He's a real-life Action Man and the star of Channel 4's SAS Who Dares Wins, but TV tough guy Ant Middleton's journey to becoming the super-positive guy he is today hasn't been an easy one.
Ant is now a proud father, family man and has a huge following on social media. He is one of just a handful of soldiers to have completed the 'Holy Trinity' - which means he has served in the Paras, the Royal Marines and the Special Forces - but in the past, his loutish antics often landed him in trouble.
The TV hard man served 13 years in the military before finding fame on the reality show, in which civilians are put through a recreation of the SAS selection process. However, a tough childhood saw him struggling to find himself during his younger years.
Ant's dad died when he was just he was just five years old, and it wasn't long until he was replaced a 'bully' who became his stepfather.
"The vivid memory of my life was waking up not long after my dad died and there was a man I'd never seen before standing there next to my mum," Ant told The Sun.
"He was enormously tall, with a big nose and dark hair that went down past his shoulders.
"I could tell he was much younger than Mum, who said, 'Anthony, meet your new dad'."
Ant told the paper he and his siblings were forbidden to speak about their father from that day on, threatened with beatings if they did.
He told the Sun: "Dad was wiped from our lives. The day after he died every photo of him disappeared from the house. It was as if he'd never existed. Me and my brothers weren't even allowed to go to his funeral. His death was made absolute."
After several years and a move from Portsmouth to the north of France, Ant decided to escape his home life and join 9 Para, the airborne division of the Royal Engineers.
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There he engaged in booze-fuelled rampages where he found himself having pool balls fired at his private parts and diving headlong into stacks of beer glasses.
On one particularly drunken night out, he deliberately wet himself on the top deck of a bus while shouting 'Airborne!'.
Ant told the paper: "As hot pee trickled into my socks and on to the floor a woman in her fifties, who looked like an office cleaner returning home from night-shift said, 'I bet your mum's proud of you'."
It was when he travelled to Macedonia to work as a French interpreter for officers of the French Foreign Legion's 'Deuxieme Rep' parachute regiment that his idea of what it meant to be a military man changed.
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"These men behaved in a way that showed they had nothing to prove," he said.
"They were intelligent as well as being trained to a level that would have left many Paras collapsed in a ditch. I came to realise the men of 9 Para were nothing more than a bunch of pub soldiers, 30-year-old infants with their ballbags in a pool table."
However, after a switch from the army to the police, Ant was kicked out for drink driving and his life soon descended into chaos once again, with him regularly getting into fights.
He told the Sun: "I never looked for trouble but when it found me I wouldn't hesitate.
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"Whoever was facing up to me would be knocked out. I'd annihilate him until he stopped moving."
Things came to a head shortly after meeting his wife, Emile, when he was imprisoned for four months after assaulting two police officers.
He says the incident was a turning point in his life and he made it his mission from then on out not to dwell on negativity.
Ant and Emilie now have four children, Shyla, ten, Gabriel, nine, Priseis, two and one-year-old Bligh. He says he couldn't be happier.
He says: "This is my life now. When I'm at home I am in full Dad mode and I love it.
"This is where I'm most at peace because I just forget about everything.
"When I have my kids climbing all over me that relaxes me. It's what makes me smile."
Featured Image Credit: Anthony Middleton/InstagramTopics: military, army, TV and Film, UK Entertainment, UK