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A London taxi driver who led an extraordinary double life in the SAS has written a novel based on his experiences.
The writer, known only by his pen-name David Black, spent 11 years as a cabbie but could be called away on a top-secret mission at a moment's notice.
A former soldier in the regular Army, he signed up to serve with one of the two SAS Territorial Army regiments to escape the mundane nature of a taxi driver's job, spending half of each year deployed on operations.
He remains unwilling to discuss what happened on his worldwide tours of duty but has used his experiences to inspire a book, The Great Satan, which is published next month.
It is based around the idea that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction, which disappear during Saddam Hussein's overthrow in 2003 - only to turn up in London. The hero of the book, Pat Farrell, has a career mirroring that of Mr Black - SAS sergeant and black cab driver.
Mr Black, 56, said: "Just driving around London is monumentally boring. I needed something more than that. I needed some excitement.
"I was not particularly an adrenaline junkie, but I'd had a long association with the military and the SAS is the Rolls-Royce of the military."
His double life lasted from 1975 until 1986, covering the height of the Cold War between Russia and the West and a period when IRA terrorism was at a peak. "It was such an exciting lifestyle," he said. "I would be driving a black cab round Trafalgar Square in the evening and parachuting into another country later that night."
Reader views (1)
At least they finally found the WMDs.
- mike stern, London, 27/07/2010 19:27
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