Interview:Tony Banks, former soldier and entrepreneur

Tony Banks waited 30 years to fully exorcise the demons that haunted him since the Falklands War. The entrepreneur turned author is now determined to help other former soldiers come to terms with their past

It was a bit like opening a filing cabinet,” says Tony Banks. “I put my experiences in the bottom drawer of the cabinet but suddenly I was opening up that drawer, emptying it out into the middle of the room and sifting through it.”

Fifty-year-old Banks is one of Scotland’s wealthiest men. He is a war veteran and a philanthropist, a thrill seeker and now an author. In his book, Storming The Falklands – published in the year that marks the 30th anniversary of the conflict – he describes how a working class boy from Dundee became a wealthy business mogul via a stint on the front line in the Falklands conflict.

In short, the book is packed with the contents of the bottom drawer of that filing cabinet; the horrors of war, the deaths of friends and family members, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and an increasing dependency on alcohol. However it’s also a quintessential rags-to-riches tale, an account of a remarkable work ethic which gave rise to a hugely successful business.

As we follow Banks from his time as a cocky young member of the TA to a hugely successful entrepreneur, his story builds to the moment he opened that filing cabinet; a 2009 appearance on Channel 4’s hit television series The Secret Millionaire, in which wealthy business owners go undercover in some of Britain’s poorest communities in order to find good causes to donate their own money to.

During filming, in a run-down area of Liverpool, he was introduced to Lee Sanger, a veteran of the war in Iraq who was suffering from PTSD and admitted he had considered suicide. “He was 28 then,” says Banks. “I thought, ‘you’ve not even had a life mate’. He must have been in a very bad place. I just lost it.”

For Banks it was a pivotal moment. His mother said it was the first time she had seen him cry since he was a little boy. On that day, three decades’ worth of grief was unlocked. “Men are terrible for hiding their emotions,” he says with a shake of his head. “We laugh freely so why can’t we cry freely?”

Banks laughs a lot, and he’s no longer afraid to cry. We meet in his enormous office at the headquarters of his company, Balhousie Care Group, in Perth; all glass walls, designer chairs and plasma televisions. He built the £50m company from scratch after returning from the Falklands, and now oversees more than 20 care homes across Scotland.

He appears to be an affable boss, joking with his staff, who seem rather fond of him. Stocky and smartly dressed with an open, smiling face, he raised his voice in a meeting last week and no one knew how to react since they had never seen him do it before.

He was recently given an upgrade at the airport, he tells me, after coming to the defence of a member of staff who was being shouted at by a passenger. He’s a fairly extraordinary man, and Cheryl, his PA, likes to remind him that he’s led an extraordinary life, even if he forgets sometimes.

Raised in Dundee the youngest of four, his father was in the RAF. Banks planned to study accountancy, but after seeing an advert in the local paper looking for recruits for the Territorial Army Parachute Regiment, he decided to join. He was hooked, and to his parents’ dismay he decided to leave university to pursue a career in the army full time. Within months of being presented with the coveted Parachute Regiment maroon beret, he found himself on a boat to the Falklands.

In his book he describes his time there in graphic detail; the loss of life, the face of the enemy, the death of a close friend and the burns victims no one had been trained to treat.

“There were times,” he says with an expression of disbelief, “when we fixed bayonets. We hadn’t fixed bayonets since WW2. We were running out of ammunition so it got to the stage where it was hand to hand stuff. We had that kill or be killed instinct, that feeling that you can’t afford to have one second of sympathy for the opposition, because that could be the moment of weakness when they get you. Survive at all costs; that’s what it was all about.”

Banks did survive, of course, unlike a number of his comrades. 255 British soldiers died in the Falklands, however, though there is no official record of the numbers, even more have committed suicide in the decades since the conflict. Many fell into depression, alcoholism and drug abuse. Some ended up in prison while others reported difficulties in forming relationships.

“I didn’t want to talk to anyone,” says Banks of the years after his return from the Falklands. “I didn’t want to talk to my ex-wife. I’d sit in a darkened room, put music on and drink two or three bottles of wine and just be melancholy and pissed off. But the key was that I didn’t know what was going on.”

Like many veterans, he was suffering from PTSD, made worse by the loss of his two brothers – one committed suicide, the other died of cancer – in quick succession. Only the condition wasn’t widely publicised and, like many veterans, he didn’t know what was wrong with him.

Senior officers are now trained to spot the signs of PTSD and they encourage people to speak up. However Banks worries that the stigma surrounding the condition remains. His decision to write Storming the Falklands was, in part, an attempt to raise more awareness of the condition, particularly considering the numerous conflicts British troops have been involved in since the Falklands.

“It’s that macho, bravado thing,” he says. “People still worry that it will affect their careers. And you can’t really speak to a civvie. If you go into a pub and there’s a guy there who’s a bricklayer or a sparkie or an accountant, well that’s not the world they live in. You think there’s no point in talking to them because they won’t understand. And with your mates, maybe you’ll have a pint and shed a wee tear but you won’t get your feelings out. And that’s the key.”

For Banks, one of the memories which haunted him was seeing the horrendous burns injuries sustained by some of his comrades. He had been given extensive first aid training, but no one had prepared him for dealing with burns victims.

“We simply hadn’t seen or expected burn injuries,” he says, his tone steady and measured. “I remember seeing these guys with no skin, in absolute agony. It was hard to look at that. And the smell of burning flesh was horrific. I’ve only smelled it once since, when they were burning cattle during the foot and mouth crisis.”

As part of the process of sorting through that filing cabinet drawer, Banks returned to the Falklands in 2010 for a follow-up programme, The Secret Millionaire Changed my Life.

Banks was 20 when he was ordered to strip belongings from Argentine PoWs, including a trumpet belonging to army musician Omar Tabarez. He viewed the confiscation as pointless, but had to follow orders. However he never forgot Tabarez, and the programme saw him track the Argentine down to return his trumpet.

It was an emotional moment for both veterans. “At the end of the day you’re both just pawns in the game. You’re just two soldiers trying to kill each other,” says Banks with an sigh. “I remember in my darker days waking up and thinking ‘God why have you done this to me?’ I felt like He had picked on me. But when I went to the Falklands again it was like finding God, even though I’m not a religious person. It was this moment of peace, opening that drawer in the filing cabinet.”

Today he describes himself as a pacifist. Since when has he felt that way? “Since leaving the army,” he says simply. It’s not hard to understand why Tony Banks is a pacifist after reading his detailed account of his time in the Falklands; the use of deadly phosphorous grenades against the enemy, the sharpening of bayonets, the scattered body parts.

“I hate people who glorify war,” he says with a shake of his head. “There is only death, despair and destruction in war. The three d’s.”

Banks left the army after returning from the Falklands and began working as an insurance salesman. He was good at selling but was fed up seeing the spoils go to his bosses, so he decided to go it alone.

He scraped together enough to buy his first care home in 1992 and a decade later he began to expand the business. Today he employs more than 800 staff, and when it comes to personal wealth, money is no object for him. The Secret Millionaire, therefore, was a welcome opportunity, one which opened the floodgates of philanthropy for him.

By the end of his stint in Liverpool for the programme, after revealing his true identity to the people he had met, Banks gave away over £130,000 to a number of good causes. He gave Lee Sanger, who had expressed an interest in becoming a pilot, £3,000 towards flying lessons as well as £30,000 towards the charity of his choice. Sanger chose Combat Stress, as Banks knew he would.

The charity helps ex-service personnel suffering from psychological injuries and mental health problems, and Banks has been involved with it ever since The Secret Millionaire.

“When I joined the army we never expected to go to war,” he says. “We hadn’t been at war for years. But when a kid joins up now they expect to go to Afghanistan. We’ve been at war constantly since 1990, so if the big consequences of the Falklands conflict included suicides and depression, what’s going to be the consequence of the constant wars since 1990? Two Iraq wars, the Balkans, Sierra Leone. If it takes 15 years before people seek help for PTSD then we’re going to have a huge problem. Because there’s something wrong with you if you’re not affected when you go to a war. Everyone is affected, just to varying degrees.”

Banks’ staff, friends and family are astounded at his energy. Since 2009, he has given away over £400,000, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and signed up to be the 200th passenger on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic flights into space. His mother is constantly telling him to slow down but it doesn’t look like that will happen any time soon. Storming the Falklands is the latest in a string of projects which Banks believes prove his theory that if you apply yourself, you can achieve anything.

He has his own helicopter and a licence to fly it, and, he says, treats every day like it’s his last. “The analogy I use is that I don’t go out for two pints. I’m out for ten or I’m not bothering,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s all or nothing.”

Money, he insists, doesn’t buy happiness. Rather it gives you choices – better car, better house, better holiday – and in his case, the opportunity to help others who don’t have it. And it’s easy for him to forget just how much of it he has. He hadn’t really considered himself successful until he got the call from the producers of The Secret Millionaire describing him as such.

“It makes me laugh,” he says, letting his gaze run over his fancy office. “Sometimes I think, ‘Tony Banks? How did you manage to pull this one off?’ Certainly, life has never been dull for me. In fact, it’s been a blast.”

• Storming the Falklands: My War and After by Tony Banks is out now, published by Little, Brown, priced £20. Tony will give a talk about his book and sign copies at Waterstones, 128 Princes Street, Edinburgh on Monday 16 April at 6pm, tel: [phone].