When East End lad Clifford Thompson joined the London Fire Brigade at 19 he was quickly hooked on the danger.“Firefighters crave the next callout - the action and drama,” he explains. “No one claims to be a hero but you learn to play that role and love being in the grip of a crisis. It’s an addiction, to the gruesome and the bizarre, fuelled by adrenaline."
But in 1991 Cliff's world fell apart when a three year old boy died before his eyes.
Guilt, anger and bottled-up horrors sent him spiralling into depression. Diagnosed with PTSD he left the fire service and became a writer and BBC journalist. And he's now written a searingly-honest memoir called Falling Through Fire.
In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower tragedy Cliff, 50, spoke to Rachael Bletchly the Daily Mirror's Chief Writer, about his own experiences and the pressures faced by our 999 heroes.
Please leave a review and let us know who you'd like to hear in The Interview in future. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy