Man On Fire

Being extorted? Terrified about kidnappers? Had death threats? Julia Llewellyn Smith meets WILL GEDDES, the close protection specialist the A-list turns to when there’s trouble

Will Geddes is the A-list’s embarrassing secret. His number figures on the speed dial of dozens of billionaires, CEOs, rock stars and movie legends, yet few of them will admit they know him.

“No one wants to be associated with Will,” he chortles. “For instance, I was at the Brit awards as someone’s guest, when a very prominent figure in the music industry started striding towards me. I said to my host, ‘Just be prepared for the reaction I’m about to get.’ I saw a flicker of recognition in the eminent person’s eye, his face started breaking into a smile and his arm went out for a handshake. Then I saw that flicker change into, ‘Oh! Now I’ve placed him.’ He immediately turned 90 degrees and walked off.”

On another occasion, Geddes was on the red carpet when Paula Abdul ran up to him and embraced him enthusiastically. “Then her face changed and she asked, ‘We haven’t met before?’ I said, ‘No. I’m so sorry.’ She was just so used to seeing me at those sort of things she thought she knew me.”

The reason Geddes is both so familiar to The One Percent and yet so likely to be blanked by them is because he knows all their secrets. He’s the man to whom the super-rich and heads of state turn when they receive a kidnapping or death threat. (He’s previously protected two of the people who late last year – not under his watch – were sent pipe bombs in the us.)

Royal families enlist Geddes to protect them; a female newsreader and a Hollywood actress have both used his services to see their stalkers jailed; household names have used him to “ghost” them to safe houses, away from the paparazzi, when a scandal involving them is about to break.