22 SAS Operator | Phil Campion (throwback ep)

Dee Takos (0:00)

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Jack Murphy (0:21)

Hey guys, welcome to episode 263 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park, and our guest on tonight's show is Phil Campion. Phil is a former SAS operator, and now he runs Forces Radio, has a big project going on there that we'll talk about. He's done like 70 episodes so far. You guys will want to check it out.

But Phil, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us this evening.

Phil Campion (0:45)

Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure to be here.

Jack Murphy (0:47)

Absolutely, man. I got to say, you and I worked previously, so it's great to reconnect with you. The last time we saw each other in person was actually when we were both coming out of Syria. We had a beer in Kurdistan.

As you said, it feels like it was a lifetime ago.

Phil Campion (1:05)

It does. But bringing it up again now makes it feel like it was yesterday in a strange way. Kind of.

It's like, wow. Just go back and have another couple of pints.

Jack Murphy (1:15)

Yeah.

Phil, I'll start off asking you, the question we asked most of our guests is about what their upbringing was like and how that took them towards military service. I was wondering if you could tell us how you grew up and what that journey was like for you. OK.

Phil Campion (1:34)

So I was born in London. The rumor goes that the doctor slapped me mother. Do you know what I mean?

I got adopted straight from birth. So I went to a family that had been vetted supposedly to bring me up, but that family failed as well. And they were quite violent. And my adopted father was extremely violent. I mean, he would literally punch my head in. As young as I can remember, I can remember violence and I can remember being hurt and punched. And I learned some really sort of early on in life, I learned some quite harsh lessons. And I always say to people, now one of the lessons I learned very early in life was that, if you can stay calm whilst all this stuff's going on around you. And I say this because he used to sit on top of my chest and beat me. And if I thrashed and if I sort of fought back, he'd hit me even more. But if I went limp and I remained calm, it was almost like he lost interest and he would stop hitting me. And that is actually, we'll probably talk about a couple of instances later on in my life, where that has actually had to come into play where I thought, right, hang on, calm down, right. Now I can think, now I can see, now I can hear, now I'm in control. And the other thing I learned from that was it was a tiny win because it was like I was controlling the situation against this great big man. And I was thinking to myself, well, you know, it's not the greatest win in the world, but it is a win. And so one of the things I've tried to bring with me throughout my whole life is to always look for a positive where there's a negative. And if you can do that, your life will be a lot happier. So yeah, going back to where we were, my childhood was pretty horrific. My adopted parents split up.

My behavior at school was atrocious and that's probably not impacted too much by my parents. I was just a naughty kid. I was a naughty kid. I couldn't concentrate. I didn't like the school subjects. I didn't like being in school. I would much rather be out playing soccer or climbing trees or fighting with somebody. So my behavior was appalling. So eventually, I ended up in a children's home about the age of 12 years old, where they controlled my schooling and they controlled this, that and the other. But it was there that I got exposed to predatory paedophiles.

It took me a long time in my life to talk about that. I held it in for years and years and years. It all came out a few years ago when I was deciding to write another book. Anyway, I was groomed by these people to the point that it became very uncomfortable.