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.

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

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

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

My dream is to own a Hockney - I'm a Yorkshireman, and his vibrant colours are a good example of how the north-country people are vibrant and colourful.