Perhaps more than any other profession, the mercenary has been responsible for the most egregious characterisations in movie history. Think Pamela Anderson in Barb Wire or the ripped and rippled cast of Predator, lathered in baby-oil. Or there’s the 1960s Django spaghetti western series, where a six-shooter, stubble and no dialogue confers mercenary status.

Which is why the sight of a real-life mercenary, Simon Mann, is such a shock. The Old Etonian, released yesterday from prison in Equatorial Guinea does not conform to movie stereotypes. He is, in fact, just a middle-aged bloke with glasses who, you suspect, has never garrotted a Nicaraguan commando with his bare hands. His nearest screen cousin is Christopher Walken in the 1980 mercenary classic, The Dogs of War.

Here Walken plays Jamie Shannon, a “soldier of fortune” who wears grey tweed jackets and would seem more at home in an Edwardian library than a shrapnel-scarred battlefield. Shannon nonetheless has plans to seize control of the ruthless African dictatorship of, ahem, Zangaro in return for a share of the country’s mineral wealth. Which raises the question: was Mann a Walken fan? Or was he suddenly inspired during an action DVD binge?’ Either way, Shannon proves himself a better mercenary than Mann, and replaces the bad dictator with a good one. Best of all, he refuses the money. Doing the job was enough. Mercenaries, especially the middle-aged kind, take note.

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