We had a food store at the theatre and I used to pinch food. I pinched some trousers and shirts to keep me going but they would wear out. I was virtually on the breadline.

The misapprehension about me is that I am some loud, rampant maniac. I am actually very pensive and quiet.

I had to leave school at 14 because my father got injured in the mines and I had to support my family. I was an undertakers assistant, then a plasterer, before doing my military service in the RAF. All the while, I was doing amateur dramatics and dreaming of getting a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

I'll never retire. The new millennium is the age of adventure as far as I am concerned. I'm going up a volcano and off into space.

I've become quite a serious explorer: I've been to Everest three times; I'm the oldest man to reach the North Pole; and I've just been to the lost world of Venezuela.

When I was 11 I played the part of Rumpelstiltskin and my teacher told me I would make a great actor.

I do everything I can for wild animals because they have such a bloody awful time.