Sir Ranulph Fiennes

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is an explorer. He's navigated the White Nile in a hovercraft, spent three years travelling around the world through both poles, discovered a lost city in Arabia, and recently nearly perished in Antarctica. Why? Because quite simply, it's his job. He'd always wanted to emulate his father's military career, but he failed to pass the necessary exams. Instead, he turned to the challenges of exploration, and for the past twenty three years has been involved in a series of hair raising adventures, many of which have been the subject of bestsellers. He is Sir Ranulph Twistleton Wickham Fynes, or Ran Fiennes. Do you genuinely think of it as a job, Ran, or isn't that a bit of an affectation, really?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes1:12

Well, I suppose it would be an affectation if I could stop doing it and still pay the bills. But if I wasn't to do an expedition next year, I'd find paying the gas bill the next the year after that extremely difficult. So without the expeditions, I would be on the dole, which I couldn't afford. So I think the definition is a fairly accurate one. It's certainly been in my passport for over twenty years.

Presenter1:33

Yeah.

Presenter1:35

But there must be a greater motivation than simply that of making money. After all, you're risking your life to do it. I mean, do you

Presenter1:41

Have any sense of anything else? I mean, do you enjoy the fame or do you feel you're achieving something for your country? Is it patriotic?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes1:47

The fame of it is a very dubious thing. I mean fame is a very double-edged weapon as such. I think whereas being known about is of course an enormous help because most of the income to be made after an expedition comes from giving lectures and the people are looking at dozens of lecturers and so you have to be known about in order to beat the other people going for it. In terms of the jingoistic side, i.e. for the country, I suppose the answer would be yes, because the last expedition I wouldn't have done because mathematically I didn't consider it was feasible. And I know that what changed my decision not to do it was Ollie Shepherd, one of our polar group, said, well, if if you don't do it, then the Norwegians will have a completely clear field. And that wasn't a very rational reason for doing it, but it was a sufficient of a spark to make sure that we did do it.

Presenter2:44

But do you ever do it for yourself? Do you ever think, you know, I need to prove to myself that I can do that?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes2:50

I don't think there's been any expedition based on a sort of inner urge to do a specific thing. No. Either my wife

Sir Ranulph Fiennes3:06

The literary agent is the boss of anybody who does expeditions, and round about the mid seventies my literary agent um explained that the British public had statistically gone off hot expeditions onto cold ones, and therefore from his point of view he could not sell an idea to the BBC or to the Sunday Times so easily if it was in a hot desert, and so he advised us, if we were to continue to make a living, to move to cold expeditions.

Presenter3:31

But you personally prefer hot ones.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes3:33

Yes, I do, very much.

Presenter3:34

Let's talk about music then. I mean, I suppose because you normally have to carry everything you take on your expeditions, then carrying equipment with which to play music is is a fairly uh

Sir Ranulph Fiennes3:44

Oh, out of the question. We don't even carry toothbrushes. Um anything which isn't necessary to progress in due south or due north gets um you know not taken at all. And so to take a C D player is not on.

Presenter3:55

But if you could, presumably some of these records here are the kinds of music that you'd play to accompany you.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes4:00

Yeah, I think all or almost all of them at least six out of eight chosen would be ones that I'd love to have with me on the journeys.

Presenter4:07

Let's have record number one.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes4:08

Uh record number one is The Flight of the Condor, which is music which reminds me of the better feelings going in cold places.

Presenter5:14

That was part of the original soundtrack of the BBC television series The Flight of the Condor. You've been on about uh nine polar expeditions, Rand Fiennes, but the last to Antarctica in um our winter of ninety two, ninety three must surely have been the worst. You were said to have been more dead than alive when you were finally brought out. How true was that?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes5:34

In some ways it was the worst, mainly because it went on for a very long time. We were travelling without supplies for three months, during which time our bodies um suffered a lot, and we know more about it because my colleague was or is Britain's top physiologist and he made sure that our bodies were checked very carefully in unpleasant ways before and after we came back.

Presenter5:56

Yeah, I think it's a good idea.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes5:58

Yes, very often. And I think one of the things that he has discovered already, although the analysis is not complete, through muscle biopsies, which are very unpleasant methods without painkillers of removing muscle from your thighs, he discovered that because we'd used up all our body fat due to starvation, we then started consuming our muscles, and the volume of the muscle decreased, and the actual structure of the muscles, rather like sort of talk twisting, had also changed, which sounds to me like in later life there'd be a rather bad result from this. But it meant at the time that we were about over a third of our body weight had been lost, despite the daily intake of 5,000 calories.

Presenter6:41

So how many stones did you weigh at the end of it?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes6:43

Um about ten and a bit.

Presenter6:45

And normally you're

Sir Ranulph Fiennes6:46

and normally weigh fifteen and a half.

Presenter6:48

Mm. So you look emaciated. You look terrible.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes6:50

Elson-like, um although we had no mirrors, so we didn't know that we looked like that.

Presenter6:56

You had crutch rot?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes6:57

Crutch rots, yes, that's through lack of washing basically, and um a lot of problems from diarrhea and so on, and piles, all of which make it difficult to walk um for long periods.

Presenter7:07

Don't

Presenter7:08

You've got a terrible foot infection.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes7:10

Both feet had raw flesh from round about the second week and gangrenous areas and poisoned bone bits. But the raw flesh at the front and the side and the back, the heel area, caused problems or rather discomfort throughout the day for many, many days, and this had an effect on the mental side of it. The mental side of it it was necessary to develop various knickknacks in your mind to try and crush the wimp side of your character, which was continually telling you to stop because of the discomfort. So one was on a nasty little chicken and the egg situation where you were perpetually wanting to stop, I acknowledge failure, but not being able to because it would have been unthinkable.

Presenter7:54

But why? What drives you on when you're in that kind of condition?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes7:58

It's your profession, you're proud of it, and you are worried about the last four which haven't succeeded, and it needs to be successful. So

Sir Ranulph Fiennes8:08

There needn't be any more motivations or reasons other than the fact that it has got to be successful, and therefore you must flirt with the problems of actually physically f fading out altogether, right up to whatever the limit happens to be.

Presenter8:22

Next record.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes8:24

Um I'd like to have Michael Ball singing Love Changes Everything from the Aspects of Love.

Presenter8:30

Now why do you want that?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes8:31

Um an important part of all my life for about twenty three years now, and the expeditions as well, has been uh my wife, Ginny, who I met when she was about nine and I was about twelve, and this particular record makes me think of that.

Speaker 48:49

Can make the summer fly.

Speaker 48:53

Or a night seem like

Sir Ranulph Fiennes8:54

Right now

Speaker 48:57

A lifetime.

Speaker 48:59

Yes, you have.

Speaker 49:01

Love changes everything.

Speaker 49:04

Now I tremble at your name.

Speaker 49:10

Nothing in the world will ever be the same.

Presenter9:17

Michael Ball singing Love Changes Everything from Aspects of Love. Your relationship on that journey across Antarctica with your colleague Mike Stroud and he was there were only two of you uh deteriorated badly, didn't it? You threatened at one point to go ahead without him and he accused you of being borish and graceless, or he's written that since. But you did quite literally hate each other out there, didn't you?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes9:39

Yes, I think not only on that expedition, but on the previous five as well. But we continue to keep going on expeditions together because we get on, when all is said and done, far better than anybody else ever has g got on together in these circumstances.

Presenter9:55

Wasn't this one more acrimonious than the others, though?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes9:58

Yes, it was about twice as long as the others, and therefore we were under strain far more than on any of the others. But having said that, I think it would have been very difficult to have got as far as we did and to have completed the continental crossing without those very strong feelings.

Presenter10:16

What resentment and rivalry you need that as a spur, do you?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes10:19

I don't think of it as resentment. I do think of it as rivalry. I think of it as a sort of hostile competitional sense which we've both got inside ourselves and which is very necessary part

Sir Ranulph Fiennes10:33

Maybe it's an unpleasant part of the character, but it doesn't normally come out because you're not normally put under those sorts of stresses.

Presenter10:39

Because you'd argued, hadn't you, even before you set out, because he wanted to take it in turns to lead, and you always like to lead.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes10:46

Yes, for 22 years I have always led from the front. I know that a lot of people lead from the back and that sometimes works just as well, but that's not my method. But when I asked Mike if he would come on this expedition, he said, Well, it's Antarctica, it's not the Arctic. We'd never been together before in the Antarctic. The difference for someone who hasn't been in either place is that in Antarctica it's all white everywhere and finding any sort of single pointer to aim for to keep your bearing is very difficult and you start going off in tangents and to even an hour and a half becomes too much after a while.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes11:19

But you're not navigating. On all my expeditions where navigation comes into it, I'm I don't put up with other people navigating. So on this Antarctic crossing.

Presenter11:28

But you don't trust other people to do it.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes11:30

No, to be honest, I don't. Nothing personal against them. I think that navigating is part of leading. And so if you've got difficult areas like descending the Beardmore Glacier, then I'm not going to put up with anyone else. So for the two hundred miles of the the glacier descent, I did lead the whole time, and this would have upset Mike.

Presenter11:50

Do you, looking back on it, feel any um regret that you did actually in one moment say to him, threaten him that you would go without him? I mean, looking back, was that what a leader should do?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes12:00

No, I don't regret anything like that because I accept the fact that we're not two saints, we're not two monks. And what what I'm very proud of, and Mike is very proud of, and that's why we will go on expeditions together again, is that we got on enormously well together. And the amount of stress and strain which we suffered, which didn't come out into arguments, into the silent hostility and competitional urge, yes, but not into rows which have been suffered by all previous Antarctic expeditions enormously.

Presenter12:33

But you say you'd go on an expedition with him again. Would he go on one with you? I mean, he's written in his book since I had seen a side of him, man finds, that I didn't like one bit. I doubted that I would ever trust him not to do the same again.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes12:46

Yes, and I I said exactly the same thing about Mike. Mike also ends up his book with saying, um if ever I was to go on an expedition like this again, the person I would go with is Ran.

Presenter12:56

Let's have your third record.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes12:58

I'd like the mass pipes and drums of the Scottish regiments playing blue bonnets, which will remind me of very happy days in my father's old regiment, the Royal Scots Greys, in Germany during the sixties.

Presenter13:53

The massed pipes and drums of the Scottish regiments playing blue bonnets, and a reminder of the regiment that you were in, and that your father commanded long ago, the Royal Scots Greys. It was your ambition throughout your youth to do the same, to command that regiment, wasn't it?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes14:08

Yes, it was the only thing I wanted to do since I was very small, and unfortunately, in my father's day there were six hundred grey horses and no A levels.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes14:20

But by the time I came along you had to have I mean there were sixty ton tanks for a start, and probably because of that you did need to have at least two A levels to become a regular officer, and um to get these things proved impossible.

Presenter14:32

Hm. So exploration to that extent is very much a second best in your life, isn't it?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes14:37

Yes, it is. I I'll always regret that I couldn't follow up the thing I actually wanted to do.

Presenter14:41

Your father, in fact, died before you were born, didn't he?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes14:45

He died about four months before I was born, um, in Italy. Um he had trod on a mine somewhere near Naples, and um died of the resulting wounds.

Presenter14:55

So you were a baronet at birth?

Presenter14:58

And you were brought up with your three older sisters by your mother and your grandmother, so you were surrounded, obviously, by a lot of females. Was your father therefore in inevitably a great hero? I mean, he was obviously a hero to you anyway, but were you very determined as a child that that he would have been proud of you?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes15:15

Yes, I s to some extent I suppose I still am um very keen not to do things which I think he wouldn't have wanted done.

Presenter15:23

So failing the necessary exams wasn't really for a lack of ambition or a lack of a role model at all, it was simply that academically you just couldn't do it.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes15:33

That's right. At at Eton, I'm not quite sure why, maybe because having been in South Africa for eleven years I got a little bit behind on the academic situation. But after Eton, um my mother decided I should go to a Crammer's down in Brighton and at that time there Mary Quent had just invented the mini skirt and concentration was extremely difficult and that could have had something to do with the continued failure to get the A-levels.

Presenter15:59

But you mentioned South Africa. You spent the first ten years of your life at that,'cause your mother took you out there to live as a child, didn't she?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes16:06

Yeah, South African upbringing in a place called Constantia, near Table Mountain, in the vineyards and the Tokai forests and the forest fires and the baboons and the people in those days we called the people who were neither black nor white the Cape Coloureds. They were wonderful people and I had a small gang, there were about eleven of us. Everybody else was a Cape Coloured. Remember Archie, who only had one arm, who was the second in command. And we used to wander around completely free, no shoes, no shirts. And it was a great way of being brought up and came down to earth with a bang when we came back to England when I was about eleven.

Presenter16:40

Record number 4.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes16:42

I am Les Troubadour de Roi Baudouin and the Curie from the Misse Louber.

Presenter16:48

And why do you want that?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes16:50

It's something which serves to remind me of South Africa, and it's just an atmosphere to it, the music, which reminds me of of those early days.

Presenter17:46

Les Troubadour du Rais Baudin and the Kirier from the Missaluba.

Presenter17:50

So you came back, Ran Fynes, to England from South Africa, to Eton. You had a terribly unhappy experience there, didn't you?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes17:58

Yes, and I was there for about five years. The first two and a half years were about the worst of any time I can remember. Why? I went there very young, and although it's difficult to believe now, I was sort of pretty. And the bigger boys, not now at Eton, but in those days, whatever it was, forty years ago, were very catty. I know you think of girls' schools as being catty, but boys were just as bad. And to be pretty was as bad as being different in any other way, i.e. if you had a funny accent like a South African accent. It was something which didn't go with the the flock, and you s soon learnt that you should go with the flock.

Presenter18:05

Why?

Presenter18:38

So you were teased.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes18:39

Teased verbally, nothing physical about it.

Presenter18:40

Nothing.

Presenter18:42

You weren't abused.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes18:42

I wasn't abused, no. And having sort of read all sorts of stories and things about public schools, I think that's rather overdone. If it had been happening, one would have known about it.

Presenter18:54

But you were nevertheless made very, very miserable, weren't you?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes18:57

Yes, because I wasn't used to it. I'd I'd been with um a family of females, my sisters and my mother, and had no uncles or brothers or father around the place, and so I didn't have to be nasty back all the time, like one is presumably if you've got brothers. And so having not learnt to be nasty, it was probably a very good thing to go to Eton where you did have to learn to try to be nasty back.

Presenter19:16

And to try to be nice.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes19:20

Yeah, I did. I mean, I I never considered running away, which would have been a sensible thing to do. I but I did consider jumping over the nearest river, which was the Thames on Windsor Bridge, and I never had the guts to actually do it, I'm very glad to say, but it got that bad. Then after about two and a half years, when I got on the boxing team and got quite good at boxing, that came to a stop. But I did have to learn to scowl and only look in the road and not look people in the face, which is a pity at that age.

Presenter19:46

Then, as we said, you you didn't get any L A levels, so there was no prospect of Sandhurst at eighteen. You took a series of short service commissions with uh your father's regiment. Then later you took a job fighting in Oman for the Sultan of Muscat. How much action did you see?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes20:01

It was quite different to any other experience I've ever had, and far more difficult than the expedition work, where you're up against nature, not against people, and up against other people is far more frightening, I find, than anything nature has to offer.

Presenter20:10

Hmm.

Presenter20:15

So you learned to kill.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes20:16

Um well, you only killed if people were otherwise about to kill you, and the only time I killed people close up was when given another second they would have laced me with a Kolechnikov.

Presenter20:28

How did you kill them?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes20:29

By pressing the trigger.

Presenter20:31

Mm. And how many? Have you any idea how many people you killed?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes20:35

No. Um n in the army most people don't.

Presenter20:39

You don't count.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes20:39

I have an idea. And close up on one occasion there were two people about um fifteen yards away suddenly, and I didn't just shoot them, I told them to shove their hands in the air in in Arabic.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes20:52

and the leading one didn't, and he had started to quickly swing a Kolechnikov in my direction, and so within a second or so I would have been dead. So faced with a choice like that, you find yourself pressing the trigger.

Presenter21:09

Hmm. And did that have any effect on you or was it simply just more of your training?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes21:15

Um no, it had a very bad effect because previously.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes21:19

You the people that you're shooting at behind bushes or rocks, because they're shooting at you, you can't see their faces close up.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes21:27

But when you can, and you suddenly see them being lifted off the ground, and so on, um

Sir Ranulph Fiennes21:33

it it suddenly did have a very awful effect, and I found that the only way of being able to deal with the situation was to eradicate it from your mind, and when you find yourself starting to think of it, to quickly stop yourself doing so.

Presenter21:46

Is that a technique you still use instance? Are you able to do that to compartmentalize?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes21:51

Yes, I think it's a very useful way of in polar expeditions, for instance, when they get unpleasant.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes21:58

Definitely try not to think of things which aren't progressive and optimistic.

Presenter22:04

Next piece of music.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes22:07

Um I'd like the original London cast recording uh Red and Black from Les Maisorables. This um is a archetypal chant of students at a time when they're feeling they must make their impingement on the world and in this particular way they didn't do it very well, but it reminds me of when I was a student wanting to make a mark.

Speaker 422:33

I feel my soul on fire

Speaker 422:38

My world if she's not there The colour of desire Black the colour of desire

Presenter22:51

The original London cast recording of Red and Black from Les Miserables.

Presenter22:55

So your job, as you've said, is an entirely practical one in one sense, but isn't it also quite a self indulgent existence? I mean, you get to do what you enjoy doing. It's kind of classic escapism, isn't it?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes23:08

Yes, I I think that's very rude, the wa the way you put it. Um escapism suggests getting away from the rigours of life to some idyllic paradisial sort of existence.

Presenter23:18

But it does mean that you get away from the kind of mundanities of every day life, from the sort of tedious old routines that most people have to put up with. It gets you out of that, in a sense

Presenter23:29

It it it means that you haven't been required, if you like, and uh does this sound rude again, you haven't

Presenter23:35

had to grow up.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes23:37

to go on an expedition

Sir Ranulph Fiennes23:40

doesn't give you security, which is what the vast majority of people seek when they are looking for a profession, and what I sought when I was looking for a profession in the army.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes23:51

So far from being what you actually want to escape to, it's very much the opposite, and I had always wanted to find a proper job so that I could get a salary, a pension, insurance.

Presenter24:05

Would you really like that?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes24:06

Well, I had it for about eight or nine years, and I regretted it when my boss died, and therefore um I lost it because his successor didn't want me.

Presenter24:15

So you'd give all this expiration up to morrow, would you, if somebody offered you a proper job?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes24:19

Yes, without any question of doubt. I can hon honestly answer that I certainly would, but I wouldn't take any old job.

Presenter24:25

You often mention your wife, Ginny, in your books, and and again there when you mention her there seems to be a a sense of guilt, really, that you're always going away and leaving her at home to cope with long winters on her own, or whatever it is. Do you feel guilty?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes24:39

I'd far prefer it if she was able to come on the expeditions too, as she used to during the first fifteen years of of our married life. But it wasn't something which was completely fulfilling for her, and she wanted her own thing, which she has now got. She now is a successful breeder of Aberdeen Angus cattle, and that is a full-time job for her. So except on rare occasions, she no longer is able to come on the expeditions.

Presenter25:06

But has she ever tried to persuade you to stop travelling, or does she know that that would um do a deal of damage to your marriage?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes25:13

She hasn't tried to persuade me not to go on expeditions per se, but she naturally prefers expeditions which seem to be less risky.

Presenter25:21

But you sound now as if you're saying that you've um

Presenter25:25

You've run out of restlessness, as it were. You'd be happy to stay at home with Ginny and the Aberdeen Angus, would you?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes25:31

I would have been happy quite a long time ago, and did take a full time job as a result, and I ten years ago at least would have been more than happy to have stayed doing that.

Presenter25:44

Record number six.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes25:46

I'd like Barbara Streisand singing Memory from Cats, not really from my own choice, but because the boss that I was talking about, doctor Armand Hammer, who died when he was ninety three about two years ago, he was potty about Barbara Streisand, particularly singing that particular song.

Speaker 426:02

Midnight, not a sound from the pavement. Has the moon lost her memory? She is smiling alone In the lamplight, the withered leaves collected my feet.

Speaker 426:28

And though

Presenter26:34

Barbara Streisen singing Memory from Cats. Probably the height of your fame, Rand Fiennes, was when you completed your Trans Globe expedition. You and Charlie Burton took three years, I think from seventy nine to eighty two, becoming the first men to visit both poles, as it were. And indeed you visited them on the same expedition, because you went around the world, as it were. Was that your greatest achievement, do you think?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes26:58

Yes, definitely. That expedition was far more difficult than, for instance, this recent Antarctic crossing. It also lasted three years as opposed to three months. And

Sir Ranulph Fiennes27:11

I was very lucky that I ended up with Charlie Burton, who in my opinion is by far the

Sir Ranulph Fiennes27:18

Toughest mentally and physically person that I've ever come across. For instance, on one occasion I can remember he had um

Sir Ranulph Fiennes27:25

Very bad piles. He'd been spending two months in an open boat with the waves crashing down his neck into a one-piece suit, so that he didn't change out of it for two months. The water sloshing around gave him crutch rot and armpits raw, and um trench foot under his feet. And then the next bit when we had to ski, the fungus stuff off the bottom of one of his feet came away, leaving him with a raw foot. He then fell over one day and cracked his head open on a rock and started to whinge. And I very well remember him saying, you know, we ought to have a rest. And at that stage, if we had rested, we would have wasted nine years of our working lives just for resting for two days. And somehow he continued totally a physical wreck and did manage the next three hundred miles over the ice caps of Ellesmere Island and sort of saved the day. But I've never seen a person as able to completely

Sir Ranulph Fiennes28:28

defeat that side of him which is saying he's come to the end of his tether and stopped, and um I feel very privileged to have been able to travel with him.

Presenter28:31

Tender.

Presenter28:37

And did you and he fall out?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes28:39

We everybody who I've ever been on an expedition with, um on a stressful expedition, there has always been some sort of falling out, but never as bad as a typical marriage or a typical business partnership.

Presenter28:51

But more intense in that moment, I would have thought.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes28:53

That's right, and and the success is being able to forget it and bury the hatchet and carry on with the same person through many more stressful situations.

Presenter29:04

Record number seven.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes29:06

I like Enya singing

Sir Ranulph Fiennes29:08

Abudai, I think that's correct pronunciation, from Shepherd Moons, which although it's I suspect Gaelic sounds to me very like the Maoris in New Zealand. It's an exact replica of a very haunting song which was sung to us by a girls' school of Maoris when we left New Zealand after the crossing of Antarctica in 1981 and before we went up to the Arctic to cross that.

Speaker 429:35

Here all the do we hear

Speaker 429:39

I

Speaker 429:42

Put a cumula, put a cumulative.

Speaker 429:46

We won Jesus Mori Namuri A Moor.

Presenter29:52

Enya singing Ebudai from Shepherd Moons. I should think sitting alone on a desert island with nothing to do and little prospect of escape is a true test of endurance, isn't it?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes30:02

Yeah, I've I've never been on a desert island. I've been in big deserts in in great heat, but usually with somebody else not sitting there all on my lonely.

Presenter30:10

I can say, would you prefer to be on your own, or do you need a rival, if you like?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes30:14

Um I if I'm going on an expedition, it's much better to be someone with whom you've got a hostile um rivalry. It brings out the best in you.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes30:25

And when you're wanting to stop, you can say to yourself, Well, I desperately want to stop, but I'm certainly not going to stop until he does.

Presenter30:31

But alone on your island you'd wither away quite quickly by yourself, would you?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes30:34

I fear that, yes, by myself, I wouldn't be too happy.

Presenter30:38

But you must have contemplated death sometimes. I mean, you've come closer to it than most of us. Does does the prospect frighten you?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes30:45

You you spend a lot of time planning to avoid death and and to avoid any form of risk, if possible. If it's impossible, and sometimes it has been, then when the moment of apparent near death is at hand, you're not really so much

Sir Ranulph Fiennes30:59

frightened as panicking, and there is a difference. And the panicking very often helps, as about a year ago when I was hanging down a two hundred foot crevasse attached only by a bending ski stick at the top. The panic gives you extra strength, even when you are fairly weak, to get yourself out of the predicament, whereas blind fear and shrieking probably wouldn't.

Presenter31:20

But from what you say, um Ranulph Fiennes, the greatest living British explorer, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is planning to die at some point peacefully in his bed at home.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes31:31

Yes, I would like to go before getting some modern disease or cancer or something like that. That would be my greatest fear.

Presenter31:39

But at home, not out there in the great wild wastes.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes31:42

Definitely a home, at the same time as my wife, yup.

Presenter31:45

Let's have your last record.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes31:47

I'd like Jacqueline Dupre playing part of Elgar's cello concerto. She, to me, was a very, very brave person. She did have multiple sclerosis, and multiple sclerosis is something which I've been involved with as a result of Prince Charles, our patron, asking us to raise money to start Europe's first MS Research Centre in Cambridge, which we have now done.

Presenter32:57

Jacqueline Dupre playing part of Elgar's cello concerto. So if you could only take one of those eight records ran.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes33:03

Um the massed pipes would be very stirring, but on the other hand I think you might be stuck there for eight years, and pipes for eight years would get a little bit much of a good thing. So probably end up with Michael Ball's Love Changes Everything.

Presenter33:17

And memories of your wife.

Presenter33:20

What about your book? Because you've got the complete works of Shakespeare, and you've got the Bible waiting for you, which is important to you, isn't it?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes33:27

The b yes, the Bible is important and sort of always has been. Um you can't carry a whole Bible on expeditions. I just have a small card thing which um has a Biblical quotation, which is With God everything is possible.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes33:44

I would want a book which was readable again and again and again, and was very full of nice things and not morbid things, and so I think I'd choose one of Mervyn Peake's books like Gorman Ghast or Titus Groan.

Presenter34:04

And what about your luxury?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes34:07

Um well, desert islands, the unpleasantnesses which you would need to cater with, I suppose, having read Castaway, uh consist mostly of sores due to insects. So I'd take some form of thing like antostan, a a vast mega tube of antistan, so you could continually do away with insect bites.

Presenter34:29

Sir Ranalfeins, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes34:32

Thanks, sir.

Speaker 334:40

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.