Stunt performing is a highly structured career path - you have to gain qualifications in six different sports to a high standard. It takes four or five years and costs at least £20,000; a black belt in a martial art from scratch costs a fortune.

A good stunt has to have both style and substance. It's a combination of impact and notoriety, the element of danger, technical execution, and the skill of the stunt performer.

A James Bond movie is a stuntman's dream.

A James Bond movie is a stuntman's dream. I was in a helicopter firing a machine gun at Piers Brosnan escaping on a motorbike.

I realised how much misdirection is in stunt co-coordinating. It's similar to magic, the tricks we use to make people think the stunt is real. I also have a lifelong fascination with gambling cheats. I'm not one, but I do have a fascination with it.

As a close-up magician, I was using gambling cheating techniques.

Yakima Canutt was famously John Wayne's stunt double, and in the Western movie 'Stagecoach,' there is a fantastic scene where there are some horses thundering along, pulling a carriage. He climbs out onto the horses and drops down underneath them, so he's being dragged along, and then he lets go.

I was in a peacetime army. It was like something out of a Le Carre novel: studying the habits of your enemy. It was very exciting. It's interesting living life as a civilian, then on Friday night you're parachuting into a foreign country.

My whole life I've actually been training to be a stunt man without realising it. I've always loved extreme sports, and I now I get paid for it.

If a magician makes a mistake, it's sometimes forgiven by the audience. If a gambling cheat makes a mistake, they will almost certainly lose their lives - and probably in a horrible manner.