Castle

Jacquie Davis

For over thirty years Jacquie Davis has survived as one of the top operators in a male-dominated profession - the secretive, often dangerous world of being a bodyguard - or to give the profession its proper name, close protection officer. In 2019, Netflix released Close, an action thriller whose main character was inspired by Jacquie's life story. Hired to protect a rich young mining heiress, bodyguard and counter-terrorism expert Sam (Noomi Rapace) finds herself tangled in a violent kidnapping and deadly conspiracy. When attackers target the heiress she's protecting, battle-hardened bodyguard Sam scrambles to save her client - and teach her how to fight back. Jacquie's has had so many close scrapes with death while risking everything for her clients, she is genuinely surprised to still be alive. She has been stabbed, thrown through a shop window, shot at several times, including by Kashmiri snipers, and chased through some of the world's most dangerous countries. She has also freed a young British woman who was being held captive in Pakistan, and rescued men imprisoned by Saddam Hussein's son, Uday, in Iraq. After leaving the police force in the 1970s Jacquie worked as a CPO, where her training - which included combat training and a willingness to risk everything for the 'principal' - led her into increasingly life-threatening operations, so much so that she became recognised as the world's top female bodyguard. Jacquie's autobiographical book "The Circuit", first published by Penguin in 1998 and reprinted in 2020, is a fascinating account of one woman's amazing experiences involving the dangerous job of rescuing children and adults around the world, to the more glittering world of guarding well-known celebrities such as Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli, Gerard Butler, Nicole Kidman, Bradley Cooper, teenage heartthrob Justin Bieber and the Beckhams, to name but a few. She spent four years as JK Rowling's personal bodyguard, and is now in demand protecting Middle Eastern royalty. In 2011, Jacquie was hired by tabloid celebrity Katie Price, following intelligence from police that a violent gang targeting premiership soccer stars also had its sights on her. The gang had been going to the homes of footballers and other rich individuals - holding people hostage as they demanded the combinations to their safes. Once seen as the preserve of royalty and celebrities, close protection officers are now in high demand for an increasing range of clients. The growth in the number of high net worth individuals over the last 25 years has certainly fuelled demand; in recent years, when the size of their bonuses became public, City bankers attracted the wrong kind of attention and many were reported to have employed private protection for themselves and their families. For some, it may be more about a perceived threat than an actual one. Jacquie has appeared on numerous television and radio shows, both in the UK and USA. A popular guest expert on chat shows, she has also acted as consultant for television and film production companies and appeared in documentaries as well as being a spokesperson on news programmes for crime related incidents. She was also the Crime Editor for Hot Gossip Magazine and has written a column for Combat-online. Jacquie Davis is trained to a high level in counter-surveillance, firearms, restraint tactics, bomb search, defensive driving, hostage awareness and survival. However, her day-to-day client responsibilities are more about conflict management, strategic planning and tactics than the hyped and distorted Hollywood perception of bodyguards diving in front of bullets and high speed car chases. In fact, Jacquie never looks after anyone unless there is a real and genuine threat to their life or well-being; that's the difference between having a bodyguard for prestige, as some pop stars do, and for protection.

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