Shooting without getting shot at

Ollie Norths first words when greeting me last week were

"A Shoot without getting shot at for a change"

Ollie was in town to shoot a special for his show War Stories Investigates on "Inside Jihad" mainly it was the show hostings and links that we worked on for four days working in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Ollie and I normally team up when we go into Iraq or Afghanistan to be embedded with US troops and spend a few weeks running around in places that sane and normal people would never consider venturing, inevitably it involves living in body armor for the entire time, and as cool as some new people in the business consider the look of flak jackets and kevlar helmets after a while they are just bloody heavy and hot.

I was looking back at photos from the last couple of years on the road and was amazed by the sheer number of them that have me wearing armor in various countries, in fact on almost all trips we do now we take the armor with us.

So it was great to be working in the Old City with Ollie, you forget when you live here, just how incredible the Old City of Jerusalem is and the history that you walk on every time you enter. On the roof of a Yeshiva (where Jewish men come to study the Torah), we could see in one picture the root symbols of what is the driving force behind the current crisis in the Middle East, there with the sun setting were worshippers bobbing and preying at the Wailing Wall whilst above the worshippers was the Golden Dome of the Rock, the third most holy site in the world for Muslims and around the scene were places of devotion and significance for Christians.

The good thing is that no one, in their right mind will attack Jerusalem at the moment for fear of damaging their own worship site, it is sort of like the whole walled city of Old Jerusalem has a "sanctuary" status, the only people with guns are Israeli soldiers guarding entrances which makes a nice change, as opposed to working in Gaza where every idiot is "packing heat" to use a ba expression.

Filming in the Old City at Dawn gives the eternal city a magical light and for a couple of hours, time stood still.

It was good to catch up with Ollie North again and he has plans for us to go back to Iraq later this year, no doubt to Ramadi the most lawless place in the whole of Iraq.

Anyway it was nice for a few days to feel safe and enjoy sharing stories with Ollie and as he promised " Not get shot at "