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TV PREVIEWS
First Cut: My Father the Mercenary, Friday 7.35pm, Channel 4 
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"He wasn't your regular dad," laughs Claire Sessarego. She's got that right, but there's more than a touch of bitterness in that laugh, because her father Philip – just one of a number of identities he had – was a mercenary, a best-selling author and, according to some interpretations of his life, a fantasist.
This short documentary – and the story is so fantastic in places, you do wish it was longer – begins as Claire and brother Paul travel to Belgium to pick up their father's ashes. The last time they saw him was the mid-90s, but, says Paul, "his death didn't come as a surprise – because it's happened before."
No, it really had – after working as a gun for hire in 1993, Philip apparently double-crossed some Balkan mercenaries and faked his own death. Oh come on, we've all done it. Up till then, his CV included a spell spent training Sri Lankan armed forces in the late '70s, a coup in the Maldives in 1980, and a some time tutoring the Mujahaddin in Afghanistan.
The dead man resurfaced earlier this decade when his book was published. Written under the alias Tom Carew, and purportedly about his experiences as an SAS man in Afghanistan, it contained a number of fabrications (he wasn't in the SAS, for starters). With extraordinary timing, the paperback edition was published on 10 September 2001. Oh, and it was called Jihad! (Um, that's his exclamation mark, not ours.)
What happened next? You'll have to watch to find out – but, as Claire and Paul discover, easy answers – or indeed any answers at all – are the last thing you should expect.
by Will Parkhouse, Wednesday 24 June 2009
Picture: Channel 4
