Born in the Norfolk village of Saxlingham Nethergate,[1] Pleasants attended school in Norwich to age 14, then worked variously as trainee electrician, forester, boxer, wrestler and then showman weight-lifter in Britain and continental Europe.

He obtained temporary farm work as a potato picker, but also began stealing from empty properties, resulting in arrest and prosecution in the Magistrate's Court.

He claimed to have been invited to join the German broadcasting service from Berlin to Allied and neutral countries, and, in this connection, to have met William Joyce and John Amery, and to have discussed with them the possibilities of charges of treason.

[4] In late February or early March 1945, Pleasants "got himself attached to [Vivian] Stranders' embryonic 'Peace Camp' – in reality he spent his time giving exhibition bouts against Max Schmeling in German officers' messes.

Another version appears to have been edited by Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting and published posthumously as Hitler's Bastard: Through Hell and Back in Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia, Random House, 2012.