Behind The Scenes of SAS: Who Dares Wins with DS Chris Oliver
Sunderland-born Chris Oliver takes us behind the scenes of Channel 4's SAS: Who Dares Wins
Sunderland fan Chris’s sport of choice at school was athletics. He went on to run for Sunderland Harriers and represented the North East in cross-country. When he left school at 16 he knew he wanted to travel and had found role models in ex-military personnel. His coach at Sunderland Harriers had a disciplinary approach to athletics which Chris admits was exactly what he needed. ‘I was a sort of cheeky chappy, probably always had something to say for myself, and he stamped a little bit of that out of me,’ he says. ‘I didn’t realise at the time how much I was going to need that when I joined the Royal Marines.’
He joined in 1999. ‘Hats off to my mam who signed the paperwork to let me join at 16,’ he says. ‘It was difficult as a 16-year-old, as you can imagine. You’re up against people from all walks of life. Some people were double my age, but I felt like I had all the fundamentals. I was fit and I had the right mindset coming from the North East. I feel like I was brought up knowing that I was going to have to go and drive my own career forward.’ Chris says he built resilience that has served him well in his career.
Chris joined the Special Forces and served until 2015 then, after some self-reflection, found new career paths on Civvy Street using the skills he’d learned. While his friends Jason ‘Foxy’ Fox and Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham joined the first series of SAS: Who Dares Wins as directing staff (DS), Chris was part of the initial conversation but joined the show later, in 2023. ‘It’s such a small world, the Special Forces, that we hear about anything that’s raising its head, and we knew about the show before it even went on TV,’ he says. ‘I was just starting a new career, and this concept hadn’t been proven (and it goes against a lot of the stuff that we do stand for in the Special Forces in terms of the secrecy and not putting yourself out there – we weren’t even allowed on social media). The thought of putting your face on TV was quite daunting, so I stepped away. I was still really good mates with Foxy, we used to catch up regularly. When I did actually join the show, there were a couple of conversations I had: one with my partner, one with work, and one with Foxy to decide where the show was going, what I could add potentially to the DS panel, and third and foremost, where they were going to be filming – because that’s what excites me!’
Throughout his time on the show, which sees participants (recruits) go through the Special Air Services screening process to test their mental, emotional and physical strength, Chris realised he also enjoys learning from recruits and their journeys. ‘I’m really passionate about training and passing on the experiences and the lessons that I’ve learned from adversity,’ he adds. ‘People don’t have to go through the adversity, but we’ve been through it, we’ve seen the sharp end on the battlefield, and we’ve got a lot of experience in dealing with certain things, whether that’s emotional or physical pressures, decision making under pressure, or how to cope in certain situations. The celebrity series brings a different spin on it, but people are people. They have been privileged, they’ve probably got a little bit more money in the bank, and they care a little bit more about what the public think of them, but ultimately they’re still people and they’ve still got a backstory. They’re still there for a reason and they’ve still got to navigate the course.’
Chris believes the series is so popular because there’s nothing else like it on TV. ‘We get the autonomy to plan a course and deliver it, which keeps it authentic,’ he explains. ‘We sit down as a family and watch the TV show (which is ironic because there’s so much swearing and it’s brutal) but it relates to everyone. It’s good because people are willing to share. I think it’s building that boundary between us being a DS and them being a participant that allows them to feel like they can share their experiences. Everybody has got a backstory, whether you think you have or not – it might not be as dramatic as somebody else’s but it will still create certain blockers, bottlenecks, problems and hurdles in your life that you want to overcome, and everybody sitting watching it has got the same issues in their lives. If, from our experiences, the way we present the show, or the way we talk to the people in it, people can take something away from it, then I think it can only be a benefit.’
The new series of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins was shot in relentless heat in North Africa, another extreme challenge to add to the long list participants had to face. This series also sees a new twist – pitting seven British celebrities against seven Australians. ‘We know who some of [the contestants] are when they’re revealed and we rip the hoods off and we’re like, “oh no way, it’s Toadfish, I watched him growing up”, but ultimately that shine of him being a celebrity is gone within an instant, because you’re seeing different sides of someone,’ Chris adds. ‘You’re asking for 100 percent of them, whether they’re an Olympic gold medalist or a World Championship boxer, or your favourite person on Neighbours, nobody really cares because you’re seeing the real person that’s beneath all that.’
The realism of the course means SAS: Who Dares Wins is not for the faint-hearted. ‘I speak to quite a lot of them following the course, and we laugh at the time and say “when you leave this course you’ll miss this place” because they’re never going to get a chance to do that again,’ says Chris. ‘Not in everyday life.’ No matter who you are or where you come from, it’s almost impossible to pass every mission, and the nature of the show means not everyone can make it through selection. It’s harsh but true that Chris and his fellow directing staff actually want recruits to fail (at times). ‘If we were under the same pressure as them we’d probably fail some of the tasks too,’ he admits. ‘What we’re looking for is how they learn from the failures, how they pick themselves up, how they pass on that information to others, and understanding that there’s no I in team, that they’re all going to have to muck in to get through the course.’
But is it really as harsh as it seems? ‘It’s 100 times worse,’ Chris laughs. The directing staff have control over when they eat, when they sleep and what they’re going to do with their time. ‘They’re relying on us for everything and we’re spoon-feeding them the training. We’re putting them through the tasks which knit them together so it’s them against us,’ he continues. ‘On this series, it was even better because it was Aussies against the English against us. They quite quickly realised that they were going to need each other. So it became the Aussies and English against the DS.’
Chris remains passionate about representing both the military and the North East on TV. ‘I want to be a role model for the North East,’ he says. ‘I love the fact that I can represent the unit and demographic that I’ve come from. I take it personally, and there’s a lot of responsibility on my shoulders, because it’s not just for me. My friends might pretend they don’t watch the show, but they’ve got one eye on it because it’s been such a massive part of our lives, and I think it paints a good picture for the military, whether people choose to accept that or not. I think there’s a lot that can be learned.’
