I can't retire from life. I love life too much and I cannot wait to start the day.

Ninety nine per cent of the time, for anyone who wins or makes money, it makes them happy.

My brother Alan - who was seven years younger than me - died from leukemia when he was 52. He never knew a day's good health - I wish I could have given him some of my good health. But he was always so cheerful and sweet.

My father was a coal hewer from Goldthorpe, a coal-mining village in South Yorkshire. He played for the Yorkshire second team as an opening fast bowler - to me he was a gorgeously heroic man. He helped form a union and closed down the Barnsley seam because it was seeping gas, and saved many, many lives.

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

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.

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.