If you're in the UK or Australia, Ant Middleton is pretty well known now having been the lead ex-special services presenter of the show SAS: Who Dares Wins, a reality TV show where a bunch of super fit people get mentally and physically tested to the end of their limits. Middleton controversially got sacked from the show in the UK in the not too distant past for some Twitter comments and 'inappropriate behaviour' on the show, but took himself off to Oz to do the show there instead and has been making a bucket load of money writing more books than he's probably ever read in his life and doing other TV work.

This book is half a recounting of his time climbing Everest and half his strategy on how to overcome your fears. If you'd like to overcome your fears but don't fancy wading through this type of book I can save you the cash and tell you his theory boils down to (a) opening those doors you've been too scared to open before and (b) visualising stepping in and out of a "fear" bubble when you are about to do something terrifying, like throwing yourself off the side of a cliff.

The recounting of his Everest climb amused me greatly as all irony was entirely lost on him. Middleton allegedly 'prepares' for this epic climb doing nothing but sitting on his arse eating chicken wings as he was too busy on his speaking tour around the UK, and halfway through the altitude acclimatisation spends 4 days hitting the bottle in a pub, but yet spends pages berating the 'Everest tourists' who are there for the wrong reasons, i.e. spending a shed load of cash just so they can say they've climbed it. Somewhere along the way Middleton completely loses sight of the fact that he's there for precisely the same reason (no, worse - he's getting his fees paid in return for bringing a TV cameraman up with him). He chastises people who 'shouldn't be up there' as they're risking other people's lives, and then in the same breath goes on to ignore the advice of his sherpa and experienced climbing colleague, insisting that they skip out doing the altitude rotational climbs recommended and forcing them to start their ascent in a storm none of them think is safe to go out into. Everyone else is up there because of their egos, but Middleton? Oh, most definitely not, apparently. He's just in a different league to everyone else, so he keeps telling us.

Needless to say he's super human and the mountain bows down to his utter physical superiority and lets him go up and down safely (which was slightly annoying).

Despite my cynicism, Middleton's ghost writer did a good job with this book and it was an interesting read. Love him or loathe him, whilst I don't overly respect him as a person I do respect his SBS training, so whilst he often comes across as a complete penis he does have some good insights to share on the self mind control techniques they're taught, which are interesting to learn from.

4 stars - he's an idiot, but it's an interesting read nonetheless. ( )