Nuts Magazine - Stag Weekend Feature (Page 6)
Tortured for fun (Page 6)
It’s Bosnia, 1995, and you’re a British agent trying to gather information about a massacre carried out by a Serbian warlord Volvic. It’s your job to meet scared witnesses and try to avoid the clutches of the assassination squads, who will grab you, torture you and then shoot your brains out. Well, actually you’re in Herefordshire and this is just a game called Praetorian Circle, but it’s one that a growing number of stags are paying good money to take part in. The evening involves a pub crawl around the local villages, meeting up with six witnesses, and being chased by three enemy agents and two assassins. And even though all involved are ex-forces blokes acting the part the assassins in question are seriously scary-looking blokes.
But first there’s training back at HQ with head honcho Dougie, who can’t be identified for security reasons. He takes us through our basic instructions, including map reading, local knowledge and lastly, giving us ten minutes to take a look at the pictures of our contacts. Dougie offers the pictures for us to take, but we refuse. “Good,” he says, “had you done that you would have already failed.”
And so for the best bit of the night: the drinking. Six pubs to go to, and six informers to meet. With night well and truly fallen, we meet mike, our sixth contact. He leads us from a phone box to a clearing in the road. And then all of a sudden, six men dressed in fatigues and Balaclavas are pointing Uzis in our direction and shouting at us to lie down on the ground. Naturally we do so and our hands are bound, hoods put on our heads and we’re pushed into a van.
We’re dragged into what looks like a farmhouse and down some winding stairs into a damp cellar, then laid out on the floor in what’s known as “stress positions”. The shouting and the abuse continues and we’re forced to bow our heads. Following this are intervals of stress positioning and time in the interrogation room, where Garry (also unidentified) asks us what we’re doing in Bosnia. Refusal is followed by more time in a stress position, cold water and a bag of maggots thrown over my head, getting stripped to my underpants and being doused in water again.
Then a gun gets pointed to my head, a Tanaka Glock 17 to be precise, though I’m not too worried about the make at this point. “Is this what your mum and dad want to see back home, their sons head shot off?” I’m not-very-politely asked. I give in and say the safety word. Afterwards, I learn they had gone through my wallet to see if they could identify my parents’ or loved ones’ names in order to make that treat more seriously, but there was nothing in my wallet except crap. “Is this what Blockbuster Video want to see?” doesn’t have the same ring to it. Immediately after the safety word, the lads are height of politeness, giving us sandwiches and beer and staying up half the night to share their war stories. Then in the morning we’re shown what we could have had: a bag of old pig’s blood over the head and a trip to the woods. “So would you do that thing of pretending to piss on me, but using warm water?” I ask Garry. “No,” he replies, “I would’ve just pissed on you.”
Caption 1 – Top Right: “These fools actually think they’re getting out of this alive” // “Ha, ha – I know”
Caption 2 – Middle Right: “By the way, Dave – you’re no longer my best man”
Caption 3 – Middle Left: “Ooh, look – chips! Erm, wriggling ones…”
Caption 4 – Middle: “Ever seen Deliverance?”
Caption 5 – Bottom Right: “Oh no, beer…”
Words: Ed West | Photos: Ellis O’Brien, Charlie Gray, Alamy, Getty
