Chris Thrall was born in South-East London. Aged eighteen he joined the Royal Marines Commandos. Following active service in the Northern Ireland Conflict and training in Arctic warfare and survival, he earned his parachutist’s ‘wings’ and operated as part of a high-security detachment on board an aircraft carrier.
After leaving the forces to run a successful business in Asia, Chris found himself homeless, suffering acute mental illness from crystal meth addiction and working for Hong Kong’s 14K triad family as a nightclub doorman in the infamous Wanchai District. Declining conventional support, Chris followed his own path to enlightenment and became a qualified pilot, skydiver, adventurer and author. He has expeditioned to eighty-five countries on all seven continents and raised thousands for charity.
An extreme-endurance athlete, in 2018, Chris ran an ultra-marathon a day for 36 days, unsupported, the length of Britain, to raise awareness of veterans’ mental health issues and the alarming suicide rate. In 2019, he completed a quadruple ironman consisting of a 9.6-mile swim, 450-mile cycle and a 107-mile run. In 2020, he gave up his family Christmas to run 200 miles around a running track. In 2023 he ran up to two marathons a day in 52 degrees heat across the Sahara Desert and in 2024 he rowed a twenty-one-foot boat across the Atlantic Ocean and entered the record books.
Chris has firewalked forty metres on red-hot coals to raise money to work with street children in war-torn Mozambique. He’s driven volunteer journalists to India on an old school bus to highlight global poverty.
Whilst backpacking through every country in North, Central and South America, he dived off the famous cliff in Acapulco, caught piranhas whilst surviving in the Amazon rainforest and snorkelled with bull sharks off Belize. In colder climes, he has expeditioned to scuba dive with leopard seals and icebergs in the sub-zero waters of the Antarctic Polar Circle, a hazardous undertaking which saw a dive buddy drown.
Chris wrote the bestselling memoir Eating Smoke, a frank yet humorous account of his adventures in Hong Kong. He has appeared on numerous podcasts and two award-winning radio plays have been made about his life. The book Forty Nights details how the life-changing experience of addiction led to his enlightenment. State of mind, the third memoir, details his legendary 999-mile length of Britain run and the mindset behind it.
During the Covid era, Chris led the Global Veterans Alliance to fight against the draconian loss of the freedoms our forebears gave their lives for and thwarted the pharmaceutical industry’s attempts to access children in schools. He also led a troop of elite fighting veterans to Achnacary in Scotland, home of Churchill’s wartime commandos, to recreate the Royal Marines 9-mile speed march in aid of the RM Charity.
On Chris’s Bought the T-Shirt Podcast he has chatted to freedom legends such as Matt Le Tisseir and Right Said Fred, rockstar Robbie Williams, SAS troopers from the Iranian Embassy siege, Falklands veterans, endurance athletes and elite mountaineers such as Nims Dai Purja and Kristin Harila. With refreshingly honest no-holds-barred conversations, Bought the T-Shirt was named the one to watch by Soldier Magazine and has been viewed by millions.
Chris has a degree in youth and community work and is a substance-misuse and addiction specialist. He has been awarded the 2nd Level Commendation of the Finnish Nation on the grounds of Human Generosity and is English Veteran of the Year for Inspiration 2022. His mantra is you’re born a legend, you’ll die a legend … make sure you realise you’re a legend in between.
