SAS Australia: Ant Middleton gives reality TV fans a bollocking

Most TV stars are asked for an autograph or a photo. SAS Australia host Ant Middleton is instead asked to scream profanities.

SAS Australia host Ant Middleton’s popularity has surged so much since the reality TV program went to air in Australia that he is stopped in the street regularly.

But while most television stars are asked for an autograph or a photo, Middleton is instead asked to scream profanities in the faces of his admirers.

“I am getting noticed quite a lot here in Australia,” the ex-Special Forces soldier told Sunday Confidential.

“They say, ‘I love your show, I love your books, now can you please shout in my face?’.”

“They will often ask to record a message of me bollocking their son or daughter, telling them to go to school or get out of bed.”

Ant Middleton on the set of SAS Australia.

The program, in which Aussie celebrities take on a series of gruelling physical and psychological tests from the real SAS selection process, has been a ratings success for Seven.

Middleton believes the appeal is due to it being the most real reality TV program we have seen in years.

“The world can be pretty fake, so people are relating to the realness, the hard work the grit and determination,” he said.

“This show is refreshing.”

Middleton admitted he had hesitations about signing on with the program, fearful it would become another version of celebrity Big Brother, which is what he has accused the UK version of the show he once featured on, of becoming.

“The UK version fell out of my grasp and was taken out of my grip, so I was worried about this version being the same,” he said.

“It wasn’t until I sat down with the heads of Channel 7 and they said, ‘we want you to run it and do what you do best’, I knew it would be different.
“They have stuck to their word so far and I have had a re-energised experience with this show because it is how we originally did it in the UK.”

The TV host delivering a trademark ‘bollocking’ to 2021 recruit Alicia Molic.

Middleton said the show is so real that he has told producers there can be no calling ‘cut’ or any second takes for the cameras,

“Not once have they said, ‘cut, can you say that again’,” he said.

If the cameraman misses it, they miss it.

“They have to be on the ball. Not miss a thing. I said to them ‘for two weeks you work as hard as we work’, and I guaranteed them they would get a good show out of it.”

It’s for this reason, Middleton puts himself in the shoes of the celebrities when filming.

“I am so emotionally invested in the recruits,” he said.

“I sleep with them, I breathe that course with them. I am not in separate accommodation with any luxuries. If I am going back to a Winnebago and have a coffee and a good night’s sleep, well it’s not authentic and not real so you won’t get the realness out of them.”

As for the cast, Middleton admits there has been more than a few contestants who went on the show to pump up their profile.

“They picked the wrong f**king course to do that,” he said of the show now in its second season, with a third about to start filming.

“We just won’t have that. We haven’t created a game show. If you are not physically and psychologically prepared for that, you will have to live with that for the rest of your life. It is brutal.”

Some the recruits from the latest season of SAS Australia.

The father-of-five said it was the unassuming recruits who have impressed him most.

“Sabrina Frederik from the first series,” he said.

“She was like an ox.

“And Merrick Watts and Erin McNaught. Trying to break her … was crazy. I didn’t think she would last two minutes She is proof you never judge a book by its cover.”

As for what’s next for Middleton, who spent 13 years service in the military, with four years as a Special Boat Service (SBS) sniper, he said he is glad to be seeing the back of the UK version of the series which let him go after controversial social media comments he made about Black Lives Matter protesters last year.

“The last UK episode finishes on Sunday and then I am going to wipe my hands of them and move forward. Hopefully they leave me alone. There’s a lot of witch hunting going on, there’s no doubt about that,” he said.

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