Truth to tell, I have never been much of a – well, fan, I suppose – of fan clubs. Honesty compels me to admit there might be just a touch of sour grapes about this, dating back to my youth. There was I, a dashing young writer, racing motorcyclist and aviator – and the only thing all the local mini-skirted damsels could think of was rushing off to pop concerts and screaming hysterically at some scruffy drug-sniffing oik in tight trousers who’s major gift to mankind was inflicting permanent aural damage to his fans by yelling pop songs at a volume fit to drown out a departing F4 Phantom. The fact that I was actually not very dashing, was only occasionally a racer, and at that time could only offer a breezy and somewhat oily flight in a Tiger Moth as an inglorious introduction to the wild blue yonder did not enter into it. Sour grapes set in.

Ironically, years later and rather briefly, I did acquire a fan club – or rather my aerobatic team did. We used to get fan-letters, to which I always made a point of replying on the grounds that it was the crowds who paid for our living and if some of those crowds took the trouble to write in then they were at least entitled to a personal response. Someone suggested we issue a Newsletter, which we duly did. We called it Issue # 2 for reasons which are now vague – possibly I had some Machiavellian notion that it made us look more established.

The results were… mixed. One chap wrote to say that his cat danced in front of the TV whenever we came on. Another guy asked us if we had considered acquiring a trio of Sopwith Camels. Someone else sent us death threats if we practised aerobatics anywhere near his house. (Said threats went on for years, providing us with endless amusement since the writer chose to remain anonymous and didn’t tell us where his house was, so that we could concentrate on it). A lady wrote to say that her husband had been a huge fan and that she’d read parts of our newsletter to him when she visited him last week. He having died the previous year.

We quietly dropped the fan club thing.

(But with the final droll sequel that the British Library somehow got hold of a copy of Newsletter # 2, shoved it in their archives, and wrote asking for a copy of Newsletter # 1. I said I’d be happy to supply it except that there was no # 1. This apparently fractured their belief-system, and for a decade afterwards I was balling-up annual letters from the BL, some of them muttering about legal requirements).

Anyway…

There are fan clubs and there are supporters clubs. And I’m hornswaggled if I know what the difference is. Maybe it’s that fan clubs wear mini-skirts and shriek at pop stars while supporters clubs wear some sort of woad and shriek at 22 ludicrously overpaid young men kicking a bladder around a fabulously expensive field for reasons I have never quite understood. I really wouldn’t be knowing.

However.

BLOODHOUND’s club is of course the 1K Club, and like any fan club is peopled by anoraks who will sign up to anything – right?

Not right. Definitely and absolutely wrong.

There is a big, big difference. I’ve now met many 1K Club members and here are some examples – names changed to protect the innocent.

Bob is big, hefty and rather shambling, with a mop of untamed black hair, five o’clock shadow to match, and… er, shall we say, a certain scruffiness of attire. He looks – well, like a cross between Bob the Builder and somebody eyeing up a joint as a potential ram-raid target.

Bob is a nuclear physicist.

Jim is smart-casual and very, very clued-up on rocketry – enough to make Daniel Jubb blink and answer questions very carefully.

Jim… is a builder. A brickie, to be precise.

Winona is a twinkling lady whose father was aircrew ferrying Eisenhower around, and who just happens to love deserts, so much so that she’s perfectly happy to go pick up stones on a desert called Hakskeen. Her partner Rolf ditto.

Rolf is a jet engine scientist who works among other things on the EJ200 programme.

Simon (‘Rusty’) is a hairy biker with a Harley Davidson hog. Mark The Fish is perhaps unsurprisingly a fishmonger. Harriet, a petite and genteel middle-aged lady, turns up in a smart but definitely 70’s-style Barbour jacket because it’s sensible wear for her open 1930’s Riley.

Geoff is a motor mechanic in a country garage. Ted is a gardener. Clive is a cop. Ken – in jeans and T-shirt – turns out to be a county-court Judge. Fred, a very bigfoot in IT. Another Fred is a crane driver. Jasper stacks shelves in Tesco’s. Jules runs a company making camera equipment for military Unmanned Air Vehicles. Achmed is a taxi driver…

A mixed bunch. A very mixed bunch. But all caught up by the same vision. All wanting to be a part of the adventure. All, after everything is said, done and dusted, wanting to look back and say; “I was a part of that. A small part – but a part of it”.

 

Bringing the kids…

Most fascinating to me are those many who bring their kids along to 1K Club events. Some of the kids get hooked. Equally of course some don’t, and just wanna ice-cream. But those parents who bring their kids are always, always the really caring parents. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from BLOODHOUND in spades, it’s simply that.

I don’t think I have the words to emphasise this enough. The only exception is when the parents don’t bring the kids, but the kids bring the parents. Even more great.

(There is in fact more than one kid regarded as ‘difficult’ for whom BLOODHOUND has been almost literally a life-saver by channelling hyper-activity into a particular objective, a bit like earthing a high-voltage static charge. There is one particularly moving story which I will come to in the future).

But someone of course has to run the 1K Club. And the President of same is – as you may know – one Ian Glover. And, in true BLOODOUND 1K Club fashion, he is not a typical guy. No – not typical.

Ian Glover is a cyber security consultant.

What you and I, in our ignorance, might describe as a computer hacker.

Ideal guy to have on the BLOODHOUND team, huh? Bright verging on genius, proven business magnate, semi-retired with time on his hands – but all not a lot of use if one early morning he’s hauled off to the Tower of London or sucked up into an alien space craft for research into his complicated cranium. Slightly embarrassing all round, that.

 

Hacker for the Queen

Well, it’s not going to happen. Because Ian is on the side of the Gods. He is, if you like, a hacker who out-hacks the hackers. He has helped secure government, military and multi-national companies from cyber attacks, whatever they are, and made a very good living out of same. He is, if you like, a sort of Hacker for the Queen.

Editorial space proscribes a full history of young Glover. He left school at 16, sort of elbowed his way into further education and a BSc degree, and then worked for the MoD producing battle simulation models – kind of computer-based war games. Things the troops on the ground might initially be a tad suspicious of. But if Plan A suddenly goes to worms because the bad guys have, say, destroyed bridge X, making it unviable for tanks which are a touch apt to sink if presented with a bridge-less river – why, then said troops are suddenly rather glad to be able to press a button and come up with Plan B, complete with route, fuelling stops and where the guys can get bacon butties. On good days it should even work.

From there Glover moved on to computer programmes identifying anything that might go bang, from WWII unexploded bombs to incoming Cruise missiles. Again, might sound a bit esoteric, but if you’ve got missiles coming at you with unfriendly intent it might be awfully handy to know what they are and thereby what their guidance systems might be vulnerable to (radar-jamming, flares, defence missiles, etc) all at the touch of another button. At least it’ll tell you when to put on the tin hat and dive under the nearest table.

Modern warfare has in fact become increasingly a cyber war. At its crudest the bad guys might well think it nice to electronically take over control of a Trident missile (if we have any useable Trident missiles) shortly after launch from a submarine (if we have any useable submarines) and turn it round to head straight back to whence it came – definitely a tin hat and table scenario. And ditto also to thousands and thousands of civilian companies worldwide – everything from banks to arms manufacturers to roadkill-and-chips fast food chains. All fear malicious hackers – called Black Hat Hackers in the trade – getting into their systems.

So how do you find system weaknesses and defend yourself?

Well, the answer is you hire your own cyber warrior to simulate attacks on your systems to prove the security. This is called a Penetration Test (‘Pentest’) – and obviously the testers need to be very, very clued-up indeed. And also very ethical, because the idea is to report back any weaknesses, not to exploit them – a bit like counting the gold bars in Fort Knox and resisting the temptation to quietly trouser one all sort of accidental-like.

Eventually Ian left the government and corporate worlds and with two partners started up his own business – a consultancy firm which ended up with more than 100 employees defending both government and businesses from cyber attacks. The trio sold the company to the multi-national Siemens – and there was Ian, in his early 40’s, perfectly able to retire for about the next four lifetimes.

Except that the Glovers of this world cannot spell r-e-t-i-r-e. Ian became a main board member of Siemens Communications for five years, then ‘retired’ again a couple of years ago.
Except that he remains President of CREST – the Central Register for Ethical Security Testers. And is still a security consultant. And does business coaching. And lectures at three universities. And takes an intense interest in a school in Rwanda – a school he and his wife help to fund. (De-coding as paid for in the first place).

And, of course, runs the 1K Club from his palatial home – which he designed himself – in one of those leafy park-like estates in posh places reserved for those who can afford, er, a bob or two. (My own security-mindedness prevents me from saying where, but it probably wouldn’t matter if I gave out the postcode and detailed directions, because any attempt to hack into the Glover security would probably result in the instant vaporisation of the miscreant, his computer and possibly his dog if it happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong moment. And with the Bow Street Runners arriving 30 seconds later to question the remains).

Sorry, I digress. The point is why should a ‘retired’ driven individual with already enough things to write on his headstone and with all of the above on his plate wish to take on the running of the 1K Club?

“Well, I wanted to do a ‘real’ job or two – and I also wanted an off-the-wall project. Then I was at a dinner and sitting next to Richard Noble…”

Ah, yes, a dinner…

 

Eating for BLOODHOUND…

I suppose it can be said that British Royalty dine for Britain, with so many banquet commitments they must surely be tempted sometimes to whip out an AK47 or at least a couple of Corgis just to bring the proceedings to a close. Well, by the same token Richard Noble and Andy Green eat for BLOODHOUND, often several times a week. Noble is – forgive me Richard – slightly thickening at the waist, while Green somehow retains his racing-snake physique against all reason. But the point is that both of them have a completely uncanny knack of making contacts and starting new deals whilst hoisting on board the inevitable roast chicken. I do not know how they do this. I suspect they inject large quantities of rum or narcotics into their companions’ spinach, but cannot prove it.

Anyway, Glover sat next to Noble. Richard said Ian seemed to have time on his hands. How he (Noble) arrived at this astonishing conclusion is not known – but the next morning Ian woke up as President of the BLOODHOUND 1K Club.

A most deft choice, in fact.

Ian, always fascinated by the Land Speed Record, had been member # 13 of ThrustSSC’s supporters’ club, the Mach 1 Club, back in the ‘90’s, and was deeply aware of how the shared enthusiasm brought he and his young son Matthew closer together.

Only thing was, on that morning, what did Ian Glover know about running a Supporters’ Club?

Well, nothing.

And a supporters’ Club obviously involves merchandise. Mainly clothing. So what did Ian Glover know about the rag trade?

Er, well… nothing. Not really a requirement for a cyber centurion…

Problem?

“Not really”. Ian throws a handful of food into his vast Koi carp pond, creating a frenzy of fish. “It turned into a sort of cottage industry. It’s not a difficult business to run”.

Oh, right. Silly of me. There was me thinking it might be an extremely difficult business to run…

 

A cottage industry…

Well, this cottage industry turned over more than £100,000 in the first year and almost £250,000 in the second through membership fees, names on the fin, donations and merchandise sales with all the proceeds going directly to help design and build the car.

Far from a small contribution for a cottage industry.

The merchandise business operates out of Ian’s garage, which is predictably not small. It houses a sports car and three super motorbikes – none of which are going anywhere in the near future because they are completely blocked in by boxes of BLOODHOUND everything – T-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, caps, you name it. Ian has a Personal Assistant in two days every week to send out the orders.

So the 1K Club pretty much runs itself – yes?

Well, certainly it does – except for the 15,000+ emails Glover receives and responds to every year, including 600 or so for every 1K Club event. And apart from the times he and his ever-cheerful wife Beverley roust out at 5 a.m. to drive a packed-to-the-gunnels Range Rover to any event at which BLOODHOUND has a presence, be it 1K Club or otherwise. And apart from the fact that he and she may well then stand behind a counter for anything up to 12 hours serving out T-shirts and other gear…

What is the future of the 1K Club?  Well, as the project gets into the build stage Ian hopes for more access to the BLOODHOUND Technical Centre for 1K members – not an unrealistic hope, because as the real parts move in for the car build, so the mock-up (the Show Car) will inevitably have to move out for sheer lack of space. Then there’ll be real things to see…

Moreover the sponsors are doing interesting things and are waking up to the reality that it’s a bright idea to open their doors to club members to help spread the word. From a merchandising perspective the club will see car models now that the design is all but agreed. And above all, guess who’s gonna be invited to the first test-runs of the car on UK runways…

Despite the already thousands of emails Ian would also like greater interaction with the 1K Club members.  “The stories and pictures people send of what they, their families and their clubs are doing really help to bring the whole adventure to life”, he says.

Well, in time he’ll get all of those things. In the meantime, do look out for the guy with the elfin grin selling T-shirts at a 1K event. And remember you’re buying from a major business magnate voluntarily turned barrow-boy…