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Summer 1985 and I’m passing out. Proud as punch in my full Royal Navy guard uniform, armed with a self-loading rifle, shoulders back, chest out, begging my father to get the camera working.

The extreme demands made on us were a shock to many. Some of my group had suffered enough by the end of Week 5, as their bedding and locker were launched out of the window onto the parade square for the umpteenth time, their kit and shoes deemed insufficiently clean. Their punishment? Cleaning the toilets with a toothbrush. Utter sadism. After 11 gruelling weeks I passed the course, and Mum and Dad came to see me pass out. There was an official video made of the day, and as the camera panned around the parade square before the arrival of the First Sea Lord, the VIP for the day, it caught my parents arguing intensely about the workings of the new camera they’d bought for the occasion. I presume they got it working in the end as I still have a couple of photos that I’ve shown my children, who never believed I actually went to sea or indeed was ever in the Royal Navy at all.