Bonus Content

A Top Gear Magazine and Cosmopolitan book of the month. John Savage definitely picked up some of his skills here. Just skim the contents pages and then enjoy the sampleChapters and videos. Illustrations are included in-book but not in the sample.

How to Drive a Tank...

. . . and Other Everyday Tips for the Modern Gentleman

By Frank Coles

Dedication

For my friend Sam Harber,

my father and my grandfathers.

Gentlemen whose lights burned brightly.

'Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.'

Virgil Thomson (advice given at age ninety-three)

The Legal Bit (aka Here be Dragons)

No book, including this one, can replace the services and supervision of qualified personnel. As you will see the best policy for following the advice in this book is always to seek guidance and help from professionals.

Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and accurate as possible. However neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable for any loss or injury arising as a result of the information in this book.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

What Do You Really Really Want?

Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda . . .

LIFE SKILLS EVERY MAN SHOULD HAVE

How to Drive a Tank

Handbrake Turns . . . and Other Naughty Driving Skills

Pick Locks, Safes and Chastity Belts

How to Hotwire Cars and Motorbikes

How to Defeat Security Systems

How to Get a Gun in any City in the World in the Next Few Hours

How to Disappear Without Trace

How to Hide a Dead Body

Make Things Go Boom

Drill It ’Til You Can Kill It – How to Shoot Any Gun

How to Fight – The Everyday Application of Extreme Force

How to Survive the Wild . . . Because You Never Know When You Might Need To

How to Gamble – It’s All in the Game

Learn Any Language – In a Week, in a Month, in a Year

Learn to Jam in a Day

FROM THE GENTLEMAN’S CLUB

The Bare Essentials

Bondage for Everyday Exhibitionists

HAVE IT ALL

Man and Motor: Why It Doesn’t Matter if the Oil Runs Out

High-Octane Thrills + Speed ≠ £££

Hot Laps – Off Road in the Arctic Circle

On the Water

Live Fast, Die Old – How to Ride a Motorbike

Wings and Whirlybirds – Millionaire Playthings: or Are They?

Space Travel

People Power

Living for Adventure

Proving It – How to Jump Out of a Plane and Live

Living on the Edge

WORK AND MONEY

Money – The Fundamentals

Never Get Ripped Off Again – Negotiating Skills from the Boardroom, the Street and the Souk

Swinging Dicks – Office Politics and How to Win Every Time

How to Hire a Hit Man

Cruising Without the Bruising – The Four-Hour Work Week

In Praise of Idleness – The Philosophy and the Foolishness of the 9–5

MAN THINGS

Lost Erections – Where Do They All Go?

Forever Fit

How to Be a Great Dad

Being the Strong Man Women Really Want

LUST AND LOVE

The Best Sex She’s Never Had – Keep Her Coming Back

Multiple Orgasms – Yours not Hers

THE DIVINE COMEDY

Laughing and Crying

Smile at the Devil and Spit in His Face – Depression and How to Deal with It

MIND CONTROL

Mind Mastery – Be Happy, Handle Anything, Some Cognitive Tools:

Assertiveness – The Art of Saying No or . . .

How to Grow a Pair

More than Mnemonics – The Loci Palace

Control Your Thoughts – Never Fall for Advertising, Politicians, Religious Authorities or Con Men: What They Never Taught You at School or on the Job

Religion and Spirituality

The Meaning of Life

Afterword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Call yourself a man? You do? Do you even know what a real man is? Are you a six foot one Adonis who wears all the latest fashions, moisturises regularly, visits spas for pleasure and never does anything wrong? Or do you drink twenty pints every Friday night, batter some schmuck on the way home, spend three seconds with the misses and fart yourself to sleep?

A prissy metrosexual or a monosyllabic lad? One-dimensional advertising demographics. Isn’t that what being a man is?

Thankfully no. There are as many paths to manhood as there are men. A man can be buff and bucolic, a lover and a fighter, a father and a fire starter, a twist or a straight, a rock god or a tank commander and everything else in between.

Being a man means making mistakes, trying things out, knowing when to say no, knowing when to be tender and knowing when to be hard; it’s neither one-dimensional nor any one thing. And let’s just clear something up right now: macho is just the bluster of little boys, manly is knowledge and inner strength to find your own path – whatever that turns out to be.

So that’s what we’re here to do, to throw down a few ideas and see if there’s anything you can play for a winning hand in the game of life. What you hold in your hands is the essence of a gentleman’s guide but a little bit bigger, a little bolder and a damn sight more dangerous. Because it says you can do anything you want to, gives you the first steps how and then a friendly shove.

But danger doesn’t mean simply putting your life on the line for extreme sports and adventurous sex although that can be a part of it – that’s up to you. Danger means putting your ego on the line and challenging yourself to do and think things outside your comfort zone.

It’s the kind of thing our fathers and teachers would have liked to tell us and the kind of thing we wish we could do as fathers and friends ourselves.

There are no pre-packaged life products you can buy off a shelf or order online. You won’t be a passive consumer inside these pages but the manufacturer of your own experience. If you don’t throw the book at the wall at least once and laugh out loud even more then I am doing my job wrong. What’s more I expect abuse from you, I expect you to tell me I’m wrong and that’s a good thing. Think about it.

Being a man means recapturing the idea of being a gentleman in the sense of being a truly noble man and doing the right thing, learning from your mistakes, and saying what needs to be said, and then just for kicks knowing how to blow shit up or jam with a guitar. It’s definitely not about being a man’s man; it’s about being your own man. And being a man is fun. I mean really how dangerous can that idea be?

What Do You Really Really Want?

Okay before we begin there are one or two things we have to straighten out. First thing is this. I can show you any number of ways to tie a tie, scale a rock face or bodyboard a naked teen through a lake of fire but they will all mean absolutely nothing if we don’t first figure out why we’re here.

I won’t just be making things up or copying from books on social etiquette written in the 1930s. I’ll actually be doing as many things as I can so that you know I’m not just heckling you from the sidelines and to show you that whatever you put your mind to you can do too. While researching this book I burst my left retina, cracked a couple of ribs, and fractured my wrist, and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. You see, being a gentleman is about far more than knowing how to wear a tie pin or hold a door open. So here we go . . .

The Modern Gent

Back in the day, days of yore to be precise, a gentleman was simply a bad boy who got away with it. They gave him lands, castles and funny little coats of arms that kept him occupied and away from anything where he might cause too much trouble, say international politics. Then Henry VIII went and spoiled the party by chopping off one head too many.

Suddenly the definition of what constituted a gentleman changed and became a set of rules for how to behave made up by wives intent on keeping their heads and the kind of chaps who didn’t like warring and whoring in foreign parts.

They boil down to this:

Look nice, act nice, speak with authority and eloquence, have your own income, don’t cause too much trouble but be prepared to step in when absolutely necessary.

There were of course the obligatory rituals stolen from chivalry: pull the chair out for the ladies, make sure they don’t have to ruffle their petals unnecessarily, those delicate little flowers that need tending. Poor things.

Thank god that all changed. Women have moved on from being finishing school fops and everyday house servants.

However many of us domesticated males are stuck in the roles defined by the Industrial Revolution working silly hours so that our wives can stay at home (they’ve stopped doing that remember?) to produce the next generation of domesticated males for the factory floor.

Times have changed, but we have not. Very few of us know how to be bold, brave, self-effacing, self-critical or put our lives or egos on the line; we’ve become the equivalent of those delicate little flowers that need tending, only wearing a disguise of thorns. You know the look: the haircut like a foetus, the cheap mass-produced sportswear. The only calluses we have are on our game-playing thumbs and our most daring adventures are package holidays.

One Saturday night not so long ago I witnessed a painful example of the modern ‘bloke’. I tried to stop another man from beating his wife to the ground and splitting her skull open. I was held back by the kind of men who would rather stand and watch hoping no one bothers them and that life passes them by. Once they’d finished with her they turned on me.

I would do it again tomorrow.

How about something worth aspiring to? The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that in the thirteenth century manliness meant:

1. To have the noble qualities of a man who is of mature character.

2. Having the admirable traits and virtues of being honourable, having courage and being independent.

It had little to do with class or status. The modern gentleman needs to represent the best of the old – daring, adventurous and willing to have a go – combined with the best of the new – courteous, intelligent and self-aware.

By necessity we will have to explore a few of the dark arts while we’re here because rather than saying, ‘Oh I couldn’t possibly,’ we want to say, ‘I know how but I choose not to . . . for the moment.’

If you’ve been wanting to find a new direction now is always the time; you really can do anything you want only most people don’t want to. They’re scared.

So what do you most want to do?

And what are you most scared of?

Be honest with your answers: they are just for you not for anyone else. You might end up with two huge lists or not have any answers because you’ve never thought about this before. Whichever it is don’t dwell on it; pack a sense of humour in your kitbag and let’s see where we end up.

Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda . . .

. . . pursued that dream job, chased that girl, taken that trip, stayed at school, dropped out, kicked that fucker’s arse, eaten the monkey brain, snorted the white powder, gone into rehab, mainlined vodka, jumped out of a plane, raised a child, driven a car so fast your ears popped, been pampered like a prince, skinned a rabbit, learned to cook, won at blackjack, cheated at poker, spoken another language, felt the warmth in a stranger’s eyes, travelled to the edge of space, hit the road, taken a year out, lived on the edge, been your own boss, hired a hit man, retired young, had the sex you wanted, survived a crisis and lived to tell, said yes and meant it, taken the knocks, found meaning, woken up happy, turned off the TV, survived in the wild, learned to shoot, seduced someone truly beautiful and travelled the world.

So choose life, choose being a man. Occasionally you might even be accused of being a gentleman.

Now let’s take a step in the right direction . . .

LIFE SKILLS EVERY MAN SHOULD HAVE

Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb.

That’s where the fruit is.

H. Jackson Browne

How to Drive a Tank

The first question is why would you want to? Well let’s see; you get to be that guy sticking his head out of the little hatch just like James Bond and then if the mood strikes you rebel against the herd instinct of commuter traffic by taking short cuts through thick walls and over parked cars.

Take a fully loaded Russian T55-AM2 tank for example, a more modern version of the one Pierce Brosnan drove in Goldeneye. It measures more than six metres long and is nearly four metres wide. Massive, unwieldy and complex it weighs in at a whopping 42 tonnes and has a 45-litre engine capable of 690bhp. It has a top speed of 50mph and in the right hands is a deadly and destructive mobile weapons system.

At the very least you’ll always be able to find a parking space.

My American uncle Armando drove one of its older incarnations in the first Gulf War and according to him, ‘You had to steer it with a hammer.’

Life often feels a little like that so perhaps as a mechanical metaphor for the intricate nuances of a modern gentleman’s life it’s an apt one to start with.

So is it really possible for one man to bring this unwieldy life–tank–gentleman thing under control? Possibly even with a little finesse? Could you do it? Could I? How do you drive the square tank of life into the round hole of happiness and fulfilment?

Well as tanks can drive through buildings, crush cars and take out the enemies of an easy life and abundance with one well-placed shell I’d say let’s hold on to our helmets, floor the accelerator and see what happens when we actually drive one.

The easiest way to do this is to get yourself on a red letter day where you’ll be taken out with a handful of other equally deranged people and allowed a few minutes on a tracked vehicle of some sort which could range from a small armoured people carrier to a Chieftain tank.

Of course, the most effective and life-changing option is to join the army and attend their training school in Bovington.

But remember: you are basically sitting in a target on tracks and there will be plenty of unfriendly armies and air forces out there eager to shred you into bite-sized chunks.

As a private individual to make the most of the Bovington facilities you’d also need a Top Gear-sized budget to play with and a lot of patience as you wait for the cogs of military bureaucracy to clank round.

Alternatively you can contact private tank owners direct.

But be warned: they are an idiosyncratic breed. They tend to be men with large tracts of farmland to play with and a fair few quid in the bank. They spend their cash on tanks sourced from various armies around the world. The cost of these vehicles can be anything from tens of thousands of pounds to hundreds of thousands. Good examples are regularly serviced and in full working order, the other type end their days as unique talking points next to the water feature.

You could buy your own tank and then take your H licence, the same one you need for a tracked digger and then drive it legally on the road. But buyer beware: make sure private individuals offering H licence training in their own tanks can deliver on any promises and aren’t more interested in money than in training. If you are thinking of taking this route my advice is to go through a commercial firm that trains construction contractors. After all the training vehicle doesn’t matter as long as you get the licence.

But you don’t need a licence to drive off-road on private land. I used the rolling farmland of the Tank School in Usk on the Welsh border. Where Alastair Scott is the proud owner of the only T55-AM2 in the country. He bought it from the Polish government and agreed to show me how to drive it. He assured me that it was nothing like the older version of the T55 that my uncle drove and definitely didn’t need a hammer to operate the steering or the fully operational laser-guided targeting system.

However if it hasn’t been used in a while the beastly T55 does need some warming up. Before you can take it anywhere you have to prepare the engine, the fuel and the pressurised heating and cooling system. Not by flipping a switch as you might in your compact high-spec modern family motor but by setting a fire beneath it. Literally. On a mild winter morning Alastair lit what looked like a mini flame-thrower built into the machine underneath the chassis and we waited outside for the tank to boil. Once the toxic fumes cleared he fired it up and we were ready to roll.

Lurching out of its garage we clambered on to the behemoth’s back and with Alastair at the controls headed for the combination farmland and woodland training area.

I then took over Alastair’s position in the front driving seat and he strapped himself above me onto the side of the tank so that he could coach as we drove. My uncle had also warned that Russian tanks were designed for small people and it was a tight squeeze for a broad-shouldered lump like me to fit through the small driving hatch.

Core Combatives instructor Mick Coup (you’ll meet him later on) still holds his H licence from his time in the military.

When he heard that I was going to handle one of these babies for real he said, ‘They’re easy to drive, you’ll love it.’ Conflicting information. Somebody had to be right but who? With the engine idling over it was time to find out.

Surprisingly the controls of the T55 tank are almost identical to those of a manual car. There are only two differences.

First the thick chrome gear stick can be slightly harder to move and has an unfamiliar five-speed shift pattern with gear one in the bottom middle rather than the top left.

Second there’s a distinct absence of steering wheel. Instead on either side of you are two steering levers that extend to shoulder height and move along an arc that runs parallel to your body.

To start moving you press the clutch down with your left foot, pop it into gear, push the levers all the way forward and then take your foot off the clutch. Next to the clutch is a brake pedal and accelerator set out just like your car. A firm stamp on the accelerator and away you go. Easy.

Now how do you turn without a steering wheel?

Simple: both steering levers have a middle braking position. If you want to turn left pull the left lever to the halfway point. This stops the track on the left side while the still moving track on the right pushes you round in the direction you want to go.