Bentine `brains behind SAS'

AT LAST it can be revealed: The Goon Show comedian Michael Bentine inspired the SAS to take on its role as the world's leading anti-terrorist squad.

Although better known for his part in the activities of the dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill-on-Sea, Bentine was in real life a crack pistol shot. He was the first non-SAS person to be allowed into the regiment's "Killing House", a state of the art environment for training SAS men in close combat.

And according to a new book by Ken Connor, the SAS's longest serving officer, Bentine, who was an officer in RAF intelligence during the Second World War, said he felt an affinity with the SAS and described the regiment's Hereford base as "like coming home".

Connor said: "As much as anyone, he deserves the credit for promoting the idea of a counter-terrorist force within the SAS, several years before the [hostage taking at the 1972] Munich Olympics triggered the actual formation of the CT team." In the late Sixties, Connor was working closely with an SAS founder called "The Master", devising shooting techniques for the regiment.

"The Master and I were invited to a shooting demonstration by him [Bentine] at Paddington Green police station in London in the autumn of 1968."

The comedian greeted the two Hereford men: "And you must be the SAS," and shouted in a Goons voice, "I vill now show you all my enormousveapon." Bentine reached into his trouser waistband and pulled out a .44 Magnum revolver with a 12-inch barrel "and began rapid fire".

"Having got our attention, he went on to lay out his thesis. He was absolutely convinced that within a very short time the UK police would have to carry arms to combat the threat from international terrorism and the growing menace of the narcotics trade," says Connor in his book, entitled Ghost Force: The Secret History of the SAS.

Bentine died in 1997. Ken Connor said he had spoken to "The Master" last week: "He said Bentine would have been good in the SAS. There is no greater compliment than that."