Jacquie Davis: ‘The most I've made as a bodyguard is £1m'

Times

12 hours ago

Jacquie Davis, 66, has been a close protection officer for 35 years and is widely regarded as the world's top female bodyguard. She spent four years as JK Rowling's bodyguard at the height of Harry Potter mania, and has guarded Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli, Gerard Butler, Nicole Kidman, Bradley Cooper, Sarah, Duchess of York, Justin Bieber and the Beckhams.
Her 1998 book, The Circuit, described her life rescuing children and vulnerable adults, hostage rescue, and protecting Middle Eastern royalty around the world, which was the inspiration for the 2019 Netflix thriller Close.
£30. I sometimes use cash; black cabs in London much prefer it. I won't use nail bars that only take cash because to me it's probably about trafficking, avoiding VAT and probably a front for money laundering, like barbers who are cash-only. It's likely to be a scam.
For work I use Amex, which is a pain because in eastern Europe you're hard-pushed to get them to take it, but it's great in the States. I also use Capital One. It depends what country I'm going to and what I'm doing. Some don't take certain credit cards. I get health insurance and points with Amex, so for booking flights and things it's useful.
I worked for British Leyland as a secretary. I went to college, did all the typing courses then went to catering college just in case. I joined the police force at 18 in 1976 and left in 1990 to become a bodyguard after I was badly injured. My father said: 'If you get injured in the police you have to have something to fall back on.' I was a chef for a year while writing The Circuit, which Penguin commissioned me to write.
Neither because the cost of living takes up most of your salary. I'm so busy jetting round the world, I don't have time to spend money anyway.
Yes, because I don't have children. I grew up in Hertfordshire, one of four. My parents were savers, didn't believe in hire purchase and it was, 'if you can't afford it, you can't have it. So save up for it'.
When I had £2,000 in the bank, 30-odd years ago, I paid cash for a car and didn't have to have it on finance. I've been given £10,000 in tips by Middle Eastern royalty at the end of a job. When you're travelling with stars you're normally in a private jet or first class, staying in 5 or 6-star hotels and eating in Michelin-starred restaurants — that's what they do, so you have to do the same.
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I've stayed in nearly all the top hotels around the world. It's lovely: you get a private butler, somebody hangs your stuff up in the wardrobe — the stupid things you get used to. There's much hotel snobbery among our teams. Six years ago if you had clients staying at the Savoy, the team would look at you with disdain and say, 'Please don't tell us we've got to spend six weeks in the Savoy.' Now it's all beautifully done up they go, 'Oh, six weeks in the Savoy, how fabulous!'
Very often. When I've done hostage rescues with women and children, the team of five or six can be in, say, Pakistan or Saudi for six weeks. They'll do it for nothing but I have to pay for the whole rescue: surveillance, flights, hotels, food and all expenses. The person kidnapped — especially if it's a child — their mum hasn't got any money.
Many times I've racked up all my credit cards, come back and lived on baked beans for six weeks. You can't leave a kid in a foreign country who's going to be sold off or married aged ten, for the sake of £200,000 that I don't have. So everybody pulls together: we do what we can and end up with nothing but you've got a child home. The most I've had to outlay is £250,000 but others like me have spent millions doing it.
More times than I care to remember, I've had to bribe officials on rescuing jobs because you want to cross borders without being seen. You're having to pay customs people, bent policemen, taxi drivers; honestly I couldn't count how many I've paid but you have to budget for bribes. The ultra-high net worth people you're protecting have no idea what you've done to get them safely from A to B. You're only allowed to leave the country with less than £10,000; so you share it among your team and have to get more sent out to you later. I've never bribed anyone in the UK or Europe because there's never a need to.
We do a lot of corporate work on the surveillance, close protection and fraud investigation side — the most I've made from a close protection job is about £1 million. The most that Middle Eastern royalty pay for a job, if it's in London and I've got 15 people out, could be £12,000 a day. The team can be one or two or up to 18 people and you have to pay them well.
It depends who you're looking after. The risk — is it political, blackmail, stalking, kidnapping? — determines how many people you'll need. We do pro bono work for domestic violence and hostage rescue. But we've also had journalists that have been kidnapped where the newspaper has paid us to get them back. Oil executives and the oil companies do as well. When such clients pay their bills, it helps cover the pro bono work.
Yes, a two-bedroom 17th-century cottage.
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No. I'm just not interested. Money isn't the be-all and end-all, even if some people do think money buys everything. It can make you miserable in comfort.
I do play online bingo. I've played it with the same ladies for the past 25 years. We've never met, but online we've seen each other through births, deaths and marriages. You might win a few hundred pounds but really it's about doing something completely different from what I do at work. There's a high-ranking officer in the navy, an accountant, a doctor. It's quite amusing, we're in highly stressful jobs and that's how we get away from the stress, for the cost of £2 or £20 to play.
Amalgamating with Optimal Risk 20-odd years ago because business insurance was going up and I thought it was getting ridiculous. You share the cost of premises, business insurance, corporation tax and everything else. We employ ten people; everybody else is self-employed and you sub-contract them. Say I've got a client who wants to go skiing, then the close protection operators have to be skiers. I've got 100 people with different skill sets I can pull from: they can ski, drive, speak foreign languages, ride horses. With the Middle East if you've got females, they've got to have female close protection officers; if it's a guy, you've got to have males. So it's all to do with culture, religion and what people are comfortable with.
To employ a friend. They thought they were entitled to more money, position and power, and thought they'd never get sacked. 'Oh, I'm your friend,' you know. 'Well, no, you're not in business.' In the end I had to get rid of them. It cost me a friendship.
Feeding the local cats. I'm a bit of a cat hotel round here. My cats have died and I refuse to get any more, but all the local cats come and visit me so it costs me a fortune in cat food. They stay for a couple of days then go home again. It's lovely because I haven't got the vet bills.
Me. My skills, the courses I've done to enhance them. You have to invest in yourself. I'm the operations director of Optimal Risk Group now.
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Don't let it rule your life. I've seen so many people ruined by money ruling their life, having to have a bigger house or car: something goes wrong and they're back to living in a two-bedroom flat with a Ford Fiesta and they're miserable. A billionaire client once said to me: 'I was born a Bedouin so if we lost everything tomorrow, I could go back to living in the desert. But my children, who went to Eton, wouldn't know how to cope.'
About £100,000, I suppose.
A Range Rover I bought for £45,000 when my book, The Circuit, came out in 1998.
No. I cashed them in to do rescues.
I'd start a foundation to help people, but not by giving them money. There was a documentary where John Prescott spoke to women on a council estate who said: 'All we want is a job so we can buy some paint for the walls or get our kids a decent bed.' All he did was invite them to parliament for champagne and strawberries. I thought, 'what an arsehole'. All you're doing is going, 'look what I've got and you still haven't got anything'. I'd help them get skill sets to get back on their feet.
Jacquie Davis is available for speaking engagements via nmplive.co.uk