I've always been generous and like giving to charities and people in need.

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.

In the Arctic I met some Russian sailors on a submarine and they chorused, "Gordon's alive!"

My biggest love is space. I completed 800 hours' space training in Moscow and I became the world's oldest man to go to the North Magnetic Pole. At 67, I also became the oldest man to reach 28,400ft on Everest without oxygen.

I met Picasso when I was a kid. I turned one of his drawings down which would be worth £37 million now. My dad wouldn't talk to me for a fortnight.

I threw [Picasso's] drawing on the floor and in doing so, threw away about £50m.

The household I grew up in... was rather like an Ovaltine advert. There was a huge fire, a kettle on the fire, the oven with the bread being baked every day, and there was the radio; it was very magical to hear all these wonderful programmes.