SAS: Who Dares Wins tough guy Mark Billingham on being stabbed in the back aged 15 and ‘saving’ Tom Cruise

MARK BILLINGHAM shot to fame as one of the stars of Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, where he is an instructor to the recruits.

The decorated war hero spent 27 years in the Army, during which time he received an MBE for leading an SAS mission in Iraq to rescue a British hostage.

Mark, 53, also won the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery after capturing an IRA sniper by using himself as bait.

Here, in extracts from his new book, The Hard Way: Adapt, Survive And Win, he recounts the many times he has almost died . . . and reveals details of an unexpected post-SAS career:

I Should have died several times in action during my military career, I make no bones about that. It could have happened on the front line, in a theatre of war or going house to house fighting terrorists and insurgents, one of them getting the drop on me.

Or being captured by the enemy and interrogated, not knowing how it was going to end. There have been countless times when I’ve nearly lost my life.

I have even been shot at, from point-blank range, yet the bullets deflected off my equipment and I survived. There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think to myself, ‘I am lucky to be here’.

A lot of my friends weren’t so fortunate. But when I look back on my life, I was avoiding death long before my military career began.

I grew up in Walsall, West Midlands, and ran with a gang of mostly older kids. It was rough and we were poor.

Stabbed in the back aged 15

There were kids in my area who got stabbed or shot — it was that kind of neighbourhood. When I was 15, I got caught up in a scrap with two brothers from a rival gang.

They were older and bigger than us, so my gang turned and ran, but I decided to stand there and fight them. We went at it until one of the brothers grabbed me by the ankle and I slipped.

One of them jumped up on my back, pinned me down, and his brother stabbed me with a knife, just below my right kidney. They ran, leaving me for dead as I lay bleeding on the grass bank.

The pain was incredible, but I knew I had to move or I was going to die there, so I somehow found enough strength to crawl back to my house, bleeding all over the place.

My mum must have heard me, because she came outside and found me lying on the step, bleeding to death. They rushed me to hospital in an ambulance.

When I woke up, the doctors said it had been very close — if I’d lost any more blood, I’d have died. Not long after that I started working in an electroplating factory.

One night I slipped and fell into a vat of caustic soda, and felt a horrible burning sensation running up from my feet.

I knew that if I was going to survive, I needed to get out of that vat, but, to this day, I have no idea where the strength came from. Somehow, despite the pain, I pulled myself over the edge of the vat.

'Mum found me on the step bleeding to death'

The accident left my legs badly scarred and covered in holes. It meant I didn’t pass the medical the first time I tried to join the Army. But I refused to give up.

I’d failed at school. I’d nearly died in a knife fight, almost lost my legs in an industrial accident and could have been beaten to death in any number of fights over the years, but I hadn’t.

So a year later I was back at selection for the Paras. And I passed, as champion recruit. Then, after eight years of active service in Northern Ireland and Cyprus, and a brutal selection process, I was in the SAS.

I served 20-plus years with the world’s greatest elite force. Whether it was releasing hostages, firefighting on the battlefield, capturing war criminals or taking out terrorists, every day felt like an adventure.

I am humbled and extremely proud of my military career, that I rose to the rank of sergeant major [Warrant Officer 1 to be exact] in the SAS, and the fact that I didn’t lose a single man in Iraq.

I would ultimately be honoured by the Queen with an MBE for services to my country in the line of duty, and nothing, other than the love of my family and my six beautiful children, beats that.

It was a privilege to serve. But nothing lasts forever. There’s a well-trodden path between the regiment and security, and a lot of lads end up doing it after they retire from the SAS.

I ended up doing security for Hollywood stars almost by accident, through an old colleague, Tony.

Cheating death in the Army

The first job he put me on was looking after Tom Cruise during a film festival in Rome.

The first challenge was shepherding Tom through a hundreds-strong crowd of paparazzi and fans who had mobbed his hotel.

My heart was racing because that was the prime time. If some d**k was going to jump out and try to grab him to give him a cuddle or worse, that was the moment it was going to happen.

Tom and I were a step away from the door when out of the corner of my eye I realised that somebody was there. Someone was moving towards Tom, fast. I went into protection mode.

F***! I grabbed Tom around the shoulders with one arm and at the same time I reached out with the other arm and just grabbed this thing by the arm, too.

I couldn’t see a face, just jeans, T-shirt and a blue hat. I didn’t have time to think, I just did.

With Tom under one arm and the suspected attacker under the other, I pushed towards the door and we fell inside the hotel doorway.

It was all reactive. I looked around to check Tom was OK but something didn’t add up. Tom was smiling. But he wasn’t smiling at me, he was smiling at the person I had under the other arm.

'Sean Penn gave me a role in his film – it was surreal'

I turned and realised under my other arm was one of the world’s best-known actresses. Before I could say anything, Tom piped up, “Billy, meet Penelope!”

I’d just saved Tom Cruise from his own bloody girlfriend, Penelope Cruz. I went on to do security for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Michael Caine, Hulk Hogan, Kate Moss and Russell Crowe.

Living and working in Hollywood, I ended up getting to know Sean Penn. He never had security or bodyguards.

In a modest way, Sean always believed he could look after himself, and he also liked chatting about Special Forces stuff over a beer in the bar.

We randomly ran into each other again in Haiti, in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. I was running a private security company and had arrived to help with the relief effort.

Sean was there for the same reason and we ended up working together. One night Sean came into the bar looking really vexed.

“I’ve got a problem,” he said. “A friend of mine has got into a situation out in Egypt and I’m really worried about him.”

The friend was the CNN journalist Anderson Cooper, who was under siege in a hotel basement in Cairo after a protest he was covering had blown up.

Burned by caustic soda

“Hang on,” I said, “I’ll make a call.” Via a few contacts I was able to reach some boots on the ground in Egypt.

We spoke on the phone and came up with a plan. Then I got through to Anderson on his mobile and told him what was going to happen.

“Stay locked in the basement for now, mate,” I said. “But as soon as you hear ‘Gold-Gold-Gold’ then open the door and go with whoever is there. You’ll be all right.”

Then I went back to the bar and had a few more beers. To be honest, a couple of hours later I’d forgotten about it, until Sean came in and started pretending to bow down.

“What the f*** are you doing?” I asked him. “Anderson Cooper is on a plane back to the US,” he said. “Your guys just saved his life.” “Well, in that case,” I said. “The next round’s on you.”

Several years later Sean called to say he needed me in Barcelona, but wouldn’t explain why until I got there.

Then he presented me with a script for his new movie, The Gunman. In the script was a part for me.

“I can’t do this”, was my first thought. And then, “Why can’t I?” was my second. And so began one of the most surreal experiences of my life.

'I’d saved Tom Cruise from his own bloody girlfriend'

I’ve been in it for five series now and it has become a key part of my life. People always ask me who I’d like to see come on the show.

The cast included Sean, Javier Bardem, Mark Rylance, Jasmine Trinca, Idris Elba and Ray Winstone.

I kept wondering when Sean was going to crack and admit that the whole thing was just a p**s-take.

So when I eventually signed up for Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, it wasn’t my first time in front of the camera.

I’ll say this: Piers Morgan, Russell Brand, Gordon Ramsay — if you’re reading this, then I’d love to see you in the mirror room, any time.

• Adapted by Emily Fairbairn from The Hard Way, by Mark “Billy” Billingham (£20, Simon & Schuster UK Ltd), out today. Printed with permission, all rights reserved.

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