Credits: Article and images by Ian Skellern @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2023/12/24/19-things-you-didnt-know-about-ian-skellern-international-man-of-mystery-james-bond-austin-powers-david-brent-or-walter-mitty-tall-tales-or-true/
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11. I have 11 passports, but only regularly use two of them.
12. While driving a Swiss bus along a rough dirt track in an Administered Tribal Area of North West Pakistan with little government control or judicial system (a Taliban hotspot), I was chased and shot at for many hours by two men with a rifle on a motorcycle. As they couldn’t catch me, they stopped and radioed ahead. I was then detained by a barrier across the road (set up especially for me) in a remote village.
When the two men caught up a couple of hours later, the head of the village held a trial and acted as judge and jury. While the ‘judge’ seemed fair, he made it clear that as an infidel, my testimony would not count if/where it differed from my two Muslim accusers who told him that I’d tried to kill them.
In my defense, I said that if I’d really tried to kill them then they would be dead, and the ‘judge’ appeared to agree with me. However, the ‘trial’ then took an unexpected turn for the worse when one of my accusers told the ‘judge’ that the young blonde woman who was with me was doing something she shouldn’t be doing – shame on you, it wasn’t what you might be thinking, but in my situation, it was much worse. Especially as nothing I said in my defence would be believed.
13. After crossing the border from Peru into Southern Colombia, I went to the tourist office in Ipiales to get local maps. The woman behind the counter asked if I was Ian Skellern, which surprised me. She then told me that the general in charge of a large military base on the outskirts of town wanted to see me and would send a car (it was a military jeep.)
The general asked me to drive a truck with 20 tourists along a remote mountain road to act as bait for a group of terrorists (thought to be FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) who had recently held up a local bus on the same route and shot and killed all of the tourists onboard.
I (naturally) agreed to drive the bait truck – what could possibly go wrong? – and while the first half of the drive was uneventful, it looked as though things would take a turn for the worse when I rounded a tight corner and saw what looked like a textbook ambush trap: a truck with a covered back and its engine cover open stopped across the track on a hairpin bend.
Scotty beam me up!
14. Shortly after arriving in Burundi, east Africa in 1987, I received a message that the British Foreign Office wanted a situation update of the military coup taking place in the country. I suspect my concise eight-word report disappointed them.
15. When in a truck entering (then) West Germany from (then) Czechoslovakia, German customs officers scanned both the truck and me with Geiger counters The readings registered far above normal, but luckily not dangerous, levels of radiation.
16. While in the Bolivian city of Potosi, I took the opportunity to visit a rough-and-ready, no-questions-asked market specializing in supplies for artisanal silver miners (no easy job at the best of times, but even worse at over 4,000 meters/13,000 feet). There I filled a box with sticks of dynamite, fuses, and detonators, and left town.
And I had no intention of doing any mining with my haul.
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Credits: Article and images by Ian Skellern @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2023/12/24/19-things-you-didnt-know-about-ian-skellern-international-man-of-mystery-james-bond-austin-powers-david-brent-or-walter-mitty-tall-tales-or-true/