FLIGHT Lieutenant John Nichol reckons he had a very good war. Yes, his battered face was paraded on Iraqi television at the beginning of the Gulf War after he and John Peters were shot down over the desert and tortured for three days. And he was used as a human shield, imprisoned in an interrogation centre for seven weeks, subjected to mock executions, bombings, burnings, whippings and beatings. And he suffers still from flashbacks and post-traumatic stress disorder. Then in March he is to be made redundant in the wake of defence cuts. But he says he wouldn’t change a thing.

He is, you see, still enjoying the spoils of war. It is because of the Gulf that this week sees him finishing his first novel, Point of Impact, which, he says, is ‘based on real-life events in the RAF, but not about flying’.

Written in his spare time and in the four months that military personnel receive at the end of their careers to learn to be civvies, the novel is one of three he’s been signed up for by Hodder and Stoughton. ‘The other two were sold without a synopsis,” he reveals, “I started to write as a result of the Gulf, after Tornado Down [an account of the Gulf ordeal, co-written with John Peters] became a bestseller.

‘I’m used to deadlines, being under pressure, being told what to do, left for a long time to do it and having the ultimate responsibility of, you know, possibly killing somebody,’ he continues. ‘But this is scary. I’ve never before signed a contract for money and works of fiction.’ The books are not the only spin-off of his war. On Sunday John appears in Eamonn Matthews’s excellent new blockbuster television series on the Gulf War. ‘It’s brilliant. It shows that there’s only one certainty in war – that people will die. There are no winners and losers.’

Since the Gulf, John has also met Baroness Thatcher, General Norman Schwarzkopf and the Princess of Wales. (‘Princess Diana presented me with a bloody awful Crimplene tie.’) He’s been in demand as a lecturer, after-dinner and motivational speaker for companies. (‘In the Air Force you compete with other air forces, nations, people in your own squadron and yourself.’) He’s been flown worldwide to stay in luxurious hotels by post-Gulf contacts. And he’s contributed to television and radio on a variety of subjects. Oh, and the film rights to Tornado Down were recently sold.

SITTING in the Royal York Hotel, John speaks in a Geordie accent at the speed of machine-gun fire. Wearing a green jacket and grey polo shirt, he’s handsome, beefy and 6ft tall. ‘I’ve worn a uniform for 15 years. Now I have to buy clothes,’ he laughs. ‘It’s simple things like that, and getting a doctor and learning how to do job interviews, that you have to come to terms with when you’re crossing into Civvy Street. In the military we’re used to ordering people ‘Do this for me’ and it will be done.’

John is convivial, extrovert and adventurous. He bears the scar from an Iraqi boot kick on his face and has a prominent bump on his forehead. The lastis the result of his first encounter with death. ‘I was fishing, aged 10, and fell down the cliff and landed on my head. I didn’t fall far, just 20 or 30ft.’

He was brought up in North Shields in a house on a council estate in which his parents still live. They didn’t have a telephone until he was 14 years old. But, the youngest of four children, he had a cosseted childhood. ‘I was the baby and consequently got more than the others. I went on two skiing holidays when I was 13 years old. My parents had never even been abroad until they came to meet me coming home from the Gulf. My mother never worked and was always at home.’

It was a Catholic family – his parents have gone to church daily since his father retired – and John was an altar boy for seven years. ‘I’m lapsed now but I still believe in God. In your darkest times in captivity you pray and make all sorts of promises that you’ll go back to church. Of course you don’t.’

He went to St Cuthbert’s grammar school and left, aged 16, with nine O-levels. It had never occurred to him to join the RAF: he’d never even played at pilots. He wanted to be an electronics technician. ‘By chance I read an RAF brochure to stop myself being bored on a bus journey. Three hours later I’d signed on the dotted line.’

He recalls his time in the Gulf. ‘Once when we were attacked by stealth bombers the ceiling came down and I said ‘Right, I’m going to die now’. It’s quite calming knowing there’s nothing you can do about it.’ Another time a guard put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

In his flashbacks he relives his loneliness and vulnerability. ‘Pain hurts but you get over it. But you can’t imagine the fear and isolation. You didn’t sleep much because of the bombing and people screaming all around you. Every night nearly all 30-odd of us had the same dream – that we were back at base drinking and our capture had been a dream.’

Five years on, John still views life from an altered perspective. ‘The Gulf taught me that something good will always come out of smething bad and that there’s always somebody worse off than you. The things I thought were important aren’t. I’ve become less argumentative but more impatient as a result of watching my life ebb before me 24 hours a day and having no control over it. I no longer worry about money and see no point in putting it in a bank. When you come back after an experience like that you live your life today as though you were going to die tomorrow. ‘

Since the Gulf, John has been deployed to Bosnia (‘When your aircraft alarm tells you a surface-to-air missile is locked on to you, it’s totally terrifying’), the Falklands, Cyprus and Canada. But now he’s taken voluntary redundancy. ‘With the cutbacks there were no more opportunities for me.’ He has a pay-off, before tax, of four times his annual £30,000 salary. ‘But I’m a real candidate for ending up on the streets. People a thousand times more capable than I have ended up in the doldrums. It’s the most frightening thing I’ve ever done.’