John Fashanu intimidated by Ant Middleton

27 April 2020

Ant Middleton is the "hardest person" John Fashanu's ever met.

Ant Middleton

The former footballer was "intimidated" by the head instructor on 'Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins' and claimed he's way more frightening than his old Wimbledon FC team mate-turned-movie hardman Vinnie Jones and the tough team of opponents from TV show 'Gladiators', which he presented in the 1990s.

John told The Sun newspaper: "Middleton is the hardest and most intimidating person I've ever encountered.

"Vinnie at 3pm kick-off -- that's frightening.

"Meeting Gladiators' Wolf in the dark is pretty scary -- and he's certified mad.

"But meeting Middleton, you just run. In terms of hardness, the SAS guys are Premier League, the Gladiators are League Two."

John - who is a black belt in martial arts - admitted he expected the show would be a "doddle" so it came as a shock as to how gruelling the challenges he and his fellow celebrities, including Joey Essex and Katie Price, were forced to undertake by Ant and his team.

He said: "I thought it would be a doddle but, goodness me, it's like a war zone. Some of the things we do on SAS, I wouldn't want my worst enemy to do -- and when I was in football, I had plenty of enemies. You're up at 2am, sirens go, lights come on and you've got to get out there, hide somewhere and shoot firearms, run through mud -- dive under a wall underneath water. It pushes you, it really does. You can see why celebrities crack. The SAS guys don't care who you are or what you've done. They don't take prisoners."

During one game of murderball - where the teams battled to push a tyre over their opponents' goal line - the former sportsman came to blows with fellow contestant Locksmith and he admitted that resulted in them failing the task, not for fighting but because they lost focus on the job at hand.

John explained: "I was noticing it was getting a little bit rougher and some of the tackles were getting a little bit more real. Locksmith pulled me on one tackle, so I was retaliating and giving it back.

"But this is why we failed, because we took our attention away from winning the match by personalising it.

"It was a case of, 'I know you're coming for me so I'm now coming for you.' The nice thing is, we're all mature -- we got up afterwards, shook hands and everybody walked away. But we lost points because we didn't control ourselves -- and with the SAS it's all about self-control."