The quietly spoken, thoughtful, brilliant Robert Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne, four times winner of the Distinguished Service Order and co-founder of the Special Air Service, was nothing like his profane, psychotic, paddywhacking caricature in the cartoonish BBC series SAS: Rogue Heroes. His hideous portrayal does him a grave disservice and has understandably upset his family.
Truth about Mayne the man is now obscured by his outsized myth. As his biographer wrote, his life and formidable achievements have become steadily ‘dramatised and isolated’, a process that started while he was still serving and which has accelerated as the top-secret SAS has morphed into a ‘global entertainment franchise’ – the service has been a source of public fascination since the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege.
Far from cock-up or conspiracy, the reasons for Mayne’s downgrade are more prosaic
Mayne’s legend includes the view that he was unfairly denied the Victoria Cross (VC), Britain’s highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy. Various
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