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AUSTRALIA

UPGRADE YOUR SOCIAL GAME

OCTOBER 2018

DISCOVER RICH KICKS AND

THE RIGHT THREADS TO COMBAT STYLE DILEMMAS

SUPERSTITIOUS? VISIT THE LUCKIEST SHOP ON EARTH

EXPLORE MORE! TAKE A BELGIUM ADVENTURE!

Amy

Taylor

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9 771562 469000

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THE NEXT GIG

THE TEAM IT’S GREAT TO BE A MAN

Publisher & CEO – Dirk Steenekamp Sales Director - Pieter Lourens Creative Director – Jodie Graves Digital and Client Manager – Lexi Robb Managing Editor – Gina DuPont Grooming Editor – Greg Forbes Gaming Editor – Andre Coetzer Tech Editor – Peter Wolff Illustrations Editor – Toon53 Prod.

Motoring Editor – John Page OKTOBERFEST IN THE GARDENS

Features Editor - Nelly Maduna

27 October 2018, Australia

Senior Photographer – Charlemagne Olivier

Australia’s biggest and best Oktoberfest celebration returns to Sydney,

Senior Photo Editor – Luba V Nel

Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide in 2018!

Senior Designer - Koketso Moganetsi

Inspired by our love of the traditional Bavarian festival and great beer, Oktoberfest in the Gardens Sydney features two massive beer halls,

For more information:

authentic German food stalls, roving performers, sideshow alley, silent

Phone: 010 006 0051

disco and an eclectic mix of entertainment and competitions across multiple stages throughout the afternoon and evening. sydney.oktoberfestinthegardens.com.au

Address: Fourways Office Park, Cnr. Fourways Boulevard and Roos Street, Fourways, Sandton, 2055 Email: info@untapped.co.za Web: fhmaustralia.com Facebook: @fhmAustralia Twitter: @fhmaus Instagram: @fhm_australia

FHM Australia is published by Untapped World Publishing (Pty) Ltd in South Africa for Australia. Material in this publication, including text and images, is protected by copyright. It may not be copied, reproduced, republished, posted, broadcast, or transmitted in any way without written consent of Untapped World Publishing (Pty) Ltd. The views and opinions expressed in FHM Australia by the contributors may not represent the views of the publishers. Untapped World Publishing (Pty) Ltd as well as its employees accept no responsibility for any loss that may be suffered by any person who relies totally or partially upon any information, description, or pictures contained herein. Untapped World Publishing (Pty) Ltd is not liable for any mistake, misprint, or typographic errors.

All prices shown are in AUD. Any submissions to FHM Australia become the property of Untapped World Publishing (Pty) Ltd.

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OCTOBER 2018

CONTENTS 10/18

Spoiler alert!

LOOK AWAY NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT’S IN THE ISSUE

Rich Kicks p26

On the cover p34

Access, It’s Great to be man p6

FHM Girlfriend p10

Big things, Small packages p42

Eat Healthy p68

24 THE DILEMMAS OF A MAN

44 GAMING

44 GAMING

86 MEAT MAD ROAD TRIP

Checking chicanes, web-slinging and Spartan fury is the line-up this season.

Checking chicanes, web-slinging and Spartan fury is the line-up this season.

FHM hitches a ride with a bunch of BARBECUE badasses on a heartclogging tour for the ages.

34 ON THE COVER

72 FHM HERO, MAD KEITH

Amy Taylor, When she is not in front of the camera, she is enjoying the sunny skies flying, keeping fit at her gym in Los Angeles or at the beach playing with her dog.

Not our words, Keith Flint’s – The Prodigy frontman who, as we found out, won’t stand for being called a firestarter.

Don’t stick out like a sore, wet thumb. Throw on the right threads to combat spring showers in style.

30 MOTORING we take a spin in some of the fanciest cars to hit the market.

Explore Belgium p14

94 TRUE STORY “If you don’t want to pay me, that’s OK. I’m going to sell his organs in Saudi Arabia.”

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IT’S GREAT TO BE A MAN EDITED BY CHRIS SAYER

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OCTOBER 2018

“What do you mean I’m funny?”

“Funny how?” Well, funny like our favourite stateside comedian…

W

e here at FHM don’t take the phrase ‘dream woman’ lightly, but Melanie Iglesias might just tick every box. The Brooklynite loves dogs, pizza and stand-up comedy; is a self-proclaimed potty mouth; could pull your pants down in a poker game, and is a fan of basically every sport. Oh, and did we mention she is lung-judderingly beautiful? So much so, that we couldn’t resist getting her back in the mag, two years since our first shoot together.

After stealing our hearts the first time around on the World Poker Tour series and MTV’s Guy Code, along with no shortage of underpant selfies on Twitter and Instagram, our Mel’s now swapped New York for California and is primed to take over our worlds all over again. So we hopped on Skype to talk magic, Cher and why you should never get her angry.

Hey Melanie, you’re a California newbie – what’s fun to do there?

Comedy is a big part of my life, so I like to go to a bunch of comedy and improv shows. Obviously LA is great for getting into shape and health and fitness, so I go hiking a lot and I eat a lot better out here. In New York, I was eating pizza and Chinese food every day.

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“I have a raunchy sense of humour. I curse a lot and I like to make people feel awkward”

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You’ve done stand-up – what’s your comedy style?

I have a raunchy sense of humour. I curse a lot and I talk a lot about things that are taboo. I like to make people feel awkward, as when I get up there they expect me to be all sweet, innocent and silly, so I give them the exact opposite. I like surprising people.

We saw on Twitter you wrote, “Something amazing is about to happen” on a scrap of paper – and then it did. Bit spooky, ain’t it?

It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I’m working on my own TV show that I get to produce, and less than 24-hours later I found out we were going through with the deal. But stuff like that always happens to me – I’ll say something and then a few days later it will come into existence.

Do you believe in magic, then?

I believe in miracles, I do.

Do you believe in ghosts?

Well, I’ve never seen one…

Do you believe in aliens?

I do believe there’s life on other planets, for sure. I just don’t know exactly which galaxy they’re in.

Most importantly, do you believe in life after love?

Life is love. When you start loving your life, love comes to you.

Sorry, that was just a cheap excuse to quote Cher.

I love Cher! I was talking to my sister about who I would most love to have brunch with, and I picked Cher as my number one woman. She’s hilarious.

We hear you’re a fan of UFC? I love anything that involves competition. I used to like to gamble, which is terrible, but when I worked in Vegas a lot; I used to love sports betting. That’s actually how I learned about most of the sports I know about. But I love UFC because it’s the purest form of competition.

Would you back yourself in the Octagon?

I fight dirty, so I’d never get in the Octagon.

I’m so tiny that I’d have to pick up whatever’s around me to defend myself. I weigh about 100lbs, so it can’t be a clean fight; I’d get demolished.

Remind us never to wind you up…

Don’t, because I can promise it won’t be a clean fight.

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Girlfriend Gabriella

From Brazil by way of Hong Kong with a little Italian and Polish thrown in for good measure, meet our geek-loving new girlfriend‌

Nick Pope

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From: Brazil Occupation: Model Instagram: @gabigauza Likes: Chocolate, chips dipped in ice cream, beaches and geeks

FHM: Hi Gabriella! Where in Brazil are you from?

Gabriella: I’m from the south, near Argentina. My great-grandfather came from Poland though, and my mum’s side is Italian. Quite a mix.

So where do the best-looking people come from? The north or south of Brazil?

Ha-ha! Well some people say the south but I don’t want to get in trouble, plus, I’ve been in England for 10 years now…

Why would you ever move here?

London’s actually quite similar to the city where my family live. It rains a lot in south Brazil and gets really cold in the winter – we don’t have snow but it does get pretty freezing, like -3˚C. You’ve travelled quite a lot. Where’s the best place?

I used to live in Hong Kong which was cool.

I got invited on private boats by the club owners. Serious party people. It was kind of crazy – we’d go in the morning and stay for a weekend. We’d just party and drink a lot…

What’s the difference between an English guy and a Brazilian guy?

I actually don’t really like dating Brazilian guys because they’re not very faithful. I know that you’ll sometimes find an English guy who’s the same but generally, they’re more loyal. Brazilians are a lot more confident; they think they own you.

Where would you like to live next?

I’d like to live in Canada.

Have you tried the weird chips, gravy and cheese curds they do?

Poutine? That’s so good, I love it.

What other kind of insanely fatty foods do you like?

I like carbonara, I like chocolate…

Really, I just like to eat.

Is the way to a girl’s heart knowing how to cook for them?

Yes, but you also have to look after her, make her smile and make her happy. It’s good to know that a guy can cook though, it definitely doesn’t hurt.

What’s the weirdest food you like?

I don’t know about me but my mum likes to dip chips in ice cream… That’s definitely a bit weird isn’t it?

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What else do you find attractive?

I like nerds; men who are very techy and like their gadgets and stuff.

So if a guy came up to you in a club, with pens in his pocket, carrying around a laptop and talking about Star Wars…?

No, that would be a bit weird for me! Not in a club, but if we were in a coffee shop, then yes.

What’s the nerdiest you’ll go? Comic Book Guy out of The Simpsons, Mark Zuckerberg…

Mark Zuckerberg – I could go there.

What would be too nerdy? What if we met you and made you watch all of the Star Wars films and wouldn’t go out with you unless you knew everything about it?

Oh god! I would leave.

Life-size model of Jar Jar Binks?

That would be creepy, I would run a mile!

Maybe I need to think of another word for nerds…

Geeks?

Geeks! I like geeks.

So there’s a geek in the coffee shop, he’s playing his video games and you’ve got your cappuccino… How does he approach you?

“I like very techy guys, nerds, and men who are into their gadgets” He can come and ask about something. It depends on the mood I’m in. If I’m not in the mood to talk, I’m going to be rude. If I’m in the mood to talk and I find him attractive, he’ll have a chance. I don’t like guys who are overconfident and get too in my face. Also, I don’t like guys who are super tanned…

Thank god for our pasty skin tone….

What else puts you off, other than perma-tanned superlads?

Wearing really low trousers that show underwear. Also, very long beards – I know it’s trendy now, but it puts me off. I like a guy with a beard but it has to be trimmed.

The long ones that haven’t been looked after are a bit disgusting. Keep it under control!

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Quick-fire round Pint or prosecco?

Prosecco, definitely Sofa or gym?

Gym! If I had more time I’d be there every day.

I do boot camp and body pump Beanie or bikini?

Beanie Twitter or Instagram?

Instagram. I use that quite a lot Bum or boobs?

Ha, I’d say bum.

Dogs or cats?

Dogs!

McDonald’s or Burger King?

Burger King, it’s much better than McDonald’s Boat ride or limo ride?

Boat ride. Those parties are crazy Bedroom or living room?

Living room, lazing about in front of the TV Heels or trainers?

Trainers!

Breakfast or dinner?

Oh, I like both!

Want to be an FHM Girlfriend?

Go to fhm.com/ girlfriend to apply

OCTOBER 2018

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: Adventures

Get smart in Belgium Take the best bits of France, a dash of Holland and the finest ale known to man, and you have Belgium: the most underrated country in Europe

Be in Bruges Bruges – or Brugge as the locals call it – is heartbreakingly pretty, a medieval city that looks like something off the front of a chocolate box.

Famous for its medieval architecture and canals, it’s the ideal place to take your lady if you need to get on her good side. After a day walking around the cobbled streets, we’d advise getting your head down in the Number 11 Guest House, a five-star B&B with the sort of posh bathrooms that turn women into wobbling wrecks.

You’ll be in her good books for months.

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Eat some serious grub Belgian food is not for the faint-hearted.

Forget the dainty sauces of neighbouring France, this is food to power peasants in the windswept fields of Flanders. Our favourites include carbonnade – a beef and beer stew; stoemp – a tasty vegetable mush from Brussels and, of course, chips with mayonnaise, which everyone eats.

Buy them from one of many frituur street stalls you’ll see in every town. Sadly, they don’t do gravy or curry sauce yet.

Go partying in Ghent OK, students are annoying but they do know how to have a good time. It’s their presence that makes Ghent (or Gent as the locals call it) such a lively place, and one that anyone looking to have a proper weekend with the lads should bear in mind. Revellers congregate in the Vrijdagmarkt and its surrounding streets to drink the night – and the following day – away. Join them.

Drink beer made by monks If you listen to so-called ‘health experts’, you might be fooled into thinking that drinking beer could be harmful to your health. Pah, these killjoys have obviously never tried the incredible brews to come from Belgium, especially potent trappist ales like Chimay and Orval. A few bottles of these God-fearing beers and you’ll be in heaven (and possibly A&E).

Brussels: rave central While Antwerp may have clothes and Bruges the culture, the Belgian capital is the clubbing centre of the country. If you like your techno hard, then long-running night FUSE puts on regular parties, while lady-friendly disco/indie can be heard at Libertine Supersport, where you’ll find DJs like Brit remixer Erol Alkan.

WORDS: ANTHONY TEASDALE. PHOTOGRAPHY: SHUTTERSTOCK, VISITBELGIUM.COM, ALAMY, FUSE.BE

Buy some clobber in Antwerp If you like your threads, then Antwerp is for you. Even the most sartorially challenged chap can transform himself with a few purchases from the stores along the thoroughfares of Nationale and Drukkerijstraat. Once your clothes are sorted, it’s a quick stroll down to Marnixplaats, a lovely square full of bars and restaurants, including the ace Fiskebar, which specialises in locally caught fish.

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LISA CANNON This tall blue-eyed blonde beauty loves to dance, surf, golf, travel, have a good laugh, and has performed in Paris at the Moulin Rouge!

Photography by Denci Freeri, MUA Erinn Ryann Royster

Were you excited to shoot for FHM? Absolutely! It has always been a dream.

Describe yourself in one sentence I am silent but mighty, unique, worldly, honest and always ready to travel. I do not give up.

What are some of your hobbies?

Dancing, Pilates, reading a good book, surfing and this year I started golf.

What Is your biggest turn on?

A man that smells good, shows confidence, has manners, a good smile, nice back/shoulders.

Also, I am a sucker for old fashion gentlemen like traits, like opening the car door for me, that one never gets old to me and always make me smile.

What turns you off the most?

Lack of communication skills and people who curse too much.

Describe to us your perfect date.

I am down for some sort of adventure. Movies and dinner can come later.

What would you consider to be your biggest challenge as a model so far?

Some jobs won’t hire you unless you have 1K or more followers which is a shame.

Any last words you would like to share with the readers?

Travel. The world is a beautiful place and it makes you appreciate life even more. And don’t be afraid to hug and mean it. You never know who has had a rough day and may need one. A hug says so many things.

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THE DILEMMAS OF MAN

CAN I LOOK GOOD ON RAINY DAYS?

LEAVE YOUR HAT ON

Hats are the must-have style accessory for spring.

They won’t keep you dry like a brolly, but they are damn cool.

Don’t stick out like a sore, wet thumb. Throw on the right threads to combat spring showers in style

SAY NO TO SHINY JACKETS

Put the shiny rain mac that makes you look like a schoolboy down. The high street is bursting with stylish Scandinavian fishermen-inspired weatherproof jackets that look good and keep you dry.

LEAVE THE WOOLLY BE

Avoid wet-dog-smelling knitwear – lightweight layering is perfect spring getup and on trend to boot.

BOOT UP, LOOK SHARP TURN IT UP

Pair your Red Wings with some slim-fit (not skinny) denim and roll up, once for beginners, twice for the more style-forward.

Downpours don’t call for postbox-red wellingtons, Paddington Bear-style, or canvas trainers. Well-made leather boots like Red Wings suffice – the creptread soles and 6in height will keep you bone dry.

THE BASIC ESSENTIALS ON HOW TO CONQUER THE RAIN FACE-SHIELDING FIVE PANELS Do: Experiment with print, slogans and materials. Mix it up for extra style cred.

Don’t: Wear it backwards.

It usually looks cool, just not when your face is dripping wet (or if you’re over 30).

PUDDLESTOMPING KICKS Do: Invest in splashproof shoes. Your plimsolls won’t withstand the wet.

Don’t: Just save them for rainy days. The beauty of these classics is they go with your standard daily outfit but will keep your tootsies in top nick.

North Face

Nike

LIGHTWEIGHT LIFE SAVER Do: Choose a nautical-looking jacket with plenty of pockets and buttons.

Don’t: Go without on a night out to save yourself £1 paying for the cloakroom.

Leaving the pub in the pissing rain without protection is not a strong look.

palladium

PHOTOGRAPHY: MARCO VITTUR. STYLING: CARLOTTA CONSTANT

WATER-REPELLENT WONDERS Do: Lather your fresh creps in this stuff.

Treat your shoes with these solutions and the water will literally roll off them.

Don’t: Coat water-ruined kicks in product once the damage is done. It will only make them worse.

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RICH KICKS Look down: your feet could be inside sacks of cash right now…

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There’s precisely 65 billion reasons why you shouldn’t buy that delicious pair of trainers you’ve been lusting after all month.

“I’ve got bills to pay” and “I need to eat”, for example. But we’ve got a reason for why you should, which totally trumps them all.

Back in February, Mick, a 30-year-old trainer collector in China, sold his 283 pairs for a tasty 1 million yuan. How much is that in British pounds?

dosh to bag himself an apartment. A real life, roofand-four-walls apartment in stinking rich Beijing. Yes, there’s a tidy profit to be had if you know your Nike Air Max from your Adidas Stan Smiths.

So that got us thinking.

Instead of signing our life away with a lifelong mortgage and selling our soul to the bank manager, we asked trainer connoisseur Morgan Weekes for four pairs of trainers that’d help us invest

Put it this way: he used the

in a six-figure collection…

THE OLD-SCHOOL HEROES “The Nike Air Flow came in some banging colours when they appeared in the ’80s,” says trainer connoisseur Morgan Weekes. “The neoprene toe still turns heads today. Trying to get hold of these 2011 versions drove me crazy.”

REPEAT AFTER US TO BLUFF YOUR WAY TO SNEAKERHEAD SUPREMACY

GRAIL A trainer with a beautiful colourway and material build that has limited availability, making them hard to get.

THE FUTURE COLLECTABLES “I’d say it’s any of the recent Adidas EQT collaborations, especially the ‘Pusha T’ version, which features a cracked Italian leather and fish scale pattern on the back panel.”

THE HOLY GRAILS “The Ronnie Feig X Asics Salmon Toe is up there at the top for me. It was released in highly limited numbers and features high-grade nubuck, leather and pigskin.”

OGs The original release of a sneaker, not a reissue.

Often on a collector’s ‘grail’ list, they are some of the hardest trainers to track down.

COP/COPPED/ COPPING Another word for ‘buying’. You might say, “I’m copping those Jordans next week.”

THE ESSENTIAL CLASSICS “A pair of Adidas ZX FLUX is a strong entry to any beginner’s collection. They have a good price point, a high level of comfort and a range of styles in varying degrees of rarity.”

DEADSTOCK/DS Originally referred to as a shoe unavailable to buy, but now used as a rating for a shoe that hasn’t been worn or removed from the box.

RESELLER Someone that camps out and buys all the stock of a release to sell on at profit. This is frowned upon in the trainer community.

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TRAINERS

HIGH SPECK It’s the trainer trend sending sneaker-heads into a frenzy: put some pep in your step and liven up your soles with some speckles

Leather and felt are fabrics made for kings

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IMP SNEARKESS HEADSER-

TRENDYG TREKKKINS KIC

Tap into ‘Normcore’ style with New Balance

PHOTOGRAPHY: MARCO VITTUR

PERFECT FO THE PRUB

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THE BAKKIE

EVOLUTION The real Mercedes-Benz X-Class is only a few months away BY

JOHN PAIGE

A new flagship to the Mercedes X-Class range is set to arrive in early 2019 with the quiet claim of being the fastest bakkie on sale. Men’s Fitness tagged along to the international test drive in Slovenia where the high altitudes and the gravel tracks converged in a similar proving ground to back home.

From the outside the X350d doesn’t

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differentiate itself vastly from the lower spec models apart from some new badging amid other little flourishes. The threepointed star still looms large, the headlights resume passenger car sleekness and there’s a confluence of European contours that tie in with the rest of the Mercedes SUV range from which it takes its cues.

Flagship status however is not attributed

to the way it looks.

Mercedes, along with Volkswagen, are in a bakkie battle for performance, taking the once agricultural workhorse and transforming it with speed, agility and comfort. There’s more emphasis on everyday driving across changing terrain than there ever has been before. As such, the X350d swaps the 2.3-litre turbodiesel,

fitted to the rest of the range, with a 3.0-litre V6 turbo diesel of mostly passenger car descent. The outputs sit at 190kW and 550Nm, 0-100kph in 7.5 seconds and a top speed of 205km/h linked to permanent all-wheel drive and a 7-speed automatic gearbox. To say the X350d is quick, is an understatement. Ostensibly the engine incorporates F1 technology. Bet you didn’t think that would be a sentence used when describing a bakkie.

In theory, x350d is, for all intents and purposes, the true authentic X-Class. It shares far fewer components with the Nissan Navara – the drivetrain is all bespoke Mercedes – while the extra structural bracing now comes to the fore when paired with the V6 turbo diesel. And it drives remarkably differently compared to the underpowered X250d with that indolent gearbox.

On the move it’s effortless and refined with plenty of in-gear surge for blissful overtakes. X-Class now drives like a bonafide Mercedes – a massive night and day difference from X250d. Yet it’s not perfect because the cabin finish is still haphazard with insufficient storage space, some frailty to controls that don’t look like they’ll age well under tough usage and a steering wheel that still doesn’t adjust for reach.

And while we can only speculate on price, it would seem a foregone conclusion that the X350d is going to become the first million rand bakkie, before adding extras.

That’s more expensive than the VW Amarok V6 turbo diesel with almost identical outputs. But at least this time, there’s substance behind the badge.

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CRUISING SPEED Touareg matures from off-road to digital luxury Making practical, family cars is a bit of a VW speciality; everything from Passat to Tiguan and even Amarok but there is one car in the range that transcends them all.

That was the impression we got driving down from Port Elizabeth to Plettenberg bay where the Touareg’s size, comfort and barrage of technology smothered the distance like a fortress on wheels.

The 3.0-litre V6 turbo diesel pulls the two-tonne Touareg along with just the right amount of force without breaking

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through the cool cabin oasis. Consumption is around 9l/100km which considering the performance underfoot once again shows why diesel was once lauded the performance fuel of choice.

The rest of the package however lives in the apogee of development. The platform for instance is the very latest (shared with Cayenne, Urus and Bentayga) with clever anti-roll stabilisation and air suspension for road-holding precision.

Yet the real innovation is the cockpit,

providing you have the extra money to spend on the options. The Innovision dualscreen setup stitches two independentlyoperated screens across the dashboard, swallowing all normal switchgear in the process and depositing it in a vibrant display. Couple this to the several driving modes (including autonomous) and Touareg really does bring out the best of both worlds.

TWIN TURBO THREAT BMW adds potent M gunpowder to iconic M2

It’s now called BMW M2 Competition and it’s the only M2 you can buy. As the name so rationally implies, this is the smallest, cheapest M car on sale, and BMW’s sent it to the school of going fast around a racetrack – although there is no

M2 race series. Pity.

This is no mildly retuned BMW M2. Sure the cosmetic changes of black grille and bigger front bumper, new larger wheels may come across as superficial upgrades but the core of the package takes on real meaning with full-on M-Power.

While the previous M2 was a blend of M componentry, this one has beefed up the hardware to become a true, truncated M4.

Twin turbo charged 3.0-litre straight six and upgraded cooling put it on the same mechanical footing as the M4 but with its power clipped slightly to 302kW although torque is equal at 550Nm.

In company of Audi RS3 and Mercedes A 45 AMG, the M2 Competition’s power moves the goalposts but boldly deviates from the usual all-wheel drive recipe.

Around Spain’s Ascari circuit, you’d have it no other way; M2 remains transparent and communicative with mischievous wiggles under hard acceleration. A real driver’s car honed to perfection.

BMW M2 Competition arrives later this year in manual or automatic. Consider for a second M2’s iconic status, while this one improves on it in every conceivable way.

You want one.

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Amy Taylor When she is not in front of the camera, she is enjoying the sunny skies flying, keeping fit at her gym in Los Angeles or at the beach playing with her dog.

Photography by Chris Paul Thompson @chrispaulthompson, PR Agency: SGG Public Relations @sggpublicrelations HMUA: Lori Young @loriyoungmakeup, Stylist: Jessica Margolis @jsmargolis

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Were you excited to shoot this feature?

Of course! FHM is such an iconic brand, and it’s a huge honour to be a part of it. Being able to work with the best photographers and crew made for a spectacular shoot full of beautiful images, so it has been fun from step 1 through to the final product. I’m so grateful for the opportunity!

Which three words best describe you?

Intelligent, funny, and sexy.

If you weren’t a model, what would you be?

I am the other thing I want to be besides a model, I’m also a pilot. If I weren’t those two things, I’d still be the thing I was between undergrad and grad school - a scientist (it was a blast, it just didn’t pay well enough). With a lot of effort and still with a lot of gratitude, I’m lucky to have done the things I’ve wanted to do in life.

What does your typical day look like?

When I’m home I get up, walk my dog, make some coffee, attend to online work for a couple of hours, work out, eat, run whatever errands are necessary, and then either have evening plans or stay in and relax.

When I’m out of town it really varies on where I am, what I’m there for, and who I’m with. It could be vacation, family time, tourism, or work. I post many of my days on Twitter, if you’d like to check out my life!

When you are not busy modelling, what is your favourite thing to do?

Two things are tied. Staying fit and flying planes. Both make me really happy, and I do both in a sort of top-shelf way (trainers and private classes, and flying state-of-the-art planes in beautiful places).

Who is your celeb crush?

Angelina Jolie, of course. Not only the most beautiful woman who’s ever lived in my opinion, but also a spectacular and fascinating person.

Do you have anyone special in your life?

Tell us a bit more.

I date a couple of men casually but devotedly, and I adore them. They make life worth living. But my main “someone special” is my 3-year-old Brussels Griffon. He’s my main love.

What is the one thing about yourself that you wish more people knew?

That when I seem terse or even mean, it’s simply my refusal to waste my life on that which I don’t want to do. I’m rigorous with my focus, and that can make people angry (they want me to focus where I don’t want to).

Where to from here? What are your plans for the future?

Continuing to travel the world, stay healthy and fit, model until it ends, and fly until I’m no longer able. It’s a fun, balanced life full of adventure and varied activity, and I fully plan to enjoy it until I can’t. More of the same, please!

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Big things come in small packages Small city cars have taken over the streets. The original revolutionary Smart car isn’t going to take that lying down...

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INTERIOR DESIGN The three-spoke sports steering wheel comes in leather and the steering wheel bezel in anthracite and grey top-stitching.

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CLEAR STEERING Includes a direct-steer system with speedsensitive steering power assistance and variable steering ratio.

03

LISTEN UP AUX/USB, Bluetooth with hands-free, audio streaming for music transfer and smart-cross connect app for iOS and Android.

04

KITTED OUT The Sports package and the Cool & Audio package are already on board the Smart car fortwo as standard features.

Like the plot of some ’80s breakdance movie, the Smart car gang are gearing up to take back the city that’s rightfully theirs. When it arrived first in 1998, the world didn’t know what to make of the titchy little half-a-car that could park facing the kerb and easily get confused for a weird moped. The Smart car, it turned out, was a brilliant re-imagining of what a car could be in the city, and it changed motoring forever.

For a bit, anyway. That is, until everybody else jumped on the bandwagon. Soon came the Citroën C1, Toyota iQ, VW up! and more.

Before long, everyone had a ‘Little Car’. That means this new Smart is going to have to step up if it wants to take the top spot again…

Four motors that make the Smart car look like Goliath Itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny cars for man-abouttown types have been razzing round for generations

THE BIG QUESTIONS

BMW ISETTA (1953) ‘BUBBLE CAR’ This egg-like car started out as a motorcycle development. Just 2.3m long and 1.5m wide.

FIAT 500 (1957) It’s less than 3m long and is 1 .3m wide but this little car sold millions in various forms worldwide.

PEEL 50 (1962) It’s 1.3m long and just under 1m wide. In all, 47 of the Isle of Man-made cars were sold of the initial run at £199 each.

WORDS: CONOR McNICHOLAS. PHOTOGRAPHY: REX

What happened to the back half?

Very funny. But yes, the Smart is disarmingly small. It looks like it’s popped out of a car compactor and makes everything around it look like a rugby player.

It looks… weird.

Word is that Apple is not just interested in making laptops and smartphones but it’s investigating making a car, too. Who knows what it’ll look like if it does, but we’d bet it’d be something like this hunk of metal. The new Smart is so compact, curvy, cute and kick-ass, it could easily be related to an iPad Mini.

What’s this Smart got going on?

It retains the tridion shell principle of the original Smart – essentially a steel bubble that encases the driver and passenger to make the it super-safe, despite its size. The slick front grille makes it look like it’s been brought back from the future and options for coloured alloys set the car up as a design statement. The whole feel is that of a luxury motor from 2025 that’s been shrunk down due to the effects of time teleportation.

Do I have to drive like a granny?

Er, yes. A bit. Look, there’s no two ways about it: if you want to screech round corners like you’re in Bad Boys III, this is not the car for you. The Smart is about fun and responsive driving, but when your car is about the size of a kitchen table then there has to be a limit. The Smart is about economy and at 70mpg, it’ll make sure you stare in bafflement trying to remember what a petrol station is.

Small equals cheap inside, right?

Absolutely not. There isn’t another car interior in the world that has as much impact as the Smart. From the techno-fabric dashboard to the curvy binnacle swoops, the retro temperature slider to the perky rev counter, everything about the interior is pop luxury.

Sounds nice, but isn’t it a bit pricey?

This car is steep for its size, but what you lose in bulk you make up for in class. If you want small and cheap there are loads of other options that will get you about just fine, but you’re paying for the quality of the design.

Am I going to get laughed at by blokes?

Maybe, but who cares? There are some chaps who would never be able to wear a car this small. Some men will always want a BMW M-Monster with turbo-charged stripes. For those in the real world who want to get about, you’ll want something practical and stylish that won’t have you scraping other motors when you park up.

Am I going to get laughed at by women?

Turn up in this and you’ll look the ultimate metrosexual – a man comfortable with the size of his penis and sense of style who’s in touch with his feelings. Hopefully, this will help you get in touch with her feelings too.

TATA NANO (2008) Designed as the cheapest car in the world, it’s 3m long to take four passengers but just 1 .5m wide to keep them cosy.

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My Spartan Senses are Tingling Checking chicanes, web-slinging and Spartan fury is the line-up this season.

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MARVEL’S SPIDER-MAN O

ver the last few years, Marvel has dominated the silver screen with their incredibly popular Marvel Cinematic Universe, yet for some odd reason there is yet to be a good Marvel video game. This however is about to change as Marvel and Insomniac Games team up to bring you probably the best superhero game ever.

The PS4 exclusive Marvel’s Spider-Man is an absolutely incredible game, perfectly capturing the thrills and excitement of being the friendly neighbourhood SpiderMan. Unlike the latest movie, Spider-Man/ Peter Parker has 8 years of crime-fighting experience behind him and he is as comfortable with his superpowers as he is in his Spidey tights. A new villain has arrived on the scene and threatens everything

Peter Parker holds dear, and as Spider-Man you will require all your skills to survive.

Fortunately Insomniac Games has done the impossible, actually making you feel like Spider-Man with improvisational combat, dynamic acrobatics, fluid urban traversal and endless environmental interaction. It’s hard to express how good it feels to swing through the wonderfully recreated New York, swinging from building to building, seamlessly entering combat and unleashing your full Spidey fury. Another nice surprise is the addition of playing as Peter Parker, dealing with his day to day life is a welcome change of pace and adds to the overall experience. Overall, this is the ultimate superhero game and sets the bar incredibly high for any future Marvel games.

OCTOBER 2018

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F1 2018 the new season of the FIA W ithFormula One World Championships

in full swing, the official video game for 2018 aims to improve upon its predecessor in numerous ways. Hailed by critics as the best F1 game ever, F1 2017 was a massive improvement for the franchise and this year’s version looks to expand upon an already solid game. As always the teams, drivers and tracks are up to date for the new season, plus all the cars and decals are spot on. Visually it’s as gorgeous as ever with each car and track looking more realistic

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than ever, thanks to an improved lighting system and all-new atmospherics that truly gives the game a sense of scale and grandeur. The authenticity doesn’t stop there as F1 2018 will feature a player managed Energy Recovery System for the first time in the franchise history, adding another strategic element to an already ultra-realistic racer. This year will also see the addition of more classic cars, a feature that was highly praised in 2017’s version, with the promise of more to be added on through DLC in time. The career mode has also been greatly

expanded, promising to immerse players even deeper into the world of Formula One so they may truly experience the daily lives of an F1 driver. Codemasters has become synonymous with great racing titles and once again they live up to that billing, F1 2018 improves on an already solid racing game, offering you the ultimate driving experience.

ASSASSIN’S CREED: ODYSSEY After the immense success of AC: Origins, both financially and critically, Ubisoft returns with another epic Assassin’s Creed adventure this time set during the peak of Greece’s Golden Age. Playing as a Spartanborn warrior, you set out to solve the mystery of a legendary broken spear, once wielded by the great Spartan king Leonidas, as you travel all over the beautiful setting of Greece.

The franchise first sees you choose between two characters at the start, the two siblings Alexios and Kassandra, with each character featuring different missions and unique

dialogue options. Another franchise-first is the addition of aforementioned dialogue options, allowing you to interact with others in whatever way you choose, be it aggressive or helpful, each option changing how the scenario will end. It’s a surprisingly welcome addition and expertly handled by the Ubisoft team. Gameplay wise Odyssey feels very similar to last year’s Origins, with some tweaks made here and there. Your character’s fighting style is more aggressive however, with the shield being entirely removed and relying on aggression and parries to defeat

your opponents. A major highlight however is the addition of epic clashes between Sparta and Athens, pitting big battles between 300 soldiers during the deadliest conflicts of the time, the Peloponnesian War. Naval combat also makes a welcome return and sailing the seas never felt so good. As per all Ubisoft games, Odyssey looks amazing and Greece feels truly alive as you travel from idyllic beaches to arid deserts to volcanic mountain ranges. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is another home run for Ubisoft and a must play if you loved last year’s Origins.

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How did one woman in Texas win the lottery not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times?

NATHANIEL RICH 48

OCTOBER 2018

SHOP OWNER SUN BAE IN TIMES MARKET, BISHOP, TEXAS

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news on 2 July 2010 – much like the news of the preceding 18 months – was dreadful. The unemployment rate was approaching 10% and home sales were declining at a record rate. But on the bottom of the front page of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times local section, there was an article with happier news: ‘Bishop native wins millions for fourth time’. A 63-year-old woman named Joan R Ginther had won $10 million, the top prize in the Texas Lottery’s Extreme Payout scratchcard game.

Ginther’s cumulative winnings now totalled $20.4 million. Three of her golden tickets had been purchased in Bishop, Texas, a small, poor town two hours north of the Mexican border. The fourth ticket was bought in neighbouring Kingsville.

“She’s obviously been born under a lucky star,” said a Texas Lottery Commission spokesman, who said they did not suspect foul play.

Ginther could not be reached for comment.

Ginther’s story was syndicated by hundreds of newspapers worldwide, under headlines like ‘Lottery queen’ and ‘Luckiest woman on Earth’. Websites devoted to the paranormal, the occult, and Christianity concluded that Ginther was a master of visualisation techniques; that the constellations had been in perfect alignment; that the woman must have prayed really hard.

A four-time lottery winner did seem unlikely, but how unlikely was it really? Mathematicians were consulted. They found the odds of such a thing occurring were one in eighteen septillion.

Eighteen septillion looks like this:18,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000.

There are one septillion stars in the universe, and one septillion grains of sand on Earth. With one-in-eighteen-septillion odds, it can be expected that a person should have Ginther’s good luck about once every quadrillion years. Since the sun will envelop our planet in just five billion years, it is unlikely that another Earthling will repeat her success.

There were some other peculiar details about Ginther. Her first winning ticket came in 1993, but the last three came more than a decade later, in two-year intervals. Ginther also does not live in Texas. Though she was born in Bishop, she has lived in Las Vegas for many years. Finally, before retiring, she had been a maths professor, with a PhD from Stanford. She specialised in statistics.

Ginther was called a ‘mystery woman’ but it was left at that.

Other stories soon claimed the public’s attention. On 23 July 2010, a black bear in Larkspur, Colorado, broke into a Toyota Corolla, sat in the driver’s seat, defecated, honked the horn, then drove the car 125ft until it crashed into a thicket. The Luckiest Woman on Earth was old news. Americans moved on.

But not all of us. I found myself trying to visualise 18 Earthsworth of sand and 18 universes of stars.

I called a statistics professor who said, from a statistical standpoint, it was likely that some sort of fraud had been perpetrated. A professor at the Institute for the Study of Gambling & Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno, said, “When something like this unlikely happens in a casino, you arrest them first and ask questions later.”

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I drove to South Texas the next morning. I spoke with dozens of people in Bishop and in neighbouring towns. I later interviewed every lottery expert that I could find in the state: former lottery employees, mathematicians, and a woman in the Dallas suburbs who has devoted more than 20 years of her life to studying the Texas Lottery. I learned that there are only three possible explanations for what happened in Bishop.

All three are exceedingly unlikely. There are limits even to miracles.

I. The Inside Job

Of all forms of lottery games, scratchcards are the most vulnerable to fraud. The most common example is the Retailer Scam. One made headlines in 2011 when a customer tried to redeem a $10,000 scratchcard at a Baltimore liquor store. The clerk, Melissa Stone, told the customer that the ticket was not a winner. The next day, Stone tried to collect the money herself at the lottery headquarters, only to be arrested for grand theft.

The customer had been an undercover cop.

Far more devastating to a lottery is an individual who leaks inside information. If a person wanted to scam the Texas Lottery, she would likely have to know a highly placed employee at GTECH Holdings – the company that serves as the lottery’s distributor. This employee would need to have access not just to the encrypted files which list the winning scratchcards, but also the shipping schedules. In Ginther’s case, she would have to wait until a winning ticket was slated to show up in Bishop – it would look too suspicious for her to travel around the state’s 17,000 vendors, cherry-picking jackpots.

The possibility would remain, however, that a townsperson might buy the winning ticket before Ginther was able to get to Bishop. To ensure that this didn’t happen, a third person would have to be enlisted as an accomplice: the store owner. The store owner would refuse to sell the packs that included the winning ticket. When Ginther arrived, she would buy every available ticket from the store owner.

The owner of the Times Market in Bishop, where Joan Ginther frequently buys her tickets, is called Sun Bae. When asked about Ginther, Bae told a journalist, “She is a very generous woman.

She’s helped so many people.”

Bae is one of these people. She has seen a significant increase in business since Ginther purchased two of her winning tickets at the Times Market. Bae’s store had become one of the top retailers in the county. Lottery tickets are now the town’s best-known commodity.

Bishop is very poor, and it is dying. There is no grocery store, one high school and two bars. Young people leave as soon as they finish high school. The Main Street is desolate, a two-block stretch of boarded-up brick buildings with faded signs, and houses in the town burn down with unsettling regularity. Now that the old downtown businesses – Murphy’s grocery store, the Bishop Drug Company, and El Nuevo Mundo clothing store – are gone, the people of Bishop congregate mainly at the gas stations.

From the outside, Times Market doesn’t appear particularly prosperous. The ‘e’ in ‘market’ has fallen off the marquee.

Stray cats wander through the parking lot. The front window is decorated with a large poster from the Texas Lottery: ‘Winning

ticket sold here!’

“This is the luckiest store,” says Bob Solis, a cheerful employee on his forties with a squinty smile. He has worked at Times Market since Bae opened the store several years ago and believes it is charmed. “Every day we have a winner.”

Bae is not around, but Solis speaks highly of her. “She’s the best boss I’ve ever had.” When asked whether he had ever met Ginther he hesitates, his eyes looking out to the parking lot.

He acknowledges that he had seen her a couple of times, but the only person she speaks to is Bae. Whenever Ginther comes in, he says, all the customers in the store gather around her, quietly watching to see which tickets she buys.

Bae is an extraordinarily slender middle-aged Korean woman with a fluttery, anxious quality to her movements. She seems alarmed when we finally do meet, backing down the aisles of the store as if seeking cover behind the racks of snack mix and canned spaghetti sauce. Her responses are evasive and hard to interpret.

She glares at us when we say she has a lucky store. “We already talked everything,” she says.

“Why you need something more? I don’t want to talk.” She vanishes into a back room.

“She must have something on her mind,” says Solis, shrugging.

Almost everyone in Bishop has a story about Ginther’s generosity. Ginther hands out lottery tickets to strangers. She visits the home for seniors and gives tickets to the patients and the nurses. She sends tickets to soldiers in Iraq. She tips gas station clerks $50 when she buys tickets. She pays people to scratch tickets for her. Ginther saw a woman leaving a car dealership in Kingsville in tears; the woman’s credit check hadn’t gone through.

“Let’s go back in,” said Ginther. She asked the dealer what was wrong.

“Credit’s no good,” said the dealer.

“Give her the keys,” said Ginther. “I’ll pay for it.”

Several people in the town mention that Ginther had been around quite recently. Local man Ricardo Lopez says she was in Bishop just a week ago. He says that Ginther comes to Bishop twice a year and stays for about a month at the Days Inn. It is the only motel in town, just a couple of hundred yards away from the Times Market.

The next morning, we return to the store. Bob Solis is at the register. His smile quickly morphs into an uneasy, defensive glower. He refuses to make eye contact. We tell him that, contrary to what he had said the previous day, Ginther had apparently been to the Times Market just a week earlier. We’ve heard that she comes for a month at a time and spends her days at the Times Market.

“I’ve never seen her,” says Solis. “She comes at night.”

“Wait – now you’re saying you’ve never even seen her?”

“I’ve never seen her.”

“Joan R Ginther purchased two of her winning scratchcards at Times Market, Bishop. It doesn’t appear particularly prosperous. The ‘e’ in ‘market’ has fallen off the marquee.

Stray cats wander the parking lot”

II. The Code CRACKER

Of all forms of lottery games, scratchcards leave the least to chance. Winning cards are not, in fact, distributed randomly.

If they were, that would leave open the possibility that all the jackpots might appear in the very first batch of cards shipped to stores. The winning cards might all be claimed within a week.

The Lottery would be out millions in prize money without having sold nearly enough tickets to cover the payouts.

To avoid this scenario, the Texas Lottery divides its print run into six batches, or pools, with each pool of half a million cards containing the same number of jackpots. When a game goes on sale, the first pool is shipped off to stores. Successive pools aren’t released until the preceding one is close to selling out.

This system guarantees that the lottery never loses.

Joan (pronounced ‘Jo-Ann’) Rae Ginther was born on a Tuesday in 1947, April Fools’ Day. Her father, who died

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in 2007, was for 30 years Bishop’s town doctor, a hero in the community. She attended college at the University of Texas at Austin, where she majored in mathematics. After graduating in 1969, she was admitted to Stanford’s School of Education. At the time, Stanford’s mathematics education program was the best in the country, if not the world.

After graduation, Ginther joined the faculty of a new community college, Evergreen Valley, in San Jose. She worked there in the ’80s, continuing her research into mathematics education. She co-wrote a pre-algebra textbook in 1986. No one in Bishop knows what she was doing between then and 2006, when she won her first jackpot.

The algorithms used by lottery commissions to determine the placement of jackpot scratchcards are called pseudorandom number generators. The ‘pseudo’ derives from the fact that true randomness is not something that can be achieved by computers. The algorithm works by issuing a series of seemingly random numbers in a predictable sequence. The series might be very long, but it’s not infinite. As Gerald Busald, a professor of mathematics at San Antonio College, explains, “If you can get into the sequence, the numbers are not random anymore. There’s no way to get around it that I know of.”

Busald’s point was proved in 1995 by Ronald Harris, an electrical engineer for the Nevada State Gaming Control Board. Harris studied a random-number generator that casinos used to supply numbers for Keno, a computerised game of chance that is similar to lotto. He and a friend flew to New Jersey and checked into Bally’s Park Place Hotel, where the same software was being used. The friend went to the Keno lounge; Harris sat in the hotel room watching a closed-circuit TV channel on which hotel guests could see the Keno numbers as they were drawn. As the numbers appeared, Harris punched them into his laptop. Once he figured out where in the sequence the number generator was, he told his friend what numbers to bet on. The friend won $100,000, the largest Keno jackpot ever awarded in Atlantic City.

As a result, most traditional lotteries still use the old-school system of ping-pong balls being drawn out of an air-fix machine. Scratchcards, however, have always been generated by computers.

To beat the lottery’s algorithm, one would have to use a strategy similar to the one employed by card counters in casinos. An expert

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counter cannot predict what cards he will draw, but he does know when the odds for being dealt a good hand are higher. If the odds are favourable, he increases his bets. Ginther would have had to analyse the results of all the previous high-stakes scratchcard games to determine where in the sequence of tickets the jackpots usually appeared. She could easily have gathered this information from the website of Dawn Nettles, a woman in her sixties who has been obsessively monitoring the Texas Lottery since 1993.

But it would take more than figuring out when the winning ticket was going to come up. She would also have to determine where that ticket would be shipped. This part of the equation is more straightforward. GTECH Holdings processes its shipments in the same sequence for every order. If you knew how the winners were distributed within a given pool, and matched that to where those tickets wound up, you could figure out GTECH Holdings’ normal shipping order, and where the winners would be distributed around the state.

Once she discovered a pattern, Ginther would have had to wait until a winning ticket was scheduled to show up in a sparsely populated region – the less competition for that winning ticket, the better. It would be crucial to pick a place that she had reason to visit, such as Bishop and the surrounding towns. It would also be helpful if the store owner held the tickets for her.

III. Dumb LUCK

Of all forms of lottery games, scratchcards are by far the most popular. According to a study commissioned by the Lottery in 2006, the more education a person has, the fewer dollars he or she spends on the lottery, and the demographic differences are even starker when it comes to scratchcard games. “Scratch-off tickets are to the lottery what crack is to cocaine,” said a Democratic state senator from El Paso when $50 cards were introduced.

It may be true that a person who plays the lottery four times in her life has one-in-eighteen-septillion odds of winning four high-stakes jackpots. But once a person plays more than four times, her odds begin to increase. The majority of lottery winners continue to play the lottery after their first win, and play heavily.

Even then, it still seems outlandish that someone could win four jackpots, but there is a persistent rumour in Bishop that Ginther hasn’t won four jackpots – she’s won three.

“Her dad – he’s the one who won the lotto,” says Ricardo Lopez, referring to her first jackpot in 1993. It was a pick-six, her only non-scratchcard winner. “But he was elderly, retired, and he couldn’t spend it. So he gave the ticket to his daughter and she claimed it. She wasn’t into buying tickets then.”

“She was in the Virgin Islands on vacation,” agrees a local woman called Pia. “Her parents called her about the ticket and she came back to claim it.”

People in Bishop estimate that Ginther buys about 3,000 tickets a year. If she has been buying tickets at that rate since 1993, when her father won the lottery, she’s bought more than 50,000 tickets. If she indeed has purchased 50,000 tickets over a 17-year period, between 1993 and 2010, when she won her last jackpot (at a cost of approximately $1 million), the odds of her winning three times is one in 8,000.

PHOTOGRAPHY: PA

This scenario would still make Ginther the luckiest gambler in the world – and one of the most reckless at that. If she had instead bet that $1 million on the roulette wheel, both her odds of winning (37 to 1) and her payout ($35 million rather than $20.4 million) would have been significantly better. It would also mean that, as soon as her father won his jackpot, she forgot everything she knew about statistics and started sinking vast sums into the lottery. Which all seems pretty unlikely.

“I think she’s addicted,” says Dawn Nettles, the woman who monitors the Texas Lottery. “She moved to the gambling capital of the world. I bet she spends all her time in casinos. I’ll bet you she will eventually be broke to where she can’t buy them. I’ll bet you she loses it all.”

Almost nobody in Bishop believed that Ginther is anything other than outrageously fortunate. Scepticism on this subject is considered sacrilege. Ginther’s success confirmed the common belief in the benefits of positive thinking. The locals propose various theories to support their conviction: Ginther was a churchgoing woman, they say, over and over. She gave money to the needy. She was a good daughter. Her success was a form of cosmic compensation for her father’s lifelong devotion to Bishop’s sick and elderly.

The implication of this line of argument was clear: without the belief that a life could be transformed by a single stroke of luck, there would be nothing left to hope for. And Bishop is full of people who are waiting for their luck to change.

Before we leave Bishop, we make a stop at the City Office, where we meet Anna-Linda Morales, the woman who many people in town describe as Ginther’s best friend. When we ask her whether Ginther had visited Bishop recently, Morales demurs. Then I ask whether Ginther is in fact in Bishop at that very moment.

“No,” says Morales, then she catches herself.

“I’m not saying.” It occurs to us that Ginther might that minute be holed up at the Days Inn, waiting for the nosy reporter to leave town.

Morales refuses to speak any further about her friend, but she and another woman in her office, Cynthia, do talk to us at length about Bishop. In May 2010, the town celebrated its centennial. In the office, there was a display case containing a 1960 newspaper article about a local boy who had become a famous athlete.

“There were a lot more people in Bishop back then,” says Cynthia with a sigh. The sombre mood lifts, however, when we ask the two women whether they ever bought lottery tickets. We might as well have asked whether they ate food or took showers. They both burst into peels of laughter. When they realise that we’re not trying to make a joke, they go quiet.

“Well, doesn’t everybody buy lottery tickets?” asks Cynthia, confused.

“Everybody buys tickets,” says Morales, reassuring me.

“Everybody.”

Y O U R

C H A N C E S O F W I N N I N G B I G A R E S MA L L. . .

PEOPLE’S POSTCODE LOTTERY

MAX PRIZE: £2,000,000* monthly

Odds of winning 1 in 1 .7m approx

HEALTH LOTTERY MAX PRIZE: £100,000

AGEUK WEEKLY LOTTERY MAX PRIZE: £100,000

SCRATCHCARD

Odds of winning 1 in 2,118,760

MAX PRIZE: £4,000,000

Odds of winning 1 in 4,313,355

THUNDERBALL

Odds of winning 1 in 8,060,598

MAX PRIZE: £500,000

NATIONAL LOTTERY MAX PRIZE: £12,500,00 (Average)

READER’S DIGEST SWEEPSTAKES

MAX PRIZE: £250,000

EUROMILLIONS MAX PRIZE: £24,000,000

Odds of winning 1 in 8,060,598

Odds of winning 1 in 17,000,000

Odds of winning 1 in 116,531,800 * Calculated down from £2 million and how many residences exist within the postcode

OCTOBER 2018

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WIN AT LIFE

t o w o H e @ t n h i w

EDITED BY JORDAN WALLER

Upgrade your cat-based Instagram photos and your YouTube rants while making some cool millions in the process.

FHM meets the internet entrepreneurs who’ve turned their social followings into a business…

int rnet !

54

(BY THE PEOPLE WHO’VE DONE IT)

OCTOBER 2018

a o t n i s d i v r e g r Turn your bu

food empire SORTEDfood was launched in May 2010 in the form of a YouTube channel by Jamie Safford, Ben Ebbrell, Barry James Taylor and Mike Huttlestone as a means to share easy and delicious food recipes between themselves…

“After we all moved away to university, we’d all try and meet up once in a while in our local pub,” explains Ben. “I was training to be a chef and the guys would wind me up with the all of the shocking, disgusting food they were eating: microwaved donor kebabs and stuff like that.

“Eventually I started writing down simple recipes on beer mats for the guys and over time, they started cooking them and filming the process on YouTube.”

The idea, which was initially started as a fun way for the friends to stay in touch, started to pick up traction across the site and the group slowly managed to carve themselves an audience.

“We were only getting about 50 views per video at first,” continues Ben. “But after a while people started commenting and suggesting other recipes they wanted to learn.

It started to snowball from there. We were really just lucky that nobody else was doing it at the time. We never saw it as a business but then suddenly, the idea of a ‘YouTuber’ took off and we managed to ride that wave.”

5

RULES TO BEING A YOUTUBE HIT

This marked the transition from part-time YouTubers to transforming the SORTEDfood channel into a real business. The friends quit their day jobs to work on the project full time – a risky punt as, at that time, most other graduates were struggling to find full-time employment anywhere. But, it paid off. To date, the channel has more than 1 million subscribers, has racked up over 104 million video views and gained a combined social following in excess of 100k. As of last year, the company had 14 employees with a projected revenue of over £2.3 million. It’s grown into

one of the largest food YouTube channels in the world. The Guardian newspaper placed the friends fourth in their list of ‘Top Young People in Digital Media under the age of 30’. Put simply, SORTEDfood is now one of the largest online food networks in the world. The guys have even released best-selling books.

“We’ve been working on a SORTEDfood app that we want to turn into the Facebook of food,” says Ben. “Then we just want to keep doing this for as long as possible and carry on making it better.”

FOLLOW YOUR PASSION Pick a topic and content theme that you’re passionate about. Without that

BE TRANSPARENT The beauty of YouTube is that you’re in control at every step so you

LEARN TO LISTEN Your audience are the best source of feedback and can help shape your future content.

COLLABORATE Teaming up with content creators of a similar size and producing content together can be

NEVER STOP TWEAKING After you publish a piece of content, you’ll have stacks of analytical data that

passion, you’re just going through the motions and your audience will see straight through it.

should be OK to share everything.

Behind the scenes bits, bloopers and the ‘making of it’ are just as valuable.

Nearly every video that SORTEDfood made came from a comment under the video.

really strong. Not only does it add variety but it also helps with audience sharing.

is worth keeping an eye on. It’ll help shape what you’re doing in your next few videos.

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Tweet yourself

all the way to the bank

In August 2011, London was falling down in the midst of rioting sparked by the shooting of Mark Duggan. In the chaos, writer David Levin used Twitter to quash rumours that his local pub, The Dolphin, was being burned down. His account soon went viral…

The riots were a worldwide trending topic and the carnage was being tracked in real time on Twitter. Like many Londoners that evening, David was scouring for online updates, keeping track of the destruction close to his home, when he stumbled across news that his local pub, The Dolphin, was burning down. Running to his window, he saw that this wasn’t actually true and blasted off a tweet to quash the rumours.

The tweet picked up traction in the Twittersphere, with hundreds of users responding in relief, sharing their own jokes

about the pub. Seeing the potential for a parody account, he quickly created one, @The_Dolphin_ Pub and made a few jokes about the place fighting off the rioters.

“It was just nonsense really, but I woke up the next day and the account had picked up over 1,000 followers and people like Caitlin Moran and Rizzle Kicks were retweeting it.

“I decided to keep it going for a few days and the followers just kept coming, so I told the owners of the pub. Within a few weeks they started getting loads of new customers. It was incredible and the owners loved it. So I just carried on, making jokes about R Kelly” The Dolphin pub quickly became a Twitter phenomena and turned David into a mysterious superpower of the social media site, followed by Londoners and celebrities alike, picking up thousands of retweets.

“I started having fun with it, testing different

KEEP IT SHORT People are so lazy now that even 124 characters is too many. I generally find, and the stats also back this up, that the shorter a tweet is, the better chance it has off being picked up – 100 Characters or less.

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BE HUMAN People want to follow real people, regardless of how big your brand or followers are. You should look at it like you’re emailing a friend. Don’t be a robot.

things. During the Olympics I did a Twitter quiz from the account and it became a trending topic, which was mental. Suddenly brands started contacting me to help them with their own accounts.

“The first big job I was offered was running the feed of BBC’s The Voice. I ended up breaking BBC records and suddenly the whole thing became a full-time job. I was introduced to David Schneider [comedian and Alan Partridge writer] and a short while later we set up a social media company called That Lot.” Four years later and David is now a 124-character expert who comes recommended by Twitter itself as an authority, and is regularly sought after by brands like Adidas and TV shows like Have I Got News For You.

STAND OUT There’s so much happening on Twitter, you need to cut through the noise. Whether that’s posting reactive topical quizzes about things like the Brits or just jokes about Jägerbombs at The Dolphin.

KNOW YOUR SHIT The amount of people that don’t realise that starting a tweet with an @handle will only go to that one person.

STAY AHEAD Keep up to date with new developments.

Vine and Instagram will bring your feed to life. I’m looking at how I can use Twitter’s new live streaming app Periscope.

Develop your sepia-toned Instagrams

into a career

At the beginning of 2012, Emmanuel Cole, had just managed to land his first proper job working as a door knocker for a charity. With his first paycheque he invested in a contract phone and, like most people, spent the first few days raiding the app store. It was there that he stumbled across the still relatively new photo app, Instagram…

“I didn’t really ‘get’ Instagram at first, but I quite liked the idea of it,” says Emmanuel. “The job that I was doing at the time allowed me to travel quite a lot around the UK, and on my travels I was taking loads of pictures.”

The majority of these photos found their way on to Emmanuel’s Instagram profile, which slowly – through the clever use of hashtags – began to garner an audience.

HOW TO RACK UP THE LIKES

“I started to get involved with small communities on the app,” he continues.

“I was messaging them for advice, and taking pictures every day to train my eye.” Within months, Emmanuel was featured by Instagram on its coveted ‘suggested user’ list. The nod of approval from the app makers saw his following leap from a respectable 2,000 to more than 22,000.

“That’s when it began,” he says. “It all changed.” His sudden profile boost meant he was approached by Levi’s to shoot one of the brand’s campaigns. “That was an amazing experience. Afterwards, I decided to take a short

break and went to New York. When I was there I met loads of other photographers and Instagrammers, and decided to quit my job to it full time.

“I still didn’t know what I was really doing but I knew I had something. I just started spending more and more time honing my skills and learning my craft.”

Within six months, he was contacted by Apple to do a talk about getting the most out of Instagram. Following that, he picked up his second big client in the form of Adidas, who he’s since continued to work with on a regular basis, among others.

TAP INTO THE COMMUNITY When I first started, I would hashtag everything to bring in

ADVERTISE YOURSELF Not everyone does this, which is a mistake if you’re

WALK WITH YOUR EYES WIDE With my first proper job, I got the chance to travel, which

IMITATE NOTHING It’s a great idea to follow lots of other people and get inspiration but after a

NUMBERS DON’T MEAN A THING Just because you have a massive morning with lots

new followers and likes. In the beginning, it was good for gaining a bigger audience.

wanting to actually get work from your online activity. People need to be able to contact you if they’re interested.

opened my eyes to lots of things and inspired all of my work. Get out there and see everything you can.

while, you need to step back from that and learn what your own style is. Be your own brand, and don’t imitate others.

of likes, doesn’t always mean that you’ve made it. You have to constantly work at it if you want success.

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AYA Photography by Ryan Dwyer, HMUA Bridget Martinez Produced by Main Street Productions

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Aya was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and immigrated to Brooklyn, New York at 4-years-old. Her tough and can-do attitude comes from living in the Big Apple for most of her life although she now calls sunny Los Angeles home.

Although her looks may state otherwise, Aya is an avid gamer and has been known to showcase her talents streaming. She also has attended New York University and has avid knowledge of pathology and mortuary science. She loves to travel and experience what the world has to offer.

If you want to get into her good books, you need to have a good sense of humour, ambition, and drive, as these are her favourite qualities. Bonus is if you are nerdy and love pets, especially cats. A perfect date for her would consist of a nice, quiet dinner at a new restaurant that she’s never been to before.

However, you’ll get on her wrong side if you gloat or don’t keep your word. This beauty believes actions speak louder than empty words.

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Cool materials

MASTER YOUR BREW 20 ways to turn your tea into a proper cuppa…

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01 IMPRESS MUM Keep these posh chocs in the cupboard, ready for a surprise visit from the in-laws. Prestat green tea chocolate thins.

02 REACH PEAK TEA Brew one of these bags for 3 minutes in 100-degree boiling water for the perfect cup of tea.

Brew Tea Co tea.

03 DROP IT IN These look like they fell off a Christmas tree, but brew your

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loose tea leaves to perfection.

Kinto tea strainer. Tom Dixon tea strainer.

04 POUR IN STYLE This teapot reeks of Scandinavian coolness. Ferm living teapot.

05 EAT THIS Still the king of tea-time treats.

Tunnock’s tea cakes.

06 RELAX IN STYLE For just under a tenner, this posh Dutch designer

kitchenware is a real steal.

Jansen & Co mug.

07 PUT IT ON ICE If you like your tea ice cold, then whack in four teaspoons of loose leaf with some cold water and fridge it overnight.

Brew tea pot.

08 DO WHAT IT SAYS Shit hot is exactly how we take our tea, thank you. Shit hot mug 09 GIVE US A SMILE

Turn that frown upside down with this mug from the super cool lifestyle store, Goodhood.

Good bad mood mug.

10 SAY A BAD WORD ‘Cocking shitter’ is our particular favourite on this swear-filled cup. Brought to you by cartoon piss-takers, Modern Toss.

Periodic table of swearing mug.

11 BREW LIKE A CHAMP These award-winning Brit tea makers have had more gold

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12 SWEETEN UP Save yourself half a second and sweeten as you stir.

Canasuc sugar sticks.

13 GET GNARLY Ace skate brand Lovenskate loves a good old cuppa. There’s no cooler teapot out there than this collaboration with Carhartt.

14 NERD OUT

You’ll need to concentrate closely on this investigation into how caffeine fries your brain, so have a few brews beforehand. Caffeinated, Murray Carpenter.

15 MOP UP We never thought we’d ever be writing about an exciting tea towel, but here we are.

Lazy Oaf jerk chicken tea towel.

16 TASTE THE ADVENTURE

This titanium cup with a folding handle may be pricy, but it’s as hardy as Bear Grylls’ balls.

Snow peak titanium cup 450.

17 KEEP IT CLASSIC Want to boss the kitchen?

Then get some fancy Le Creuset gear. Le Creuset stoneware tea for two.

18 SOLVE A CRIME Recreate that pivotal scene in 1995’s The Usual Suspects by dropping this replica mug.

Kobayashi mug.

19 HIT THE SWITCH Go all futuristic with this space age-looking kettle.

De’Longhi KBJ3001.W kettle.

20 TAKE YOUR MEDICINE These brews were made by a doctor after years of studying pharmacognosy (medicine from natural sources).

Dr Jackson’s Teas.

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PHOTOGRAPHY: ROWAN FEE

hung around their necks than a Jamaican running squad.

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EXOTIC TOMATO CHICKPEA PASTA SALAD Prep time: 10min Cooking time: 6min for the pasta Servings: 1 large salad Ingredients • 1 packet of chickpea pasta (250g) • 150g baby spinach wilted and cut into small pieces 600g exotic small tomatoes cut in halves • 8 whole sprigs of red salad onion chopped up into small pieces (leaves included) • 120g sundried tomato (preference for olive oil vinaigrette) • 15g (1 handful) of freshly chopped parsley • 30g of wild rocket

For the sauce • 1 heaped tsp fresh garlic • 2 tsp Oryx desert salt • 1 tsp ground black pepper • 5 tbsp olive oil • 2 tbsp honey • 30g of wild rocket • 3 tbsp sesame seeds • 50g of almond sprinkles or flakes • Garnish with micro herbs and ground black pepper Instructions Cook the pasta first. In a large mixing bowl, wilt the spinach by pouring hot water over it and set aside for

5-10min. Chop the red salad onion and sundried tomato into small pieces.

Cut the tomatoes in halves. Drain the water from the spinach - it needs to be drained properly otherwise it makes the salad soggy. Add the onion, tomatoes, sundried tomato, rocket and parsley to the spinach. Mix the sauce in a separate small bowl, mix well till honey is dissolved before pouring over the tomatoes and spinach mixture. Add the pasta and almond sprinkles and mix well. Garnish with micro herbs, place in fridge and enjoy when needed (best after 2 days).

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OVEN ROAST STUFFED BUTTERNUT WITH WALNUT AND CRANBERRIES Prep time: 45min Baking time: 10min Servings: 4 Ingredients • 1 large or 2 medium butternuts cut in half and baked in oven for 45min • 1 tsp olive oil • 1 large red salad onion diced • Cooked butternut that’s removed from the halves • 50g carrots chopped into small pieces • 50g celery chopped into small pieces • 250g of cooked brown basmati rice • 1 handful of freshly chopped thyme • 1 tsp sage • 1 tsp onion powder

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• 100g cranberries • 100g walnuts • 2 tbsp olive oil • 2 tbsp honey • 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar • 3 tsp salt • 1 tsp ground black pepper Instructions Preheat oven to 200C. Cut butternuts in half, and remove the pips, place on a baking tray and bake for 45min. Allow to cool off slightly, and remove some of the butternut to create more space for the stuffing. Do not throw the excess butternut away. In a pan, fry the diced

onion, celery and carrots till cooked.

Add the rice, butternut that was removed from the halves, cranberries, walnuts and the rest of the ingredients to the pan and mix well. Scoop into the butternut halves and bake for another 10min, garnish with fresh herbs and serve warm.

CHOCOLATE DESSERT HUMMUS WITH CARAMELISED RICE CAKES AND FRUIT Prep time: 10min Making time: 10min Servings: 1 large dip Ingredients For the Chocolate Dessert Hummus • 2 cans chickpeas • 2 tbsp olive oil • 1 tsp salt • 2 tbsp caramel essence • 2 heaped tbsp cacao • 5 tbsp honey • 2 heaped tbsp almond butter • 1/2 cup of unsweetened almond milk For the caramelised rice cakes (2 rice

cakes) • 1 tsp olive oil • 1 tsp honey • Pinch of salt • 1 tsp caramel essence • 2 rice cakes Serve with berry fruits of choice, banana and roasted nuts Instructions Drain the chickpeas and rinse well.

Place in a blender and process till fine, Add the rest of the ingredients to the blender as well and blend till mousselike texture. Pour into desired serving bowl and refrigerate till set.

For the Caramelised rice cakes Heat up a medium-size frying pan with a teaspoon of olive oil. Place the rice cakes in the pan, drizzle with honey and caramel essence, and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Turn around and repeat the process. Allow the honey to caramelise on both sides and fry till golden brown. The rice cakes should be slightly chewy. Allow to cool off and serve with hummus and fresh fruits and nuts of your choice.

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“TREAD CAREFULLY OR I WILL CUT YOU TO SHREDS” Not our words, Keith Flint’s – The Prodigy frontman who, as we found out, won’t stand for being called a firestarter* *(or you owe him a quid)

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here’s a no-smoking sign on the wall of the London studio where we meet Keith Flint.

Still, The Prodigy’s pierced and punk-plumed wildman is rolling a fag. He crams a wad of Golden Virginia into a crumpled Rizla, licks it, lights it and takes a long, merciful drag.

“I fucking hate this nanny state we live in right now,” he exhales, filling the room with smoke. “It’s like being back at school. I cannot be told what to do. As soon as I’m told not to, I will. It’s the death of life, the nanny state. And it kills everything. It will turn us all into zombies.”

We are talking about the controlling influences of the music industry. It was only while making of The Prodigy’s new album, The Day Is My Enemy, that he says he had a staffing cull to kill the ‘maggots’ feeding off the band.

“When you’ve got people telling you to do this and that, you can feel like meat,” he blasts. “So I now only directly deal with [bandmates] Liam or Maxim. I’ve never had a personal manager; I’ve always looked after myself. That’s why I dress myself, that’s why I speak for myself, and that’s why I remain myself. I’m quite willing to fuck things up

wearing a pork-pie hat and a blue-and-white striped prison uniform shirt. A bolt bores through his upper ear and tattoos cover his arms and chest.

He bursts with energy and ideas, pogoing between topics as they come into his head, and he swears like a trucker in a jackknife. He’ll often call someone, or himself, a cunt, apologise, then use the word again. Can one man really exude this much passion all the time? What happens when the music stops and the lights go up? Who is Keith Flint, really?

Born on 17 September 1969, Keith was raised in Braintree, Essex. He admits his wasn’t a particularly happy childhood and his parents split when he was young. “I hated being at home so much that I’d go in for dinner – which was statutory – and if it wasn’t ready for three minutes, I’d go out again and come back three minutes later.”

At the age of 15, Keith was thrown out of school.

“I was quite disruptive and out there,” he remembers. “Then I found myself in a load of remedial classes being told how to use a ruler. But when they tested my IQ, they found out I was quite intelligent. Trouble is, I’m definitely on the spectrum

“I HAVE GROWN UP KNOWING ME, SO IF I DON’T, WHO IS?” for myself but I’m not going to have some cunt do it for me. Not for something that’s so precious. Would you let someone come into your family and tell you how it should be run? I never have, and right now, I’m using that history to be even more of a cunt.”

A conversation with Keith is not unlike one of his gigs. It is unpredictable, visceral, and raw. It can be angry at times, scary at others, but entrancing throughout. But he is not the four-letter lady-part he just singled out. Not today, anyway. In fact, he is rather charming and funny. Eloquent, too. And he laughs a lot.

“I am kind of a court jester meets asylum escapee,” he says. “I sometimes describe myself as like a hallway in a house: you think you’re inside, but there’s another door to the real me. I’ll sit and wait like a predator and then I will cut you down. I will fucking cut you down to the ground.”

He seems to be looking us dead in the eye, though all we can see is our own reflection staring sheepishly back at us through his big, purple sunglasses. Keith Flint has come to this interview dressed as Keith Flint. Apart from the shades, he’s

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somewhere – there’s a dysfunctional side. That probably sounds like I’m trying to back up mad Keith – but if you want me to be honest with you, that’s as honest as it gets.”

Keith undertook various jobs as a butcher, a roofer and an investigative driller. But a thirst for adventure had infected his soul. So, in the summer of 1988, he left Essex to roam the Middle East and Africa.

“When I got back, someone was telling me about the acid-house rave scene and I thought, ‘Fucking hell, you’re talking about something with as much passion as I would be talking about hitchhiking to Israel.’ I wanted a piece of that.”

The spring of 1989 led him to an outdoor rave in Essex where little-known dance DJ Liam Howlett was playing. “I loved his music and boom, I was in,” says Keith. “I was never the brains behind the band – that was always Liam. But together we were a complete package. It was the outlet I was looking for.”

Music became Keith’s medicine. “As a kid, I was always fighting to be who I was,” he says. “Then

suddenly, I no longer had to fight. I just was.”

The early ’90s saw The Prodigy burst from the chest of the underground rave scene like strobe-lit aliens on ecstasy. Melding breakbeat, jungle and hardcore into a bludgeoning wall of sound, their second album, Music For The Jilted Generation, spawned a jagged new genre of pop.

Then, in 1997, Fat Of The Land reached No 1 in the UK and US and they’ve topped the British album charts with every record since. They’ve got two Brits, three MTV VMAs, two Kerrang!

Awards and five MTV Europe Music Awards.

They’ve been nominated for two Grammys and today, they’ve sold more than 25 million records worldwide. Not that Keith cares.

“We never gave a fuck about making money or what people thought,” Keith says. “All we ever wanted was to play our music.”

WITH AONO BARBER, PAUL HEWITT, AT SONOSPHERE

andmates and flunkies have come and gone, but controversy has been a lifelong friend to The Prodigy. Over the years, they have been accused of everything from inciting arson (Firestarter) to condoning domestic violence (Smack My Bitch Up), leaving middle-England’s papers and parents dry-heaving on the taste of their own outrage.

“I went out with a girl who was a bit lah-didah,” Keith recalls. “She was cool and grounded but her mum one day opened the Guardian and there was a picture of me with green hair, draped over a monitor, dribbling – the full fucking Monty Flinty. The headline was: ‘What would you do if your daughter brought this home?’ Her parents fucking hated me with a passion.”

But as their currency in music grew, so too did their pay cheques – and their appetite for drug-addled abandon, though Keith says he rarely got high on stage.

“I did half a pill at Labyrinth (legendary East London venue) at our first proper gig and I thought my head was going to drop off. I realised I didn’t need a false rush when on stage – it was already there.”

Then, in the early 2000s, Liam’s creative flow – that had buoyed the band for so long – ran dry for the first time in 20 years with a bout of writer’s block. No new material meant no gigs with which to sponge up Keith’s rampant energy.

“Yeah, it was a dark period,” he says.

“I was drinking and taking too many drugs. The problem is, you’ve got shitloads of cash and shitloads of time and all you’re doing is looking for a buzz. I did fuck all really, apart from being a jerk.”

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“I AM KIND OF A y the time Liam finally found his mojo, Keith had unravelled. “I got to the point where I had to stop. I didn’t want to be a jabbering wreck.” But coastal walks and solitary Saturday nights in never much suited Keith. “I was heading for complete vanilla-ism,” he says.

“Being sober, my obsession became being fit and focused, but I like to leave the planet now and again. I decided to have the odd joint or a few beers to keep a bit of psychedelia in my life.”

And here we are now, sitting with Keith in this London studio, five albums and 26 years since he and Liam first met in that muddy Essex field – two lost boys drawn together by a shared love of hardcore and a burning problem with authority.

“I think Liam is the only person I’ve ever loved,” says Keith, with genuine affection. “He and Maxim have actually taken time to get to know who I am. It’s probably to do with not having a good family background. The band became my family.”

We feel for a moment as if we’re breaking through. But when we joke that we’ve made it inside the hallway of Keith’s mind and can see he’s left another door ajar, he flashes a faux glare. “Tread carefully or I will cut you to shreds,”

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he bites, turning out that football-hooligan snarl he employs on Firestarter. He’s still smiling… but you never quite seem to know with Keith. We try a different tack. Something safe. Keith’s other great obsession is motorcycle racing. He owns a race team and, at weekends, can often be found with wife Mayumi at a motorbike grand prix somewhere in Europe.

“It’s about challenging your bravery and your balls,” he says. It is a metaphor for life: If you don’t go into a bend without that sharp intake of breath then you ain’t going fast enough. The sooner you become aware that you’re mortal, the sooner you start living.”

Keith lives in his rural Essex mansion with Mayumi – a Japanese DJ who plays by the name Super Megabitch – and their nine dogs.

He also owns a pub called the Leather Bottle in Pleshey, near his home. “We’ve got an open fire, and I’ve got about 60 quid in a pint pot on the mantelpiece because every time I light it, the Firestarter jokes come out, and boom, I’m like, that’s very funny, you owe me a pound. The money goes in and then off to charity.” s Keith approaches his 46th birthday, it’s clear he’s lost none of his edge. But does he ever feel trapped by his

hell-raising reputation? Does he tire of being the Firestarter? “When I go away, I’m always the Firestarter,” he reflects. “I carry that everywhere I go. Nobody sees a musician… Oh, sorry, bigging myself up there. They just see me. [But] I am determined not to let The Prodigy overrun every aspect of my life so I can still live it.”

We are nearing the end of our time together.

While we’ve seen fleeting glimpses inside Keith’s mind, we’ve only peeked into some of those back rooms that lurk behind the hallway. Some of them, we’re not sure we even want to enter.

Suddenly, he tells us a story. “My dad,” he says. “He was a cunt. I had this mohawk as a kid and I remember he once dragged me up the hairdressers. But because there was only a strip of hair to cut, I ended up with a little quiff at the front and I looked like Tintin. The humiliation of going back to school with that was mental cruelty. “[Years later] I saw Liam and the way that he put in with his father and I thought that maybe I hadn’t made enough effort. I thought perhaps the downside of my childhood was a product of who I was.” So, in a bid to ‘see what a family looked like’, Keith reached out to his father one last time. “I opened that door and he let me down again,” says Keith. “So I rung him and said,

WORDS: MATT BLAKE. PICTURES: © MIKE VAN CLEVEN AND INSTAGRAM.COM/KEITHFLINTOFFICIAL

MEETS ASYLUM

‘You will never see me again. You will never speak to me again. And if I see you, I will beat you.’ From that moment on, I was a man and I was free.”

It would be easy to attribute his rage to a troubled childhood. And perhaps he has spent his life yelling back at some echo from his past.

But now, free seems the word that best describes Keith Flint. He seems, more than most, to take life by the testicles and genuinely doesn’t care what people think of him.

“I’m not saving up for anything,” he says. “I’m cashing it all now. I’ve always had this thing inside me that, when I’m done, I’ll kill myself. I swear to God that’s not suicidal – it’s definitely a positive thing. The moment I start shitting the bed is when you’ll see me on the front of a bus.”

Then he smiles, rather sweetly, and adds, “I think I’m very generous of spirit with the people I love, but I can also be a very selfish person too. I’ve grown up knowing nobody is going to look after me, so if I don’t, who is? I’m not frightened of who I am; I just want to look back and know that I’ve lived what I consider a fulfilled life.

That’s all. Happy days.”

Catch The Prodigy on their European tour between 10 April and 16 May, or at Isle of Wight Festival and T in the Park. Visit theprodigy.co.uk

The story behind his uncaptioned – and often weird – pictures on @keithflintofficial

“When I took over the pub, I found this piece of rotting meat behind the fridge and it sums up how I felt by the time we finished the new album: rotten inside. There were too many maggots trying to get their piece of The Prodigy.”

“That’s Cyrus and Bonnie. You can trust a dog more than you can trust a person because you know what they’re about. When they fuck up, you don’t have to cuss and lift rolled-up newspapers. Respect them in a disappointed way – ‘Ah, fuck’s sake, you’ve just eaten my phone,’ and they’re like, ‘Yeah fucking hell, sorry about that’.”

“Aside from music, my other great obsession is motorcycle racing.

I own a race team, and this is James Rispoli, one of the riders in Team Traction Control. Racing’s like life: if you don’t go into a bend without that sharp intake of breath like you’re going over a roller coaster, you ain’t going fast enough.”

“The Monster girls are the bollocks.

They’re down, intelligent, good fun and good partiers. No, my wife doesn’t mind – I don’t have to be around girls with a view to shag them.

I enjoy their company and they enjoy mine.”

“That’s me and Liam. We are true brothers. We argue like brothers but he is about the only person in my life who has taken time to understand who I am and accept who I am. He doesn’t always like it, but that love will never die.”

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Kindly Myers This gorgeous American blonde bombshell loves to travel, meet new people, and spend time with her two dogs.

Photography by Thomas Prusso

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Describe yourself in three words Funny, kind, and spontaneous.

What was it like starting out as a model?

Starting out it was a lot of fun, never in wildest dreams did I think I would have achieved all that I have.

What would you consider to be your biggest challenge as a model so far?

One of the biggest challenges is to make yourself stand out. There are so many beautiful talented women in this industry. It is very important to try your best to stand out and be different from the rest.

Who inspires you?

I am very inspired by strong women. Famous or not. I love being independent and following my dreams.

Describe your perfect day off when you are not modelling?

I have two dogs. I spend a lot of my free time playing with them. If I’m not with them, I like to ride my horse.

Do you feel more like a city person or a country person?

I am definitely more of a country person. I love the outdoors. I love animals.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

I absolutely love where I live now, Nashville, Tennessee. If I moved, I would move to Miami, Florida.

Do you have a secret talent?

I can blow fire. That is definitely my secret talent.

A guilty pleasure?

Reality tv. I can’t help but get sucked in.

Describe to us your perfect date.

Take me on an adventure. I love experiencing new things. Let’s get outside and explore.

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OF THE

FHM HITCHES A RIDE WITH A BUNCH OF BARBECUE BADASSES ON A HEART-CLOGGING TOUR FOR THE AGES WORDS: JOE MACKERTICH PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMES BROWN

“Where are you guys going tonight?

Where’s good?

You heading out for a few drinks?”

Clint the chef is quite drunk. It’s late, dark, and we’re stood with him at a totally lightless junction somewhere on the outskirts of Kansas City. The three men who he’s just questioned – the only other people on the deserted road – cross over to our side to get a better look at the large man yelling at them.

“No sir,” says one of them, adjusting his tie. “We don’t drink.

We belong to the Church of the Latter Day Saints. You might also know us as Mormons.” And then, after a pause. “Uh… who are you?” It’s a fair question.

“Well,” says Clint. “We’re from Britain. And we’ve come to eat your barbecue.”

Clint’s right. We are from Britain, and we are there to eat their barbecue. All of it. We are the Mongol Horde, sweeping across the plains of an unconquered frontier, leaving devoured cattle, eviscerated swine and baffled service station attendants in our sauce-smeared wake. Or in more mundane terms: FHM has hopped on board the battle bus of a bunch of mates travelling through the southern states of the US in a bid to track down rad ribs and brilliant brisket. Scott Munro, James Douglas and Clint Britz are to barbecue what your teenage niece is to Harry Styles.

Ultra fans. Slobbering meat groupies. To them, the act of taking a post-sack-sized slab of beef and cooking it perfectly in a smoker is an artistic feat, worth travelling across the world to see up close.

They do this, by the way, not solely in a bid to get obese and decrease their life expectancy by about a decade, but because they’re pro meat pushers themselves. The three of them own Red’s True Barbecue - a madly successful restaurant chain that started in Leeds, then made its way into Manchester and Nottingham. The lads have come to America to hone their craft and study at the greasy knees of the world’s greatest pitmasters.

And they’ll do this by eating barbecue every day. For every meal.

“By the end of this,” says someone, “you’ll only want porridge and blueberries for a month.”

It’s eight in the morning, and FHM is stood, trying not to look

suspicious, by ourselves on a shadeless St Louis street corner.

We’re waiting to meet the Red’s guys for the first time. But there’s no sign of them. BWWWWWAAAAAAARRRRRRR. Petrol heads among you will recognise that noise. It’s the sound

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of a 46-foot, 20 tonne, chrome-plated twin axle tour bus parping its horn. Trees shake and birds are sent scrambling into the sky as the shiny behemoth rounds the corner, looking for all the world like Robocop’s penis on wheels. It’s possibly the most conspicuous way you can roll into a sleepy suburb short of carpet bombing it from an F-16.

The door flies open and a set of automated stairs descend onto the pavement to where we’re stood. “Hi mate!” says the guy at the wheel, who looks like Chuck Norris cross-bred with all four members of sludge metal band Mastodon. “Get in!”

This is Scott. If all the three of the Red’s guys have a specific role to play in the company, then Scott’s might be the most fun. He’s essentially the walking, singing, tattooed manifestation of the brand made flesh. Or as our photographer says (warmly) at one point: “He’s like a baboon. On heat. That’s pissed.”

Once we’re on the road we ask him what the road trip accomplishes. “Look,” he says. “In the grand scheme of things, we’re beginners at this. These people we meet in the south have been smoking meat in their families for hundreds of years. It’s about history and tradition.

“Our accountant’s balls shrivelled up when we mentioned going away on this trip,” says James from one of the bus’s leather sofas. “And yeah, it’s going to cost about £65,000.

But we’re discovering stuff that’s valuable to our business.

The places we visit influence the look and feel of our restaurants, as well as what’s on the menu.”

Scott’s point about family and tradition is driven home by a visit to home-slash-restaurant of Dave “Big Wing” Wingo.

Situated in one of St Louis’ dicier neighbourhoods, complete with dilapidated houses, rusted metal gates and vacant lots, Big Dave’s ends wouldn’t look out of place in The Wire. We make our way to his front door, aware of the fact we’re being watched from what feels like every window and stoop. The house next door is boarded up, but kids’ toys are visible on the wooden floor.

“Come in guys!” All trepidation ebbs away once we’re inside. Dave’s a big, friendly guy, quick to dish out bear hugs and brisket. “This neighbourhood is nice now,” he says. “But it used to be pretty rough.”

The next three hours are spent in Dave’s backyard. He’s gone to a huge effort for us, laying on a spread of spare ribs, turkey wings, rib tips, ‘corny pigs’ (smoked corn with pineapple ‘ears’) and snoots – deep fried pig’s snouts.

As the time goes by, more people turn up. Kids (who are polite to the point of paralysis), friends, curious neighbours, HOMETOWN BAR-B- QUE even Dave’s extremely old mom, Miss Brooklyn, New York Lily.

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Hometown Bar-B-Que, still doing things the old-fashioned way

“Miss Lily heard you guys were comin’,” he hollers as she appears, “so she’s gone and put her favourite wig on.”

The atmosphere is fantastic and it’s clear that in this relatively poor corner of St Louis the taste of home-cooked barbecue helps bring communities together. It’s a million miles away from the slick meat machine that is Scott, James and Clint’s restaurant, but the guys are obviously moved by Dave’s hospitality. At one point a minister who may or may not have been someone’s uncle, says a prayer. Everyone bows their heads as he appeals to the Almighty to protect us on our journey.

“Amen,” shouts Miss Lily. “That’s right!”

The problems associated with motoring through the back of beyond in an

enormous luxury vehicle are many. Stopping anywhere is a hassle (“I think I’ve taken up, like,

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15 parking metres,” says Clint at one point).

Then there’s the M&M’s. Gay porn websites are set as people’s fact that onlookers laptop home pages while they use the toilet. assume someone During one stop in Kansas, Scott and James famous is on board invade a tennis court and ask two young (the rental company racketeers if they wouldn’t mind launching informed James that 120mph serves at them while they face the the coach’s most other way. recent residents “Why would you want to do that?” asks one include 50 Cent, LeAnn Rimes and, most of the tennis players. impressively, Ant and Dec). At one gas station, a “Because it’ll be funny,” says Scott quite girl in hot pants and a crop top actually wanders reasonably. “We’ll film it.” onto the bus to see for herself. The In fact, the mood is so jovial that it’s easy to disappointment once her eyes are greeted not forget the guys are in fact successful by the sight of Macklemore but a bunch of hairy, businessmen. At one point Scott has to shush flatulent men is palpable. Scott soon starts everyone on the bus because he’s on the phone telling credulous locals that we are actually a on a conference call with investors, trying to band and that our name is Gastric. raise £450,000.

We race towards Kansas City, Later that day we turn up at the Led Zeppelin and “Mississippi” door of a well-known eatery called John Hurt blaring over the stereo.

Jack Stack BBQ. The guys order It’s a unique vibe – a bus full of their usual (which is to say, they men, each of whom know they are order everything on the menu and living together for a week and a a load of beer) and get stuck in. half. It’s fun. But after a few days it “It’s odd,” says James later. “We starts to feel a bit like being first went to that place ages ago. trapped inside an episode of And we were blown away by it. The Jackass with no beginning or end. food was good and they just BACK RACK BBQ AND There’s a lot of burping. Viagra CINDER BLOCK BREWERY seemed to have the whole Kansas City, Kansas business side of things locked tablets are hidden in bowls of

You gotta go here

You gotta go here

down. But now… I sort of feel business and, it we’re better than that.” turned out, was also James isn’t being arrogant thinking of starting when he says this. He and the a barbecue joint guys have spent the last three with the money. years working their arses off to “My first thought when I met make their restaurant a hit. It Scott,” says James, “was, ‘Why began when Scott realised there would someone with ginger hair was a gap in the market for a wear so much mustard-colour quality barbecue restaurant in WOODY’S SMOKEHOUSE clothing’? My second thought was, Leeds. He called up his ‘Fuck, I better team up because his Joplin, Missouri childhood friend Clint – the only restaurant’s going to be way better one of the three who is a than mine’. You could just tell from fully-qualified, highly experienced chef – and the way he was.” convinced him to leave his job as head chef at a Beers were sunk, man-hugs exchanged and posh hotel. a three-way business bromance was forged.

“Scott started doing his research,” says Clint.

Red’s opened in 2012. And then it all went “He would sit for hours outside of Nando’s in mental. his car in the rain and count how many people “We figured out that we needed to make were going in. He worked out the customers’ about £16,000 a week to break even,” says average spend.”

Scott. “But it wasn’t long before we were “I realised,” Scott says. “They were making a making £45,000. It was incredible.” fucking ton of money.”

“We were working 115-hour work weeks,” Scott eventually went to Barclays with his says Clint. “After nine weeks my sous chef just business plan clutched to his chest. But he was burst into tears and said ‘I can’t do it Clint, I just crushed to discover that, despite scraping every can’t do it’. I had to comfort him. But there were available penny together, they’d still not raised days when I felt like going up to the queues of enough capital. Scott had almost given up hope people coming into the restaurant and when he was introduced to James through a screaming ‘Go away! Why can’t you all just go mutual friend. James had just sold his property away?’”

They ended up turning £3million in revenue in their first year – three times their projected amount. Scott still gets goose bumps talking about it.

“We just had an idea and went with it,” says Clint. “It was blind faith.”

Faith is something not in short supply across the deep south. As we zoom

through Oklahoma the scenery takes on that air of rural gothic menace, familiar to fans of True Detective. Pokey Baptist churches, surrounded by scrubland and often accompanied by trios of tall white crucifixes, are everywhere, as are ramshackle liquor stores and huge billboards bearing the stark warning: “METH: it traps you”.

We wind up at a place called Backdoor BBQ in Oklahoma City, a natty smokehouse run by a heavily tattooed lady called Kathryn who, despite being welcoming, is clearly hard-as-nails. Throughout the course of the trip we eat kilo after kilo of barbecue but after one bite, it becomes clear that this place is a bit special.

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Kansas City’s Bucky, head honcho at Cinder Block brewery

The food is so good, so tasty, that your immediate emotional reaction after sinking your teeth into it is not one of happiness but sadness. Sadness because you know that at some point the meal will have to end. At some point you’ll be sat in some UK chain restaurant fantasising about something called an Okie Burger which is so delicious you’d beat the shit out of your best mate just to eat it again.

Clint’s being prevented from tucking in by our photographer taking snaps of his food.

“Why can’t I just eat it?” he howls.

Clint’s the sort of thoughtful, funny, practical guy you’d be delighted to have as a brother-inlaw. Unlike James and Scott, whose shock-anawe showmanship has a lot in common with fellow culinary agitators BrewDog (who they’re full of respect for), Clint is only really interested in one thing: the food. Finding it, preparing it, cooking it, eating it. He enters each restaurant

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like an extremely focused establishment called Gas Monkey barbecue Commando, scanning Bar and Grill in Texas, a place the menu, peppering his wrists where the people, cars and food all with hot sauces, cross-examining comes in just one size: enor-huge. the staff.

Flatscreen tellies showing sport “We have to strip down our hang off every available bit of wall menu,” he says excitedly between and one of them – in a neglected mouthfuls. “We need to be more corner of the room – just happens like this.” It’s like seeing an artist to be showing the Europa League. from the 1930s encounter a The sudden, unexpected BLACK’S BARBECUE Picasso for the first time, appearance of Everton’s left-back, Austin, Texas re-evaluating his life’s work. a man who looks bout as Texan as Afterwards he goes and seeks out the a Tunnock’s Tea Cake, is like a familiar ray of restaurants pit master, Kenny, to tell him just light, beaming into the rolling meat dungeon how great he thinks the food is. that has become our lives.

“Thanks y’all,” says Kenny, a genuine tear in Travelling into Dallas we hit up the Pecan his eye, “that really means a lot to me.”

Lodge – an old-school eatery run by Justin, a laid-back man-mountain.

“Justin is hardcore, still,” says Clint. “You get the feeling that he’s still up at three in the morning, at the smokers, stoking the fires.” goodwill and affection, perhaps the most Smokers play a big part in the life of any unexpected would be the sight of Leighton serious barbecue-er. On our trip, the visit to Baines. But there you are. We’re in an each restaurant’s smoker feels like being shown

Of all the things capable of filling your heart with warmth,

the warp core of an intergalactic spacecraft or the city. Dallas is an odd place. the holy altar of a temple. Sometimes it feels “When you see these little barbecue shacks,” like the pitmaster has a romantic relationship says James later, “don’t think for a fucking with it. second that it isn’t a four or five million “Before we started properly,” says Scott, “Clint dollar-a-year business. They’ll have people and I bought a smoker from Lithuania and queuing up outside from 7am.” would stay up all night, doing shifts and then James, who essentially has Sean Bean’s face climb into bed next to our wives stinking of grafted onto Rick Edwards’ head and body, is an smoke. And my wife doesn’t particularly like interesting character. Unlike Scott and Clint, he barbecue.” initially seems guarded. Prickly even. But it’s a “Someone needs to be there all the time,” prickliness, we eventually realise, that’s the says Clint. “Making sure the heat stays at just result of a inn ate intelligence. Born into money the right temperature. Good pitmasters aren’t and then, at the age of six, finding himself living like good chefs. It’s a craft. You have to fall in in a small council flat with his mum, siblings and love with it, the physicality of it, the colour of the grandmother, he grew up broke and bitter, smoke, the feel of the meat, the sauce resenting the hand life had dealt him. He left everywhere, the dirt.” school at the earliest opportunity (with two Justin’s brisket and ribs are fantastic. He GCSEs) and, with playground insults about his mentions he’d just been out with “shit clothes and trainers” still his wife that morning to stock up ringing in his ears, swore to himself on guns as they’d heard a rumour that he was going to get rich one that a loopy, disgruntled former way or another. employee was He’s achieved that goal running their mouth about now. And, although the money wreaking some kind of revenge on obviously allows him to be a them as a result of being fired. We generous friend (not to mention nod politely. A near-constant fund a series of expensive, procession of Gulfstream private short-lived hobbies like rock jets float by overhead, ferrying climbing, sky diving and scuba PECAN LODGE Dallas, Texas oil-rich millionaires in and out of diving), you get the impression his

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personal quest to find contentment may not end any time soon.

As we approach the end of our time on the road, all we can think about is the fact

that when legendary actor John Wayne died the autopsy revealed that his meat-heav diet resulted in him having about 40 pounds of compacted feces in his colon. We don’t want to go out like that.

The tiny town of Madisonville is where we take our leave. It’s the type of place you wouldn’t want to hang around in too long.

“NO STOPPING HERE” is scrawled on huge letters over a wall. Elsewhere, a sign with “STAY OUT!” is bolted to a tree. For a region that prides itself on its rootin’, tootin’ hospitality, certain bits of it sure feel mighty hostile.

As we depart we ask James if he has any words of advice for any would-be competitors in Britain.

“Good luck to ’em, I guess,” he says. And then he changes his mind: “Actually no, tell them it’s a piece of piss. All you do is throw meat on a grill. How hard can it be?”

Red’s True BBQ is coming to Shoreditch, London in July

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True story: “If you don’t want to pay me, that’s OK. I’m going to sell his organs in Saudi Arabia”

When Alastair Onglingswan was kidnapped from the back of a taxi in the Philippines in 2004, his family were terrified.

As a US citizen from a Chinese background, the FBI soon became involved, specifically hostage negotiator Chris Voss. After 14 years working in New York on counter-terrorism, Voss was certain he could rescue the 38 year old.

But the Philippines is not the USA, as Voss knew all too well. A previous kidnapping had gone badly wrong after American and local hostages were murdered despite their abductors agreeing to let them go.

Voss was determined to learn from that. But negotiating with a highly intelligent foe tested him to the max…

“I GET A CALL AT THE FBI ACADEMY IN VIRGINIA. An American has been missing for around 24 hours. His family are out in Manila but he’s from the New York area. The kidnapper has already been in touch with the victim’s girlfriend in New York.

I immediately place a team around her so I can control the dynamic. We start to coach her, build a strategy.

“Meanwhile, he’s starting to negotiate via email, which is odd. He starts providing proof that Alastair is alive by sending photos.

There are threats, too: ‘If you don’t want to pay me, that’s OK. I’m going to sell his organs in Saudi Arabia.’

“That scares the hell out the family. It turns out the brother, Aaron, in Manila, is

easiest to coach. He is solid, with a stable personality. The mum is too upset.

“I start talking to Aaron on the phone, coaching him directly from Washington DC. I’m nothing more than a voice. I’m on my own.

There’s no team set up there yet. It’s going to take at least four days to set up the paperwork and get people to Manila.

“We put the kidnapper on a schedule, only talk to him in the morning and make out the rest of the time we’re trying to get his money.

“HE WANTS $200 A DAY TO TAKE CARE OF ALASTAIR. It’s doable. But I wasn’t going to do that.

Not yet.

“If we don’t fight or negotiate, it could go on forever. And then after a year the abductor’s going to say, ‘You clearly have so much money, I want $20million’. This causes the family tremendous stress.

“THE KIDNAPPER IS A LITTLE BIT UNUSUAL. ARROGANT EVEN. Normally, the more in love a kidnapper is with singular pronouns, the less influence he has. This guy uses all plural pronouns – we, us, they, them. I get the feeling we’re dealing with the boss.

Kidnappers run a business operation like everyone else.

“To show how serious he is, our hostage taker says he’ll chop the victim’s ear off and send us a video. The Filipino police, meanwhile, think they’ve isolated a location for the kidnapper.

A rescue is attempted but they miss so spectacularly,

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“I GET THE OK TO SEND OVER TWO EXPERIENCED FIELD PEOPLE I KNOW WELL. They’ll listen to my guidance.

We decide at this point to make a payment as it’s going to calm Alastair’s mum down. The kidnapper asks for the money to be deposited into a specific bank account. We think maybe we can trace him.

“The money goes in, he pulls it out. Nothing. He’s created a bank account that isn’t traceable. There are no cameras at the ATMs he uses. He just walks away.

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Meanwhile, the victim’s brother is really picking up the coaching and comes up with a genius question to ask the kidnapper: ‘When we run out of money, what’s going to happen?’ “‘It’s going to be all right,’ the kidnapper says. He’s just told us he’s not going to kill him. We’ve got him.

It’s over. There’s no more threat to the family so we can continue to hammer him.

“We have a settlement of $40,000 on the table. We’re hoping he’ll take it and the kidnapping will be over, though I want it lower. The local police come back and say they have an address.

They want to do a rescue.

It’s time.

“They hit a house the kidnapper owns and his wife is inside. The police grab her and she tells them they have another house.

They find Alastair there, in the basement. The kidnapper comes through the door and they grab him.

“Alastair has been abused. The kidnapper would come down and beat him up so he could take photos of the bruises. He’s

been in chains on a mattress for 22 days.

“Our kidnapper thought he’d figured out a great way to kidnap people: he kept a bottle of ether under the front seat of his taxi. If you got in the back seat, looked wealthy and fell asleep, he’d knock you out with the ether.

“My previous case in the Philippines was a year earlier. The family paid a ransom but the kidnappers backtracked and chose not to let the hostages go. That’s why I held out so long for Alastair.”

What happened next?

01 The man who kidnapped Alastair was one Petrus Yau from Hong Kong. He was jailed for a minimum of 20 years. He was found by the Philippines National Anti-Kidnapping Task Force (NAKTF) after they traced an email to a woman called Susana Sumogda. She happened to be his wife.

02 When he was detained, Yao was interrogated by the Philippine police, who employed suffocation techniques (using a plastic bag) on his wife in an attempt to make him talk.

03 The subsequent investigation found he was involved in three other kidnappings. One victim, a Brit named Ali Khan, had his ear chopped off in 2001, while another was never recovered.

04 Alastair spent more than three weeks chained upin Yao’s basement but only suffered bruising.

The mental anguish was harder to shake off. “The mum blamed Alastair’s then-girlfriend for making him take a taxi in the first place,” says Voss.

Chris Voss has retired from the FBI and teaches the art of business negotiation at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. A TV show based on his time with the FBI is in the offing

WORDS: STEVE BRENNER. ILLUSTRATION: KIM THOMPSON

the guy has no idea they’d come for him in the first place. I don’t trust them – they have a history of being in cahoots with kidnappers.

“The kidnapper isn’t stupid. It turns out he’s wired his phone to a house three blocks away. At this stage, we’re expecting him to contact us and show us a video of him killing the victim. But he doesn’t, and he eventually calls us. “‘Where’s my money?’ he asks. I know Alastair is OK. But Steve, the FBI guy in Manila, doesn’t know what to do. ‘I’m your man,’ I plead.

‘Let me bring my team.’

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