The three successful SAS: Who Dares Wins – Jungle Hell recruits have revealed what it was like to be “at the mercy” of the show’s “very scary” directing staff.
Bin man Grant, professional boxer Joshua and personal trainer Hilary discovered they had successfully passed the Channel 4 show’s selection course in the Vietnam jungle on Tuesday evening.
Reflecting on the role of the directing staff – chief instructor Billy Billingham, Jason “Foxy” Fox, Rudy Reyes and Chris Oliver – 37-year-old Grant from Edinburgh told the PA news agency: “They were good cop-bad cop the whole time.
“You couldn’t gauge them. I admired them, but I didn’t mess with them.
“They were scary… They were in control the whole time, your hands and your life were at the mercy of them and that is a very, very horrible thing to feel.”
Meanwhile 24-year-old Joshua from Ilford described the staff as “real-life superheroes”.
“I couldn’t say that they intimidated me because I had in my head that everything is just a game and everything is just trying to test me,” he said.
“But in regards to seeing them in real life, it’s just ultimate appreciation for what they do, they are like real-life superheroes.
“I just admired them and respected them.”
Hilary, 31, from Barnet, told PA: “I definitely found them very scary, and even more scary than watching them on TV.”
Following the news that she had made it to the end of the gruelling process from an initial group of 20 recruits, Hilary said the experience taught her: “There’s no such thing as ‘I can’t do it’.
“It was certain things that you think in your head, ‘I can’t do it’, but then I would always end up doing it, I would always ended up completing it and it would always happen.”
Grant said the process had helped him understand the concepts of “mindfulness” and “being present”.
He said: “I’ll be honest, I’ve never really got mindfulness before, but I think the terminology ‘remaining present’ is something that has completely and utterly made sense to me now.”
He added: “With the process, that’s what I learnt, that each task was a passage in time, it was a moment that was going to end and you either did it or you didn’t.
“And if you stick with it, and it does end, the satisfaction and the feeling, and the reward that you get, is massive.”
The recruits also had conflicting feelings over whether they knew they would ultimately complete the process and pass the condensed version of SAS selection.
“One hundred per cent, I was getting to the end. I told my Mrs that I was coming back in a box or I was getting to the end,” said Grant.
Joshua added: “I personally did know that I was going to make it, I had no other choice.”
However, Hilary said: “I just didn’t know what was going to happen… I would always overthink things and think: ‘Maybe yes, maybe no,’ so my tactic was to just go and take every challenge as it came.”