Zero Risk

August 15, 2023
Tony Loughran’s memoir, Zero Risk, certainly lives up to his motto—‘I’d rather spend one year as a tiger than a hundred years as a sheep’. From his rough-and-tumble—and then outright criminal—youth on the mean streets of Liverpool to his enlistment in the Royal Navy as a medic in the 1980s, followed by brutal commando training, to his service in Belfast while the Troubles were raging, Loughran’s early years provide more than enough material for a gripping read. But he was only getting started. In the early ’90s, Loughran joined the BBC as a safety and security expert, where he developed safety courses and procedures for TV stunts and trained journalists to handle operating in war zones. That eventually led to him setting up his own media security and investigative consulting firm based in Australia, largely operating in the Middle East. Loughran takes a little while to hit his stride, but once he gets going, Zero Risk becomes a book that’s hard to put down as he powers through countless high-risk situations (with occasional asides as one relationship or another falls apart). It’s a great book for those interested in the dangerous side of news reporting or a colourful life in general; among many other claims to fame, Loughran handled security for Martin Bashir’s notorious interview with Princess Diana.