Our People: Dave Richards

Dave Richards has gone from combat to dentistry. PHOTO/BEN FRASER

"Open wide, this won't hurt a bit."

Who hasn't wanted to say that to a dentist?

Our People has and it was to a real devil of a dentist - a dyslexic one at that.

What we wanted Dave Richards to open wide about was his life as a member of the Red Devils, the UK's elite parachute regiment's display team, the time he's spent behind enemy lines in Iraq and why such a dramatic career change, despite his dyslexia impediment, took him into dentistry.

Dave's only been fixing "munted" teeth (munted's his word) in Rotorua since February when he joined InCity Dental. Pictures on his surgery walls of his 'para' days and his framed service medals are an explosive talking point.

Naturally it's Dave doing the talking, whoever's conquered the art of forming words around a mouthful of drill and suction devices?

But long before he took up dentistry action man Dave was jumping out of "perfectly good" aeroplanes and firing machine guns from tanks rumbling through Iraq in the western world's mission to uncover Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

A photo of him at the trigger end of a mighty big machine gun during the 2003 Gulf War was splashed across front pages of Britain's major newspapers. It's one of those pictures that tells words by the thousand.

Let's not waste our own words - Dave's 33 years have been so jam-packed squeezing them into Our People's space allocation's as challenging as freefalling from 13,500 feet to hit targets as diverse as South Africa's vast veldts and tea parties at Prince Charles' Highgrove estate. The latter went with the territory; HRH is the regiment's colonel-in-chief.

Not a natural academic, Dave quit school at 16, a huge disappointment for his dentist dad.
At 18 with a couple of years' farm work and a technical diploma behind him, he signed on for the army. He'd wanted to be a Marine but missed out on the navy's strict height requirements "by a millionth of a millimetre". The RAF was also out - he's borderline colour blind, so the army it was.

"The forces attracted me, I'd always had an adventurous, outdoorsy streak, in hindsight I was terribly naive, ignorant; had no idea at all about what I'd be involved in."
His recruitment officer casually mentioned the parachute regiment. "I had to ask what it was, went on a three-day course and got called up three weeks later."

His first jump was a minefield of nerves. "My legs were like disco dancing after a lot of drinking, but once you're out of the aircraft training kicks in, it was awesome, I knew I wanted to keep on jumping."

He was one of two from Britain's parachute regiment's 1800 members to be selected for the Red Devils freefall display team in 1999.
Representing the Devils at national skydiving competitions he won gold at intermediate level and silver in the beginners' division.

Over the following five years he jumped across the UK, in the US "eight times in four years opening air shows", South Africa and around Europe. His jump tally's just shy of 800.
Outside the glamour of the Red Devils "real life" soldering continued. In 2000 he was in Northern Ireland intelligence gathering, "tracking down people making explosive devices".
Come the Iraq invasion he was on the front line "working the weapons and liaising with the SAS".

Losing so many mates in Iraq "too many came home in body bags" convinced him the time had come to further his education and follow his father into dentistry, however he still needed two A levels to enter university. " I knew what I was getting myself into and I'd always been good with my hands".

He'd begun a degree in biomedical science at Sheffield University when his dyslexia was discovered. "I was taught how to overcome it by adopting different ways of learning."
To finance his studies he worked behind a supermarket meat counter, as a dental assistant and a technician in a lab making false teeth. "In the paras I was on £60,000 ($120,000) a year then, suddenly, heck, no money."

A hankering for "beautiful, outdoorsy New Zealand" was his spur to study at Otago University's dental school. His initial application was declined "then I got this email saying someone had pulled out of the next intake, it was mine if I could be there in three weeks, I mailed back 'is this a joke?', it wasn't."

Dave reckons anyone who whinges about the difficulties Kiwis have entering Britain hasn't tried to get into New Zealand. "I had to pay a lot to get a visa in a hurry, the whole process was manic, it wasn't until I got to Singapore I realised I didn't have anywhere to live."

A friendly cabby at Dunedin airport took him to a B&B. A few days on he "rocked up" to a post graduates' halls of residence and again was admitted because of someone else's mind-change. "I've had so much luck, luck, luck."

His bioscience degree leapfrogged him a year ahead of other entry students. "I didn't get homesick until exams kicked in, all 18 of them; I kept thinking "My God, I'm so over this."
His love of water sports kept him on track, teaching wind surfing and mastering the art of stand-up paddle boarding, winning two golds in the 2012 Masters Games. There was a windsurfing gold the year before "I guess I'm a guy who doesn't like losing".

Since his Rotorua arrival he's coached local windsurfer Luke Wallbridge to first place in the Under 15s national champs and has recently started flying lessons.

"If Rotorua still had a parachute club I'd be jumping here."

Born: Isle of Wight, 1981.
Education: Primary and secondary schooling locally, Sandown High School Southampton, the army, Sheffield and Otago Universities.
Family: Parents and sister in UK.
Interests: Fishing (sea, lake and spear), windsurfing, stand-up paddle boarding, kayaking, learning to fly, "parasailing's to come".
On Rotorua: "Beautiful but hard to make friends my own age."
Personal Philosophy: "Live life as you mean to go on."