Andy McNab didn’t have the best start in life. As a newborn baby, he was left on the steps of Guy’s Hospital in a Harrod’s carrier bag. He didn’t do well in school and found himself in juvenile detention. He joined the army at 16, fighting the IRA in the streets and fields of South Armagh, and it wasn’t until he met an army education officer that he realised he had the reading and numeracy age of an 11-year-old.

“He told me that I wasn’t thick, I was just uneducated,“ says Andy, who went on to become a member of 22 SAS working at the heart of covert operations for nine years, culminating in him commanding the Bravo Two Zero patrol in the Gulf War. “That’s what I now tell people, myself – there’s a difference.

“Every time you read, you get a bit of knowledge, and every time you get a bit of knowledge, you get a bit more power. I try and get this into people’s mindsets, tell them that they can do this at any time in their life. If you can read and your literacy is up, your numeracy skills go up and then you pass that on to the next generation, to your kids.“

Andy is passionate about getting this message out there, and has been going in to schools, prisons, the military and industrial workplaces such as factories, telling his story and trying to inspire a love of reading and learning.

“I just go in and talk about my life,“ he says, “the juvenile detention, the army, then coming out and getting into the writing and then the films. I say ‘Lads, if I can do it, you can’. None of this would have happened if that army educator hadn’t made me realise I wasn’t thick, so now that’s what I go out and do.

“I feel very lucky and privileged to have had that opportunity.“ It has been 20 years since Andy wrote Bravo Two Zero, about his experiences in the SAS, which was followed up by Immediate Action and Seven Troop, and, while he still inspires the odd newspaper article about why he still keeps the truth about his identity hidden – Andy McNab is a pseudonym, his face is blacked out in photographs and TV interviews, and no photography or videoing is allowed at his press events – his focus is now very much firmly on the books and helping others get into reading.

Andy was approached by “the military” to write Bravo Two Zero, but says he had no plans to write beyond that book, and certainly not fiction, which he didn’t believe he could do.

But Hollywood director Michael Mann, who Andy was working with on the film Heat in 1995 in a consultation role, talked him into it.

“I’d never been a reader when I was a kid and it wasn’t anything that interested me,“ Andy admits, “but Michael told me that if you’re writing a book all you’re doing is writing down the pictures you would see when you’re watching a TV show, three acts and an epilogue. And he told me not to think of the chapters as chapters, which I didn’t understand anyway, but as commercial breaks.

“So I thought ‘Well, I’ll give it a go, then’.“

And so Andy’s best-selling Nick Stone series was born, the 15th of which, Silencer, has just been published, 16 years after the first, Remote Control, in 1997.

He has also written the Boy Soldier series, books for Quick Reads, the new Tom Buckingham series and two young adult series, Dropzone Stories and The New Recruit series.

Andy has also written two scripts, the first of which, Simple Lie, is in pre-production with a Hollywood company at the moment and should go into production sometime next year, and the second of which is the screenplay of the first Nick Stone novel.

But one thing Andy really fancies trying his hand at a stage play.

“I’ve had a couple of talks about doing one but I just haven’t had time. It’s the only thing I haven’t done. It’s a totally different discipline but it’d be a really good experience, I’d love to give it a go. If I do, I’ll bring it to Watford – come and see it!“

  • Andy McNab is at Chorleywood Memorial Hall, Common Road, Chorleywood on Friday, November 1 at 8pm. Details: Chorleywood Bookshop, 01923 283566, chorleywoodbookshop.co.uk