SAS vs. P Company: Inside British Tier One Selection | Ep. 292 | Pt. 1

Mike Drop

Mike Ritland

News, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Politics

4.9 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2026

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Phil Singleton spent years operating in the shadows — tier one SAS, Operation Nimrod, the Iranian Embassy siege — and then quietly disappeared into a second career training thousands of law enforcement officers across the U.S. as Training Director for Heckler & Koch. He doesn't carry a cell phone, doesn't chase recognition, and until now has been one of the most quietly consequential British operators most Americans have never heard of. This week Phil pulls back the curtain on what it really took to earn that winged dagger, what it was like to storm a foreign embassy in the middle of London on live television, and why — at 72 — he's perfectly content stacking bananas in a grocery store produce aisle with zero regrets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:24.1	I went through what is P Company.
0:26.2	And I would honestly say it's probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.
0:32.5	Far harder than SAS selection.
0:38.3	If you think back in history, when the parrars go in, they go in, and it's non-stop.
0:43.3	Pow, pow, pow at Normandy. Don't stop. You don't get the night off.
0:47.3	So the selection was designed for that.
0:50.3	Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow.
0:52.3	They wanted to run you into the ground as fast as they can.
0:56.0	They want you by midday, you know, on hands of knees.
0:59.0	You want to give up, soldier. No, no, I'm going to keep going and keep going.
1:04.0	It was a nightmare, but I looked past it.
1:09.0	If you fail this one, you know you're going to go back again.
1:12.6	What was it like when you were there?
1:14.6	Was it pretty violent?
1:15.6	One of the hardest things I did.
1:21.6	I have four dogs, and they've eaten all types of different food and we recently found
1:32.1	team dog like believe this spring so we've been on it for a year.
	...

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