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- FROM HEAVEN TO HELL -

When you're that nervous, your heart's going like the clappers anyway; even without the vests we'd have been breathing oddly. But with the vests on, it felt like the life was being choked out of us - a sharp reminder that our breath, our very lives, could be taken away from us at any minute.

The guy who had sewn us up made us pace up and down the room, to make sure we could walk all right, and he gave us the thumbs-up. I was just thinking, 'This is heavy. We're never going to be able to get away with this.'

I turned to Paul and said, 'You look massive,' and he replied, 'You look a bit big yourself, like.' We even managed a laugh at that.

Then we put our shirts and jackets on over the top, so we were wearing the actual outfit we'd be going through Customs in. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, 'Fair enough, we don't look that bad.' It looked like we'd been working out a bit, pumping the iron.

Our confidence rose at that point, but then we realised something: we were boiling hot. For starters, that was going to be a big problem in the stifling heat of Caracas but, more than that, we'd stand out badly, toggled up in jackets like we were going out for a pint back home. But then, we reasoned, we were going back to England, a much chillier country, so the thought quickly slipped our of my minds.

'You're gonna take this stuff back for me,' said the greasy-haired bloke. 'And don't even think about making