‘I’m better than Andy McNabb!’ says SAS veteran turned author Ant Middleton

SAS veteran Ant Middleton has joked about being a better author than his colleague Andy McNab.

Asked if he was the new Andy McNabb as he spoke about his new book Red Mist, he told GB News: “Oh, I’m better than Andy McNab!

“What I love doing with my fiction is merging the two worlds, non-fiction and fiction. There are only certain things I can say throughout my life experience in my non-fiction, but in my fiction, again and it is fiction, I can talk about my life experiences, and where I’ve been.

“I can tell you about the locations that I’ve been to, and ultimately give a twist on my character. The character Mallory in the book is very much an alter ego of myself, shall we say.

“It’s a good chance to not only express my feelings and myself, but also my life experiences in real time.”

In an interview with Andrew Pierce and Isabel Webster on GB News, he said: “I’ve done this sort of hardcore soldiering routine. I enjoyed soldiering. I’ve done, like I said, the Marines, the powers, the Special Forces, the sniping world, which is sort of like an elite unit of the elite.

“I just enjoyed being out there getting dirty and really getting into the nitty gritty of modern-day warfare, shall we say?

“It really interests me and that’s what’s so good about my books now, as I can take that which interests lots of people out there and almost put it into a lifetime sort of documentary or into an archive, shall we say, where people can pick it up and go?”

Asked if he had a ruthless streak, he said: “Yeah, I think but this is what I say about the book. We all have a bit of Mallory in us.

“We all got that little you know that beast inside us that wants to come out and that needs to come out and it’s just how you exercise that, how you how you release that.

“So, for me now it is with my TV shows…we have everything that I do whether it’s climbing mountains, but even writing books now.

“It really releases that beast…it sort of exercises my demons in letting that out.”

Asked if he chose the name Mallory in honour of the British mountaineer who died climbing Mount Everest, he said: “That’s where it came because I’ve climbed Everest – it was a tough, tough climb. And Mallory was just a great name.

“I believe that Mallory was the first to summit…I know that just being at that peak, he would have in my eyes summited. So he wouldn’t have just come down, he would have got that summit fever, which we all get.

“Now I just recently got on K2, I have just recently climbed K2 as well, so from my experience, and from what I’ve been through, I think Mallory was the first to summit Mount Everest and I thought to myself, what a great character to insert into my books.”

On the title of his book, he said: “Anger is a weapon. And if used correctly, it’s a very, very useful weapon for protecting not only the country but for the people in the country.

“Sometimes we lose our cool, we make mistakes, and that just shows that we’re human, that we can be trained to a certain level where we control our anger to a certain extent where you’re on that line, and sometimes we overstep it and I’ve overstepped it a couple of times…

“So, as long as you’re learning along the way, which I do, which I have done, then this is why I love sort of mentoring people now and showing them how it’s how it’s done through my actions.”

He added: “I do believe that there’s a time and place to let your emotions out. You must control your emotions at all times.

“It’s like anger, anger is an emotion but that doesn’t mean that you can go in hitting everyone when you feel like it. You have to control that emotion and it’s exactly the same with sadness, with empathy, whatever it may be.

“Control your emotions, because if not people will take advantage of them.”