TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* Britainology 85: Celebrity SAS—Who Dares Wins

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

For this month's first Britainology, we've watched the season of the military-themed and emphatically strange UK reality TV show "Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins," featuring....Matt Hancock. It's exactly what you think it is. Get the whole episode on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/britainology-85-106954905 *EDINBURGH LIVE SHOW ALERT* We're going to be live at Monkey Barrel comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe on August 14, and you can get tickets here:  https://www.wegottickets.com/event/621432   *MILO ALERT* Buy Milo’s special ‘Voicemail’ here! https://pensight.com/x/miloedwards/digital-item-5a616491-a89c-4ed2-a257-0adc30eedd6d   *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

Matt Hancock saying that parkour is a great way to learn about your body like so on us of all this stuff So anyway with that in mind, and of course, I can't just do those types of flips Yes. Yes, there was that Anyway, Matt Hancock went on What is it who dares wins the fucking celebrity SAS who dares win? So this is a show that had been running for a while both initially as SAS who dares wins where it was like members of the public taking part in this fake SAS selection reality show.

And then they started doing a celebrity version of which Matt Hancock was on the most recent season, season five, which came out in 2023, I believe. What we're doing here is a companion series. It's SAS month here. We're doing here is a companion series. It's it's SAS month here We're doing this for you guys And then we're also going to be doing an episode about the Iranian Embassy siege with November which should be pretty fun Yeah, we're a little bit late because we've had a lot of stuff come up this month

But we will be promise you you'll get your slop and you'll get to SAS episodes But first to clear the air here, I am in the CIA. Yeah. No, I'm not actually in the CIA. Hilariously, it's the opposite. I've been out of the military longer than I was in, and I'm also, my only connection to the military now is that friends of mine that I'm still in touch with

have to list me on their security clearance as like foreign contacts that they know because I am a British citizen. But in a different life, a long time ago, I commissioned as an infantry officer in the US Army and I was on active duty for about three years when I tried out for Army Special Forces selection and got selected in March 2011 and then went into the qualification course, which is much, much longer. It's not this kind of a thing. It's lots of different instances

of this kind of a thing, but in different formats. Sometimes it's academic stuff. Sometimes it's physical. Sometimes it's like tactical training stuff where it's less like do fun, obstacle courses and more like fake patrolling kind of stuff. So I did that. I decided I wanted to leave the army. And so about halfway through the qualification course I left, my punishment was to go to basically the worst unit in the army in South Korea. And then I got out. Yeah. You went to the BTS army. I did. Actually, one time we literally were made to as part of our duty description, we had a formation at like 7 PM to then go and so it didn't look like there was no crowd

at this weird morale K-pop concert on bass. And we had to watch- Stood at attention at the K-pop concert. The band Crayon Pop performed their hit song, Jumping. They were in bike helmets and the chorus is something like, jumping like I'm dead serious. Now bear in mind in the US Army in Korea, there's a lot of Korean Army soldiers there too because they have this program where on merit alone

and definitely not family connections and wealth, you can serve out your conscription as an auxiliary to the US Army in a much nicer and more comfortable environment than in the Korean Army, where you get treated like dog shit nonstop and basically get no free time ever. So there was enough of a Korean audience there,

but they're like, yeah, it's not, the Catoosas aren't enough. We gotta pack this basically like sports field with a set up bandstand and make them make it seem as though all our soldiers are super excited about seeing a K-pop band perform. It's very funny to be issuing your soldiers a ration of K-pop. Look man, when you have to teach soldiers how to like wash their own dicks, like getting

orders to attend a K-pop concert is really, It doesn't seem... There's a joke years ago. You boys don't know nothing about K-pop. You can't even tell there was a BTS Blackpink. Milo is making reference to the Geechee Sergeant Major at my infantry school, which is very funny because yeah, it's a story I've told him. But basically when the Sergeant Major of our infantry course briefed us, it was in a big echoey lecture hall and basically no one could understand him because he had a Gichi accent. I struggled and I'm a little more familiar with it having family from North and South Carolina, but yeah, wow, it was different. I'm telling you all this huge open parentheses,

we got to close before we get back to the topic, which is that I obviously did not close before we get back to the topic, which is that I obviously did not try out for the SAS. The closest equivalent to the SAS in the US Army is probably Delta Force or CAG or whatever they're calling themselves. I never tried out for them because you kind of can't where I was in my career. Like to be an officer in CAG, you have to be post company command and typically the only people who would even be invited to try out were people who were, it's mostly people who were in range of regiment, which is more like the American paras than it is like, it's somewhere between paras and SAS I'd say.

And then special forces, the US Army Special Forces is different. It is this stuff, but it's different, like it's different mission set and it's a different vibe, but it's still a lot of the same things. And I bring this up because like, I guess the weirdest thing about it is, is that it wasn't in Vietnam during a monsoon,

but I have done this stuff pretty much all of this stuff. Like I've done it in the real thing, not in like a reality TV thing. And like, I'm not saying that it's not to brag, it's just more, it's kind of surreal to watch it from this angle, I suppose. We're watching it because it's dumb and Matt Hancock is on it.

But you can imagine for me, it's just sort of strange, like because there's a sense of like, this is the toughest thing you'll ever do, but do that in BBC announcer voice. And I have done it, and I mean, it sucked, don't get me wrong, but like, there's a certain kind of like exoticism about it when you don't have any connection to it.

That's the point, that's the appeal of the show. And so you can imagine for me, it's just sort of like,ism about it when you don't have any connection to that's the point of the appeal of the show. And so you can imagine for me, it's just sort of like, okay, I guess this is my job. My job is to watch this very strange show in our studio basement this morning. And yeah, now talk about it. It's a real, it's a real like patchwork of different bits of like army law in this show. Like I mean, look, I'm not look, I'm not an army guy, but I would say I take a healthy vibes based interest in the British army and what it's up to.

And so there's like, it's interesting that there are some things which I mean, like I'm not an expert, but there are some things which they seem to get right. And then so much stuff that is just like so bafflingly not right, that it's like a weird mishmash. Like they're getting, they make them all refer to them as staff, which is right, they do make you do that on SAS selection.

But then almost everything else about it is like the paras. It's like, they make them do milling, which is a paras thing. Like the SAS would not be doing stuff that fucking stupid. Also things like, they're just like constantly like yelling at them and beasting them and stuff, which again is like, that's like a Paris thing or like a regular army thing. But like famously SAS selection is like, they barely even talk to you. They're just like, you have to do this on your own. I'm not going to encourage you. Like you either get up the hill or don't. I don't give a fuck.

Which is kind of what army special forces selection was like. I'd say Ranger school is more like this. We didn't do milling, but we did it. We basically did combatives, which is like Army MMA and they made us do a great big combat. Army MMA, what a terrifying thought. Yeah, it's horrible, it's stupid. Bad MMA that sucks, but the Army MMA you do. Where you have a sticker of a Camaro on your Camaro. Yeah. Yeah. That's the first time I ever learned about Tap Out as a brand was that one of the

Ranger instructors had a huge bat, like decal in the back of his gigantic truck. So, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's all he needed was a monster energy drink sticker on that thing. And he would imperfect. It was like on his way to divorce court, gonna lose. I'm going to try and arm bar the judge. That's the only way I'm going to win. I bring up the thing with in Ranger school because, so I went to Ranger school when I was a second lieutenant. It was sort of an expectation that if you're an infantry officer, you go and you graduate or at least try. I passed. I graduated in January 2008. It was really physically hard on

people. It sucks. Special Forces selection is hard in a different way because it's just so condensed, but they don't really yell at you. They don't really haze you. You get to eat more, you get to sleep more. But in Ranger School, bring up the thing with with the combattist tournament because basically like combattist is a thing that's really skills-based and like there is a way of taking it seriously and like learning it but most people don't Get to so most people it's just at the end of the day It's who gets tired first who can remember one or two moves better than the other guy and it just looks like To use a relatively army expression monkeys fucking a football And so in order to spice things up the way the Rangers instructor instructors work or they go around and check the like watching the fights as it could be simultaneous what's happening in this big pit and

If they thought there wasn't a clear like someone gonna win on technique They just drop either like a rubber knife that you could like oh you stab the guy you killed him or a real taser Now it wasn't powerful enough to fully incapacitate you but it did fucking hurt It was like getting shocked with someone like a stun gun like someone's electric razor It hurt enough that it was unpleasant and yes you you could taste people So that gives you some idea of how seriously it was taken. It was just hazing like it's all just hazing