I've always hated it when people overspend, are spoilt or throw their money away.

You can't call it an adventure unless it's tinged with danger. The greatest danger in life, though, is not taking the adventure at all. To have the objective of a life of ease is death. I think we've all got to go after our own Everest.

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

I went to drama school but it was very hard to get work until I was made assistant stage manager.

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'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.