The Celebrity Chauffeur

I'm not just a chauffeur but that's the part of the job I love.
I was in the British armed forces for twenty two years before retiring from that life and finding myself at a cross roads of what I would do. I was still only forty years old so I wasn't ready to retire. I had a good pot of money saved and knew when I hit fifty five I'd half a great pension and could probably then decide to call it a day on a working life.
The army looks after you reasonably well. I had several offers of careers I could retrain into. I did a business management degree in my spare time. I initially went into some tv security work after being contacted by another ex squaddie who had set himself up and was doing very well. He had contracts with several tv production companies to run their security details.
After a few jobs with him I sat and had a chat with him and I decided to set up my own company offering chauffeur services for those same tv companies. Couple that with my military experience and those companies were all too happy to have me looking after their clients.

Five years before I'd finished in the forces I divorced my wife Kelly. We had never got around to starting a family, something I now regretted but we all make life choices we have to stand by.
It wasn't the prettiest divorce, I was angry she'd choose to leave me when I'd worked hard for years , getting promotions along the way. I saw action in several shit holes across the world and had seen brothers fall along the way.
It was only more recently that I realised the shit life she'd had. I was never around and when I was I was drinking and catching up with others. I see that now, but of course it was too late.

I bought a seven year old Bentley Mulsanne, set up my company "Saferider Chauffeur Services" and put myself out there.
My name is John Rider, so the company name was, I thought , a good play on words.
It didn't take long at all to find myself getting contracts with the BBC, Sky and ITV, usually driving high level execs from an airfield to an office or vice versa. I had several other jobs with private industry too doing the same thing.
Quite often I'd ferry around radio presenters, tv presenters and a few actors or actresses for premieres etc. and a few now knew me by first name.

This was all ten years ago and I have some amazing stories during that time. I'll tell them here.