Explorer

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Uh, yes. Go ahead.

Ladies and gentlemen,

the Guinness Book of Records Hall of Fame.

The first man that we're inducting into the Hall of Fame

dedicated his life to danger, adventure and exploration.

Ladies and gentlemen, Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

He's been described

as being something of an eccentric.

A remarkable man

you might call brave, driven, extraordinary,

or just plain crazy.

He's gone further than anyone's gone before,

pushing the boundaries of what humans can do and understand.

It's been a life of adventure.

Parachuting onto a Norwegian glacier.

Fighting a guerrilla war in Arabia and...

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.

Thrown out of the SAS,

he's walked to the North Pole, run seven marathons.

His level of fitness,

endurance and competitive spirit

puts him way above any sportsman.

He is the greatest explorer this country's ever had.

Frostbitten, half-starved

and more dead than alive,

the polar explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes

tucked into a hearty breakfast.

One question everybody wants to know:

"Why did you do it?"

The number you are calling does not accept unidentified calls.

The number you...

Are you doing it now?

I spoke to him on the telephone occasionally.

See how things were going.

But most of the time, I thought I'd never see him again.

I kept saying, "You can't do it now.

Don't you realise how old you are?"

Anyway, it didn't stop him.

Darling, are you OK for Matt

to use our conversation in his film?

I'm cleaning my teeth. Sorry.

Just cleaning her teeth.

She said she'll be out in a sec.

Hello? Hi.

There's nothing normal about Ran.

In the context of the contemporary world,

he is not a normal guy.

He is the last great explorer.

The man has become a myth.

You only ever see explorer Ran,

you never see the other side of it.

Hello?

Hello?

Tonight is going to be special.

Ran has always managed to do things

with a certain je ne sais quoi,

a certain flair,

that sets him apart from all of us mere mortals.

Most of us aspire to run a marathon.

They're like penicillin pills.

-What, aren't you feeling good? -Not confident.

And that is typical of Ran for you.

Always further, always up, always beyond.

Always that little bit better.

To me he has always been the best.

He's always been the leader.

And he's always been my hero.

Ladies and gentlemen, please do a warm welcome

for the legend that is

Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes.

Thank you very much.

I'm gonna be speaking, basically,

on the topic of taking package holidays

to weird areas with no scenery,

with odd bunches of people.

I ought to stress that I've been doing it

for 32 years as a profession

not because it's there, or because it's sort of romantic,

but basically in order to pay the gas bill.

Right, we're going for it, yeah.

Whoops.

Done it.

I drive a hell of a lot, yeah.

You have to lecture.

That is the only way an explorer can get paid

for doing what he does, or she does.

But there is always the worry

that one might no longer be able to make an income.

Hello, police.

Get into gear, will you?

Stop hooting.

When he's got his work head on,

he's very single-minded, he's driven.

Nobody can say, "Ran, don't you think

it'll be better to do it this way?"

One time I said, "Why don't you

just take a gun and shoot yourself

in the middle of a field?

It would be much less expensive

and it would not involve so many people."

I met him for the first time in the Arctic

when we were about to set off.

I'd kind of heard that he was really difficult

in terms of knowing what he wanted and sticking to it.

And he was the leader.

Just as army units have leaders.

Hello.

-Hi. Mike? -Yeah.

I certainly didn't view it like that.

You know, I just wouldn't even conceive

of an expedition of two having a leader.

It just goes quite beyond me.

The extravagant ambition

of British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes

is to overcome the last great polar challenge,

a totally unsupported trek to the North Pole.

But once loaded

with the 60 days' provisions for the journey,

his sledge weighed nearly 400 pounds.

And with the temperature below minus 50 centigrade,

this was proving too much even for him to haul.

Honestly, Ran, I can't see

what on earth you can take out of this.

I can take the spare radio battery.

If we do that, what are we doing?

We're compromising on safety.

-That's the way we don't travel. -It's irresponsible?

It is irresponsible. And we just don't work like that.

With one battery, that's what you're doing.

-What about one saw set? -One saw set?

Again, what happens when the other one goes?

You're absolutely stuck.

-Yeah. -It's all compromise.

Well, something has got to go.

Against the advice of his team-mates,

he decides he will cut down his supplies from 60 days to 45.

The thought of failure is impossible.

He cannot fail.

In athletic terms, he was really very special,

and could have been

an Olympic-standard endurance athlete.

Ran's foot got frost bit a couple of days ago now.

When he took his sock off tonight,

part of the little toe came away.

The toe could become infected

and the infection could spread to the foot

which would be serious.

I just keep saying to myself

the old thing from Pilgrim's Progress

which is, um, always a little further,

even if it's only ten yards.

That's what you're thinking of, that ten yards.

We wanted to be first unsupported to the North Pole.

If you got there second,

you might as well not have done it. Simple.

Sixteen days after setting out,

the Britons find that they're finally cut off

from the Pole by open water.

But it's been confirmed

that they have reached closer to the North Pole

than any other unsupported expedition.

To have done the record of the furthest north unsupported,

is nice to know for one's own point of view inside oneself.

But the goal of the Pole, totally unsupported,

must remain, for me, something which is sadly unattainable.

Ran was so disappointed that he hadn't got to the North Pole,

or that we hadn't,

he went into complete decline.

Probably the first time in Ran's mind he thought he had failed.

To me, he's out there for the wrong reason.

He's out there for what he thinks

other people are gonna think of him.

And it shouldn't be competitive.

How insecure do you need to be

to have to go around the fucking world

to beat the rival, to feel good about yourself?

That has to be driven by some sort of metric

that was given to him

by his parents or his peers or something.

Quite peaceful up here, isn't it?

Peaceful? Yeah, most of the time.

The only thing that breaks the silence is moos or baas.

Are you shaking? Ah.

Got the tremors.

Ginny put our ancestor pictures in this room

going back to the 15th century, some of them.

Try and keep them straight.

Yeah, so that's, um, pretty much that.

That's Dad. And obviously, as I go past my dad,

I say, "Morning, Dad. Love you."