Thai cheek

ONE chap is in need of muscle relief, so heads for the Thai massage parlour. Taking his pick from six Thai girls, he strips off for the session.

It feels good. “I can’t believe I’m on operational tour getting a Thai massage,”

he says.

Not only that. The big news is that Burger King is opening a branch in four days’ time. “Two burgers, load of chips and a little bit of lettuce on the side make you feel better,” says another man.

He’s decided against a rubdown from a Thai girl because “I don’t trust myself getting a massage.” Most of us can probably work out why.

This unexpected encounter comes in the first of six TV visits to Air Force Afghanistan, looking at life for British servicemen and women stationed at Kandahar air base, in southern Afghanistan.

This “gateway to the war in Afghanistan” is occupied by 10,000 soldiers from around the world and one billion pounds worth of Nato hardware, in a community in the middle of the desert.

Inside the wire are fast food joints, sports pitches (ice hockey anyone? – another bizarre sight in somewhere so hot) and massage parlours. There’s a weekly Saturday market, where local tradesmen, following a full body search, set up shop and sell to air base personnel.

The commander takes a local interpreter to barter for a carpet, something that reminds us that, for all the air-conditioned rooms and facilities, they’re in a war zone.

The interpreter, wearing dark glasses and face wrapped in a scarf, points out that he’s doing a dangerous job. “Most of the time the interpreters or the guys who work for Nato they get killed,” he says.

He covers his face as he’s unsure who’s Taliban and who’s not. “If someone recognises me, of course they will kill me,” he adds. Is it really worth the risk to buy a carpet for someone else?

The point is reinforced by another interpreter with a patrol outside the base.

He relates that his father was shot because he worked for the troops.

All the jollity about massage parlours and the search for Kandahar’s strongest man is put into perspective by the statistics – almost 1,000 service personnel have died there since 2001, including more than 100 British soldiers.

This knowledge makes for a tearful farewell as loved ones see off a squadron heading for Afghanistan from the UK.

While new recruit Nathan, 21, is looking forward to it, another – Jonesy – is sad to be leaving his pregnant fiancee. The narrator dramatically captions these pictures of weeping relatives with the line, “No one can be sure if they’ll see their loved ones again.”

The programme shows action outside the massage parlour. A pilot takes to the skies in advance of a convoy of 200 vehicles setting off through hostile territory.

His aircraft is equipped with a “sniper targeting pod” which sends back live bird’s-eye footage of the enemy on the ground. Then he’s ordered to put on a “show of force”, which involves flying low and making a lot of noise until the Taliban make a run for it.

Another way of frightening them is to make them stand by the “poo pond”, the base’s sewage works. It’s the size of nine Olympic swimming pools but, with increased numbers on base, is struggling to cope with more than it was built for.

WELSH singer-songwriter Cerys Matthews is the latest celeb to discuss her love affair with the wonders of verse as part of the Beeb’s poetry season, in tonight’s My Life With Verse.

She travels back to her roots to explore the extraordinary legacy of Celtic poetry, and to discover why poems elicit an emotional connection with the concept of home.

Starting in her native Swansea, she immerses herself in the surreal visions of Dylan Thomas, retracing his steps and analysing his musical use of language.

She then heads for Yorkshire and Ted Hughes’s vision of the ancient Celtic kingdom of Elmet, and to County Sligo to explore the beautiful landscapes that inspired arguably Ireland’s greatest poet, William Butler Yeats.