My home life suffered though. I knew when I started the job it was madness, and that’s exactly what it turned out to be – absolute f***ing madness.” It was like I'd vanished. I was given a new passport, birth certificate, driving licence, bank cards, credit cards, all the essential documents for a new identity," said Doyle in a interview with the Star. "I learned how to make cutting ­charges to blow a hole in a wall and how to breach the skin of an armoured cash van with a shape charge.

Even going to the supermarket with my girlfriend was a f***ing drama," he said. "One time we were in my local Tesco when I spotted someone I knew turning into the aisle we were in.

Soon he was headhunted by GMP's specialist undercover unit and tasked with infiltrating the city's underworld. All of his old life was removed and he was given a new identity - that of Belfast-raised 'grafter' and armed robber Mikey O'Brien. Shay grew up on a tough Manchester council estate where drugs and gangs were rife. A life of crime would have been an easy path to take. So it went against everything that was expected of him when he joined the police. To add credibility to his cover story, he worked alongside Nikki, a fellow Level 1 covert operator who dressed up in Gucci and posed as his girlfriend.

This time he wasn't getting up. Neither were the two young women he'd just murdered. The two unarmed young police officers he cut down in a hail of 32 bullets and the fragments of a grenade, ending their promising lives so savagely, so senselessly. I felt empty. Cold. How had it come to this?' I’d spent my life at the sharp end, chasing gangsters. Feeling the adrenaline of going through the door, the rush of a big arrest. All that was gone.” She was equipped with a five-grand Louis Vuitton handbag and the air of a WAG wannabe," he says. They even rented a flat together in the gangland's heart and used it as their work base. "In reality, she was a brilliant operator and highly intelligent." Doyle would spend weeks at a time in the role and would only shed his persona for a few stolen nights a month when he returned to his real girlfriend who was living in their real flat, just nine miles away. "My work put untold stress on our relationship as I became more impossible to live with," he admits. All the years he had spent learning the ways of the street: how to talk, what to say, how to conduct himself in the company of criminals proved to be gold dust. "Most cops speak in cop language, even when they are off duty - any decent criminal can spot them a mile off," he says. I want to highlight mental health issues in the police force. Many police officers can’t put their hands up and tell people they’re struggling”.Certain things came easy to me, and I had an innate drive to succeed. Whatever field I went into, I would put myself up against more educated people, and it gave me fuel”. I welcome former British soldier and undercover police officer Shay Doyle to the show in this interview episode.

It wasn't long before Shay's prodigious talent caught the attention of the top and he was called upon to join the secret Level 1 undercover unit, Omega. He was given a new identity and his DNA and fingerprints were removed from the national database. I was discharged from the police force due to mental health issues. I was still relatively young, but I was struggling with PTSD. My calm facade belied the rage erupting inside. For 42 days he'd been at large, 42 days that ended in an act of unimaginable horror. I can still see his face. It still haunts me."

It wouldn't be long before Shay's prodigious talent caught the attention of the top. Then came the call that changed his life: an offer to join the secret level one undercover unit known as Omega. And it was easy to see why they wanted him; he wouldn't have to stray too far from what he already knew. He had all the attributes of a professional criminal - the athletic physique of a cage fighter, the talk, the walk. Streetwise and fearless, he'd be a match for the most hardened villain. He was given a new identity; his DNA and fingerprints were removed from the national database and so began the life of Mikey O'Brien. An excellent book. A well written story of an undercover cop diving deep into the underbelly of society to root out the dangerous criminals that threaten the fabric of society. A cliche I know, but I couldn’t put this book down and read it in a couple of days, mainly because the story really resonated with me. His description of how the pitiful upper ranks in the Police treat the the genuine hard working foot soldiers with arrogance and contempt are bang on. Most senior officers are inept, egotistical, useless pen pushers interested in only one thing…….promotion, power and money. It’s a boys club where people shoved up through the ranks engage in daily, cringeworthy ass kissing and creeping to further their power with scant regard to the cops out on the streets doing a really difficult job day in day out, taking years off their lifespans because of the shift work and stress they deal with.

Shay now works with organisations to break the stigmas around mental health, particularly in the emergency services. Notching up arrests didn't do anything for me. I had a turbulent upbringing, but I developed integrity and was always taught right from wrong, and to look after the weak and vulnerable.

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Doyle was medically discharged from the police in 2020 suffering from PTSD. Now in his 40s, he feels he has paid a heavy price for his career. "I sacrificed my mental health for it," he said in an interview with the Daily Express. Raised on the streets of a 'tough Manchester council estate' Shay Doyle could easily have turned to a life of crime. Instead, he ended up playing the part of a gangster and helped bring down some of Manchester's most feared underworld figures. Shay's police career spanned 17 years, and he was one of the UK's chosen few Level 1 undercover operatives. I remember watching it all unfold and thinking it was like Northern Ireland in the bad old days," writes Doyle. "There was an air of excruciating tension unlike anything I'd ever witnessed in the police before."