Tough guy Ant Middleton opens up about family, fame and his first kill in Afghanistan
THE first time Ant Middleton killed a man was in the heat of a night-time gun battle in Afghanistan.
TV’s hardest man, then serving with the special forces, watched through night vision goggles as a Taliban fighter armed with an AK-47 assault rifle came out of the dusty shadows.
Patrol leader Ant, now 37, hit the Afghan fighter with two perfect shots to the mouth — and felt not one jot of remorse.
One of only a handful of soldiers tough enough to ever complete the military’s gruelling “Holy Trinity”, serving with the Paras, the Royal Marines and Special Forces, Ant is now the hugely popular star of Channel 4’s SAS Who Dares Wins.
He has also built up a large following on social media for his unrelentingly positive approach to life, with lots of posts about #zeronegativity . . . and for those rugged looks set off by piercing blue eyes.
During our conversation Ant’s phone pings constantly with emails — many of them marriage proposals from women all over the world.
But he also receives hundreds of messages from people asking for his help in dealing with the everyday problems they face.
He says: “A lot of people want to go out there, help people and save the world. Sadly, half the time they can’t even help themselves.
“But the question I’m constantly asked is, ‘Who would win in a fight between you and Bear Grylls?’.”
He never gives an answer — but The Sun’s money would be on 5ft 8in Ant.
Bearded Ant served 13 years in the military before his telly career took off with the tough reality show in which civilians are put through a recreation of the SAS selection process.
And he has just written his life story, First Man In, which is also full of no-nonsense advice for young people on dealing with life’s knocks.
WE'VE LET KIDS DOWN
ANT tries not to get angry these days – but his huge body tenses with fury when he talks about how Britain has turned kids into snowflakes.
He explodes: “Our health and safety cotton-wool culture has gone mad! Society has shackled our young people.
“You’re no longer allowed to push yourself to the limit. That’s how we learn. It’s where we get our life lessons.”
As for his own biggest life lesson, Ant says: “No matter how much trouble I’ve managed to get myself in, the only way I’ve ever got myself out of it is by keeping a positive mindset. Positivity is the secret principle of success.”
Ant certainly learnt his life lessons the hard way — from the age of just five.
That is when his dad, gentle, loving computer programmer Peter Aaron, who played chess for Great Britain, died of a heart attack on New Year’s Eve 1985, aged 36.
Just two weeks later, Ant’s mother replaced his doting dad with a “bully” who became his stepfather and ruled the family with an iron fist.
Ant says: “The vivid memory of my life was waking up not long after my dad died and there was a man I’d never seen before standing there next to my mum.
“He was enormously tall, with a big nose and dark hair that went down past his shoulders.
“I could tell he was much younger than Mum, who said, ‘Anthony, meet your new dad’.” Ant says he and his brothers, Peter, Michael and Daniel, were threatened with beatings if they ever talked about their Dad again.
He says: “Dad was wiped from our lives. The day after he died every photo of him disappeared from the house. It was as if he’d never existed. Me and my brothers weren’t even allowed to go to his funeral. His death was made absolute.”
When Ant was nine, the family left their lives in Portsmouth and moved to the village of Saint-Lo, in northern France. There he and his brothers went to a local Catholic school, where they learned fluent French.
Then, as a skinny 16-year-old, and partly to escape his stepfather, Ant signed up for 9 Para, the airborne division of the Royal Engineers.
Ant used hatred he had built up from his humiliation at home to drive himself to pass the gruelling three-week P Company selection.
He wanted to be the best but quickly discovered there was no way to climb to the top through excellence. At that time, the only way to earn kudos in the regiment was to dream up ever more shocking behaviour.
Wild boozing, thuggery and loutish feats like downing pints of pee and lowering your private parts into the pockets of a pool table then allowing shots to smash into your bits became normal nights out.
For his initiation into 9 Para, Ant stripped naked in a bar in Aldershot, Hants, before diving head first into a pool of booze foam and broken beer glasses on the floor.
He recalls: “There was nothing to do but go for it and hope that a dagger of glass wouldn’t slash my face, rip an artery or, even worse, my nut sack. Welcome to the brotherhood!”
HARDMAN'S TOP TIPS
- Don’t let anybody define who you are.
- Make your enemy your energy.
- Leaders stand apart from the crowd.
- Make friends with your demons.
- You don’t need to be the leader to lead.
- Failure isn’t the mistake. It’s allowing the mistake to win.
- Never be too quick to write anyone off.
- Do what you have to do, even if people judge you for it.
- Winning battles is often about timing. Wins are rarely clean.
- Waiting is a weapon.
On the way back to barracks by bus after yet another drunken night out, he staggered out of his seat on the top deck, raised both arms triumphantly and shouted “Airborne!” before releasing his bladder.
Ant says: “As hot pee trickled into my socks and on to the floor a woman in her fifties, who looked like an office cleaner returning home from night-shift said, ‘I bet your mum’s proud of you’.”
Later on, during a mission to Macedonia Ant used his language skills as he worked as an interpreter for officers of the French Foreign Legion’s “Deuxieme Rep” parachute regiment.
He says: “These men behaved in a way that showed they had nothing to prove.
“They were intelligent as well as being trained to a level that would have left many Paras collapsed in a ditch. I came to realise the men of 9 Para were nothing more than a bunch of pub soldiers, 30-year-old infants with their ballbags in a pool table.”
Disillusioned, he quit the Army and joined the Met police. But just before the end of his training he was kicked out of the force after being caught drink-driving.
Ant then moved to his father’s home town of Chelmsford, Essex. Fuelled by his demons, he was constantly in fights.
He says: “I never looked for trouble but when it found me I wouldn’t hesitate.
“Whoever was facing up to me would be knocked out. I’d annihilate him until he stopped moving.”
His life began to change when he met his wife Emilie, now 38, the woman he calls the “long-haired general”.
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Ant says: “You know when you meet someone that you love straight away. I thought to myself, ‘I can’t mess this up. I have to change’.”
With Emilie’s encouragement Ant joined the Royal Marines and later became a sniper in the Special Boat Service — when, in Afghanistan, he he made that first kill.
Yet after leaving the SBS in 2011 and despite his new loved-up life, he hit another low point.
One night in 2013, boozed-up Ant assaulted two police officers in Chelmsford. He spent four months in prison. He calls the incident “a turning point in my life”.
It was then he began his quest not to dwell on negativity — and to savour every moment he could with his family.
Ant and Emilie have four children, Shyla, ten, Gabriel, nine, Priseis, two and one-year-old Bligh.
Their youngest is named after the sea captain who crossed the Pacific on a small open boat after the mutiny on the Bounty. Ant re- created the epic journey for Channel 4 show Mutiny last year. He returned from his latest feat this week — successfully scaling Everest for a TV documentary to be broadcast later this year.
But he is happiest at home. As we chat, he kisses the older kids as they go off to school and fusses over the little ones.
He says: “This is my life now. When I’m at home I am in full Dad mode and I love it.
“This is where I’m most at peace because I just forget about everything.
“When I have my kids climbing all over me that relaxes me. It’s what makes me smile.”
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