Profiles

:: March 2007

Toby with fellow comedian Terry Alderton

Day 1

I've got a letter that tells me I have to muster at RAF Brize Norton at 8.30 in the morning for a 12:30 flight. Muster, it turns out is what the forces say when they mean "meet", in that rather odd way they have of inventing words when perfectly good words already exist. We work out that Brize is about three hours from my house, so at 5am on the 19th of February, I find myself sat next to Big Rich, taxi driver to the stars, as we head south. A clear run means we get there early, and I'm all checked in by 8 am and I've met up with my fellow performers for the week.

Terry Alderton I know already, a great comic, but it's the first time I've met the band. They're called Electric Mayhem and they seem like decent lads, so we should be alright. Ian the tour manager is a safe pair of hands, and the dance troupe are all on the floor sleeping off a hangover, so I'd imagine we're going to get on like a house on fire.

After ten minutes, Ian comes to us with the news that the flight will now leave at 3.30, giving us 7 and a half hours to sit on the floor and watch British forces doing something they are great at; waiting. No one waits like our boys, they are used to it, and they do it brilliantly.

The plane is a thirty-year-old Tri-Star, an old Pan Am, and it's not exactly fitted with all the mod cons. In fact, you'd be hard pushed to see any cons at all, modern or otherwise, it's just a rather small seat on a plane headed into a war zone. There's no in flight video, there’s no headphones for the radio, but there is a sign up telling us not to wash our hands in the loo, because the water going down the sink will freeze and crack the pipes. So we sit, and we wait.

Prison chic: Grizzly Inn

Half an hour before we land, it hits us. The captain comes on the tannoy and tells us that we must now put on our body armour and helmets, and all of a sudden the feeling that we are just playing around leaves us. We've all done the same thing, we've all told wives and girlfriends that we'll be fine, that we'll be miles from any trouble and that the Taliban won't have a go at us.

However as we watch professional soldiers struggle on with their body-armour and sit apprehensively looking at a sea of bobbing helmeted heads, there is a feeling that this might actually be a bit daft. Fifty miles from Kandahar, the pilot knocks out every single light, and we spend twenty boiling hot minutes in the pitch black, with every window blind closed until we finally bump down at Kandahar airport.

The welcome speech is lovely, saying how nice it is to welcome us to Afghanistan, and what to do in the event of a rocket or mortar attack, and we're off to spend an hour waiting for our bags. Eventually we get them and by 5.30 am we're in our accommodation, comics and band in a room together with bunk beds and a table with Pringles on. It's prison chic, but welcoming and as we all tell each other that we'll not be able to sleep, the lights go off and we're snoring within minutes.