You were probably expecting me to review Ross Kemp in Afghanistan (Sky One, Monday) this week but I’m a bit off Afghanistan programmes at the moment. Not to the point where I won’t watch them all the time to the exclusion of almost all else. Just to the point where, at the end, I feel ever so slightly, ‘Was that it?’ Don’t get me wrong. I have the most enormous respect for the brave folk who make these programmes — still more for the men doing the fighting. But I’ve yet to see the documentary which properly conveys to people who’ve never done it — e.g., me — what it’s like to be involved in a serious firefight.
On his tour of Helmand with the Royal Anglian Regiment, Kemp experienced a gun battle of pant-wetting intensity. Seven rocket-propelled grenades flew inches above his head. He thought he was going to die.
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