Military Driving School

Meet The Mastiff (1x1)

: 19, 2011

This brand new series sees Jeremy Kyle find out exactly what it takes to be a driver in the British Armed Forces. Jeremy joins the team at the Defence School of Transport in Leconfield, East Yorkshire, the largest, toughest driving school in the world where 16,000 trainees pass through each year, taking part in over 100 different courses. It’s here that every driver deployed in Afghanistan is trained and the skills learned in training help save lives on the front line. Over the course of 12 weeks Jeremy follows a group of trainees learning to drive for the first time and a group of experienced soldiers who are learning to drive highly specialist vehicles ready for Afghanistan. The series follows servicemen and women at all levels - from teenage soldiers straight out of basic training, to battle hardened veterans coming back for extra training, Episode one: In this first episode, Jeremy is introduced to some of the school’s impressive fleet of vehicles and is taken for a spin in a Mastiff, the school’s newest recruits arrive and start their gruelling training, and Jeremy speaks to an instructor whose driving training saved his own son’s life in Afghanistan. The first piece of equipment that Jeremy is introduced to is the Mastiff two – the Rolls Royce of the army’s transport fleet. It’s one of the most heavily armoured vehicles in active service and over 300 of these highly protective trucks have been sent out to Afghanistan this year. Jeremy meets Sergeant Major Darren Hugill who drives him in a Mastiff and shows exactly what the vehicle can do. He says: “What we’re going to do now is we’re actually going to go down what’s called the ‘one in three’ – which is a 30 degree ascent… The one we’ve got here is the knife edge so basically it’s just straight up and then straight back down again.” The latest recruits joining 110 Squadron Royal Logistic Core have arrived at Leconfield for their driver training cours