SAS: Who Dares Wins star Billy Billingham on his military career, life as a bodyguard for Brad Pitt ahead of shows in York and Harrogate

But he’s well-adjusted to the lens these days, of course, as the chief instructor on Channel 4 show SAS: Who Dares Wins.

Now, he’s turning his talents to the stage, too, with his upcoming to tour Always A Little Further, appearing at York Grand Opera House on Monday, October 16 and Harrogate Royal Hall on Wednesday, November 8.

The show’s title is one that goes back to his childhood as a self-described “rogue kid”.

He says: “‘Always a little further’ is a mantra that I've adopted and it's weird because when I was a young kid that got in trouble, an old man taught me boxing, when really he should have given me a slap because I stole from him.

"But anyway, he taught me boxing and what he told me is that, ‘When the chips are down, and you feel you can't do any more, you can - you can always go a little bit further’.

The phrase he heard nine years old was one that proved useful when he joined the SAS years later.

“It is about telling people, look, when you say you can't do it, a lot of times you can, you've just got to be able to go out of your comfort zone and go for it.”

It’s that kind of lesson Billy hopes to get through to audience members when he offers an insight into my action-packed life as a special forces operator and his time on and off camera.

Despite his decorated career – and the MBE he received from the late Queen – he readily admits to being a tearaway when he was a youngster in Walsall.

“I was into gangs, I got stabbed, I was in trouble with the law, I was thrown out of school. I found my direction, discipline and respect through boxing, and then through being in the cadets and that was a light that said to me, that's where I need to be - I need to be in the military - and luckily, I got into the military.”

In the cadets, being taught first aid, how to use a map and compass, and fire a rifle just “made sense” to him, unlike school – from which he was expelled for “gluing a maths teacher to the chair”.

Billy joined the Parachute Regiment in 1983 and served until 1991, holding a number of positions, including Patrol Commander for operational tours in locations around the world and also served as a training instructor for the regiment as a military specialist.

After passing selection, he joined the SAS in 1991 as a Mountain Troop specialist.

He has been responsible for planning and executing strategic operations and training in numerous locations including Iraq, Afghanistan, South America and Africa.

”I had a fantastic career,” he says. “Everything from conventional warfighting to hostage release to indicting people for war crimes.”

He worked towards the rank of Sargeant Major and, after a career of more than 30 years, left the military in 2015.

“I look back at some of the times and some of the things we did and I think, how the hell did we walk out of that? How did we get that job done? People say ‘would you go back and do it again?’ I would, but I probably wouldn’t walk away from the things I walked away from.”

After his military service, Billy became a bodyguard, looking after Sir Michael Caine, Hulk Hogan, Kate Moss, Russell Crowe and Tom Cruise. He was also bodyguard and head of security to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who were formerly a couple.

It meant that he had gone from working on top secret missions to the highly exposed world of celebrity.

“Trying not to appear on any cameras was impossible. The fact that, now, instead of people shooting guns at you, people are shooting cameras, felt worse,” he says.

He would try to keep out of the way but found that when articles about the likes of Pitt and Jolie were written, there would be stuff about him too.

The job itself was exciting, he says, but difficult work and long hours.

“What I found as a bodyguard is you can't trust anybody else to do the work. You ask them to go and do scouting or reccies for the next day and that it would never get done properly. Or you couldn't trust them to not be talking to the paparazzi and stuff like that. So I had to work really hard but I enjoyed it.”

These days, he appears on SAS: Who Dares Wins with DS Rudy Reyes, Jason Fox and Chris Oliver, putting civilians and celebrities through an eight-day selection process to test the candidates.

Billy, 58, who is father to five daughters and a son, says: “It's like no other show there is anywhere. We don't see it as a TV thing. It's a course, people turn up on this course, wanting an experience to be pushed physically, mentally, emotionally to their limits. So we run it as a course and we just happen to film 24 hours a day. There's no script. There's no retakes. There's no stopping at winnebagos and getting yourself a coffee.”

When he’s not filming, Billy co-runs the Rebuild Globally charity with wife Julie Colombino, helping to fight poverty in Haiti. He’s also an ambassador for the Phoenix Heroes and the Royal British Legon’s Tommy Club, which help veterans.

“There's nothing more rewarding,” he says. “Enough people gave me a chance and an opportunity when I was a kid growing up, and now it's me giving other people a chance.”