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”. But the 17 years he spent in his covert career took a terrible toll on his personal life and mental health, sparking a catastrophic breakdown. Now, in an explosive memoir, Doyle (not his real name) has told how he went from a council estate kid to become one of the UK's elite undercover cops. 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. It was decided I needed a girlfriend so Nikki (a fellow UC officer) would be dressed to the nines in Jimmy Choo heels with a Gucci or Vuitton handbag.

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”. 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. READ MORE TRUE CRIME:• The violent rise and fall of gangster 'White Tony'... devoted Winnie Johnson's other lost boy 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. 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.”I welcome former British soldier and undercover police officer Shay Doyle to the show in this interview episode. 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."

Doyle began his career in Greater Manchester Police on the beat in Tameside. But his talents and street smarts were noticed by his superiors from the off. He describes it as a game of "high-stakes chess", which required hypervigilance at all times. "My expertise was starting from scratch," he says of his life in the shadows. After a stellar career undercover Doyle moves on to finish his police career after adding several major ,and dangerous,investigations to his CV.

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." And the plan worked. Over the course of a year Doyle became known around Moss Side and Hulme and became a regular drinker in the area.

And a big part of that, he says, is that new officers, without experience in covert work, failed to understand his role. It's a common failing in modern police forces, he believes. 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?' 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. 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.” There he unleashed a hail of bullets on the two unarmed officers, tossed a hand grenade on their dying bodies and then calmly handed himself in at Hyde police station. Pc Fiona Bone (left) and Pc Nicola Hughes (Image: PA)

I just don't speak like that. All I had to do was put to use all the attributes I'd been unconsciously collecting all my life." The soldier-turned-undercover policeman risked his life to infiltrate south Manchester's gangland. He was also on the frontline of some of the most high profile police operations in Greater Manchester history, including the Stepping Hill poisonings and the hunt for double cop killer Dale Cregan. The biggest case of his career began just after midnight on May 25, 2012 when Mark Short was shot dead as he played pool in the Cotton Tree pub in Droylsden. Doyle is not his real name. He was given a new identity when he was medically discharged from the police in 2020 suffering from PTSD. Now in his forties, he feels he has paid a heavy price for his career. "I sacrificed my mental health for it," he says. 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.