lot worse, but every time something like that happened I knew I was proving my worth, my initial briefings would be seen to be wise and, most importantly, there would be lots more paperwork for Paul Easter to drown in!

  I knew word was spreading among the pros about the increasing crime threat and that I was the man to come to.

  ‘You’re the guy who’s looking after everybody, aren’t you?’ Alan Hansen’s father-in-law approached me in the Oyster Bar at the Taj Hotel. I’m not sure a specially cordoned-off VIP area at a posh South African hotel was really his scene. He was standing on his own. I think he wanted someone normal to talk to. We chatted about the army, life at the Beeb, Liverpool, Scotland, the World Cup, the England v USA game and Alan – just normal stuff. I liked him a lot.

  Hansen popped over to see if he was all right.

  ‘Yeah, I’m just chatting to Craig,’ he replied.

  We were there hours, knocking them back, chewing the fat, until Al called time just before midnight – his father-in-law tottering towards the stairs. What a laugh.

  The next morning Hansen confirmed the damage. ‘Thanks for getting my father-in-law pissed!’ he laughed.

  This became the routine. Joking and banter before the show, almost robotic professionalism during it, and we would always unwind together in the bar after.

  Nicky Campbell was also out for 5 Live – staying in a guesthouse in Rustenburg. This is where England were based. Just like everyone else, Nicky had had all the briefing, and just like many others before him, he had gone out, leaving his iPod by the side of the bed, only to return to find it gone. I wasn’t officially told about this – I think Nicky wanted to keep it quiet – but as ever, word got back to me. I joked that they would soon return it when they saw his taste in music!

  It was another thing to stuff Paul Easter’s inbox with. Those Sit Reps were coming thick and fast, all full of minor detail like this. Here I was doing what the BBC loved, filling in forms, while justifying my existence. Nobody seemed to realise that the more Sit Reps I filed, the more it showed that there was need for more and not less of me on the ground, and that you couldn’t do the job behind in a desk in West London. Ironically, the quest for paperwork and their desire to send me in that direction proved all over again why I had been hired in the first place.

  Increasingly, despite the past tricky two months and the silent pressure I was feeling from work, I knew this was a trip to savour. It wasn’t that I was bogged down in paperwork; I just knew that the end was coming and that I had proven my worth time and time again from back-watcher to undercover reporter. If they were about to kill off Craig Summers by confining him to a desk back in London, then I would enjoy every last drop of this trip.

  To be able to tell your mates back home that you walked Motty out of a bar pissed was the stuff I never had a shot at the day my dad marched me off to the army. This was probably the last tournament for John Motson too. John was now sixty-five and had handed over the reins as lead commentator to Guy Mowbray, but still somehow found himself on the trip. A train-spotter of useless football information, he knew everything. You had to respect him for that – statistics and turning them into poetry were his life. But just like the rest of us, he liked the odd sherbet too.

  One night in Twankey’s Bar, he turned to me. ‘I think I’ve had enough, Craig. I’ve got to go home,’ he slurred. As he turned round, he walked straight into the glass partition at the other end of the bar. He didn’t hit it hard, in fact no less tamely than the shot Robert Green had let in, but because it was Motty, the whole bar cracked up. It was a classic You’ve Been Framed moment.

  ‘Are you all right, John?’ I asked him.

  He told me he thought he’d had one too many. I couldn’t have Motty face down in the gutter. ‘Oh, Craig, that’s really kind; you don’t have to,’ he protested. ‘That’s very kind, young man.’ I showed him to his room and went back to the bar, laughing. That was a moment I would never forget.

  On Sunday 27 June, Alan Hansen’s prediction came true as Germany served notice on England’s tournament. At home, a nation stopped. In South Africa not even the diehard pessimists could have foreseen such a dire England performance, torn apart by the misfortune of Frank Lampard’s disallowed goal, a horror show of defending against long balls coming straight down the middle – the bread and butter of the English game served up on a plate by the Germans. We were out in the last sixteen, losing 4–1.

  The atmosphere died immediately. The boys still had half a tournament to broadcast but this meant News would start withdrawing and some of the less frontline pundits began to come home. In short, the whole operation, despite months of planning and millions of pounds, came down to one thing as ever. The show was only going to be as good as long as England were in it. As a fan, I was gutted. As a professional, it meant less to do on the job and more online Scrabble to play with Colin Murray. Most England fans left the next day as many of my colleagues began to de-camp.

  South Africa was still a dangerous place though – a gang of New Zealand fans, one of them a former policeman, had been raped.

  And when we weren’t dragging out the work, there would be the daily draw for tickets from our allocation. After England’s exit there were more to go round, so long as you could handle the vuvuzela. I couldn’t have had been more charged about a match when my name came out for the neutral’s heaven – Argentina versus Germany in Cape T
own. Every England fan would have kept any eye on this one and if I hadn’t been working for the BBC and this game had been in some European hot spot, well – it’s the kind of fixture when my old West Ham colours might have come out and mixed it a bit. Those days were long gone now. Instead, my ticket came with conditions. I had to chaperone Gary Lineker’s and Lee Dixon’s sons to the game.

  And the game couldn’t have had more about it. Germany won four nil – not that George Lineker would have known, texting birds on his BlackBerry throughout and wanting to leave before the end! I loved it, though. It was the game of the tournament to see the old enemy thrash … the old enemy. Normally these matches were dogged affairs. This was a firecracker but barely consolation for the traditional English exit. That left me just killing time until the end of the World Cup. Sue asked if I would be coming home early. Paul Easter would ring me on mobile and I wouldn’t take the call, later phoning him back to say I had been really busy. I hadn’t been.

  On 11 July, Spain beat the Netherlands 1–0 in the final. It was the pairing many wanted to see. The next day I wandered into the BBC compound for the last time. This time I took Paul’s call.

  ‘Have you done a post-deployment report?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I replied.

  That was the final nail in the coffin. I told him we were flying back the next day (Tuesday).

  ‘I need it on my desk for Wednesday,’ he said, stunning me. ‘I’m meeting Paul Greeves on Thursday. I can give it to him then.’

  I slammed the phone down. He was taking the piss.

  I rang Richard Stacey in News and Jimmy, who had been looking after Johannesburg, and told them I had twenty-four hours to turn this thing around. Two pages wouldn’t do. They wanted War and Peace. I emailed it just before we flew.

  On the Wednesday I went into Television Centre to see everyone.

  ‘Where’s Paul Easter?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, he’s not in today,’ I was told. ‘He’s in tomorrow.’

  PINSENT

  I felt I had been set up – deliberately messed about. Obviously, it had been the last day of operations in Cape Town and we were packing up. Then, when I made the effort to go in just after landing, my boss wasn’t even there.

  It was time to go.

  When I finally spoke to Paul, it was obvious he was miffed.

  ‘You won’t be going away for six-week trips like that any more,’ he had pretty much said.

  I began to form my exit strategy. Phil Bigwood, executive producer at Match of the Day, was already buzzing about the Euros in 2012, despite England’s shortcomings.

  ‘I don’t think they’ll allow me to do it,’ I told him, knowing what was coming.

  The BBC had spent half a million quid on DQF – Delivering Quality First. They had spent that much money on consultants showing them … how to cost cut! I always used to say to John Simpson after every trip, ‘What’s next, John?’ It was time to stop asking. They wanted me less on the road, and more at my desk, and rather than just hinting this, these were now the words coming out of people’s mouths.

  Despite my desire to get out of the BBC, I wasn’t quite done yet.

  On 29 November I flew back out to Baghdad. Matthew Pinsent had been making occasional shows for BBC World in the run-up to London 2012 – he was charting the unlikely Olympic Dream.

  ‘There’s a couple of rowers in Iraq who are going for the Olympics … what do you think?’ Kev Bishop, the producer of World Olympic Dreams had come to ask. We had worked together at the Euros in Portugal six years previously.

  ‘Have you spoken to anyone else about it?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘No, I’ve come to you first,’ he replied.

  In some places my reputation was still right up there. I was over the moon that he had thought of me, and that I could be on the road again. Paul Easter was put in the difficult position of having to come to me to say that I had been asked for as nobody knew Baghdad better. I felt it was done through gritted teeth, which made it double the pleasure.

  I rang Dylan, the head honcho in Baghdad. He knew the patch, the short-cuts, and he knew how to deal out there. I had got on really well with him over many years of visits. His response was immediate. Whatever I needed was not a problem.

  What I wanted was for Matthew Pinsent, legend of four consecutive Olympic and ten World Championship Golds, to row on the famous River Tigris, the 1,850-kilometre stretch of water on whose banks Iraq’s capital stands. I hoped that wasn’t too much to ask.

  This is where the Baghdad Rowing Club was based – one of just two clubs in the country. The Tigris itself went on into Turkey and Syria, but it still bore the marks of the brutal Saddam Hussein era. At that time, bodies would just float abandoned in the water. Even now, you couldn’t row the whole stretch, a specially cordoned-off section steering you clear of the government ministries whose offices overlooked the water. This was the first problem for Iraqi rowers Haider Rashid and Hamza Hussein – the Olympic course was longer than the zone marked off for them.

  Haider and Hamza had also spent much of their time on the water accompanied by a soundtrack of gunfire and explosions. In many ways, given the resources available to them and their lack of Olympic pedigree, this had the potential to be the Cool Runnings of 2012. It was the Jamaican bobsleigh all over again.

  To put it into context, Iraq had won one medal ever, at the Rome Games in 1960. From nowhere, they produced a Bronze in weightlifting. In days gone by of course, the Olympic story was overshadowed by the fact that Saddam’s son Uday was head of its committee. His way ruled, with dire consequences for failure. Seven years after his death at the hands of Special Forces, Haider and Hamza were coming out of the cold in search of their Olympic dream. These were no Redgraves, though – Haider was pushing thirty and had spent much of his life away from the troubles in Sweden. Hamza was thirty-four and the more likely of the two to get noticed on the world stage. They also had day jobs: Hamza was studying and Haider was a teacher. That was like old-school athletics – where you were officially amateur and worked an eight-hour day in a bank, bookended by four-hour training sessions either side. That was proper desire and hunger.

  It was a world away from the time, resource, attitude and funding that Sir Matthew Pinsent had available to him by the end of his career.

  I first met Matthew in the same way I met many other people – right after they had attended the Hostile Environments Course. He was a smart guy, taking it all in and, like Ranulph, asking the right questions – sensible stuff about the drive from the airport etc. You could tell Matthew had thought about it. If his trophy cabinet hadn’t already placed me in awe, he had my respect for preparing mentally for this challenge.

  The political situation in Baghdad was at its calmest in living memory, but there were still threats. There had been three democratic elections since the fall of Saddam. The situation was stable – sort of. Electricity and water were still rationed to six hours a day. The Americans were babysitting the Iraqi police and army and there would be plenty of checkpoints – there was a still real danger of kidnap. Insurgents wanted the Yanks out. They wanted their own democracy, not an American-influenced one. We had often interviewed locals who had preferred life under Saddam – they were free to roam and electricity and water weren’t issues. It was an uneasy kind of peace. I briefed Matthew that magnetic (sticky) bombs were now a real issue.

  Dylan told me that it would be foolish to interview Hamza at his home at Adhamiya. There were a still a lot of tensions in the northwest part of the city centre. Something going wrong would not do me, or the CV that I had been dusting off, much good for the future. In the week running up to departure alone, there had been thirteen incidents across the city. Predictably, that made me even keener to get started. Matthew, too, wanted to know the place as well as his story.

  After flying ahead to double check all the arrangements, I picked him up in an armoured 4x4 on a cold and dusty day. You could see him soaking it up on that first driv
e – a world away from a team coach driving you to a sterile Olympic village. I laid out the map and showed him the safe areas. My brief was exactly the same as with the Three Dogs. If anything happens, you stay in the vehicle. There was no need to stop unless we had a serious accident. We had B6 ballistics all around us – that was the highest level of protection you could get at the time, and it would protect us from grenades or small pistols – but an IED (improvised explosive device) could take us out. In total, the ride from the airport to the Bureau took around forty minutes. So there was plenty of time for someone to have some fun with us.

  I told him that whatever happened, I was in charge. Americans called it the most dangerous road in the world – from 2005 to 2009, there were hundreds of attacks on this stretch. I had never had a problem to date. I left him with nothing to do except stare out the window. As long as he had his wits about him, it was probably the best thing to take it all in.

  Safely at the Bureau, I showed him the humble basic living quarters. He went straight to the gym. I think it exceeded his expectations, given the simplicity of the rest of the surroundings. He had nothing to train for now, but of course, it never left you.

  We would begin proper work the next day. That afternoon, I took him down to the Tigris for a first look – he loved the river and its sense of history. Most people probably couldn’t name it in a pub quiz but it was an iconic landmark which held a thousand secrets. We went down on foot past the checkpoint and through a park which was non-existent three years ago. Nowadays everyone would flock there on a Friday, and they greeted us warmly. Life went on – not everyone was a terrorist. They didn’t really clock Matthew – they were just being polite as we were clearly guests in the country. One patrol car stopped us, concerned at which way we were filming. They didn’t want us pointing the camera in the direction of the Ministry of Information.