I was very, very lucky because I started swimming when most of the landmarks in the world had not been swum.

I was asked to give a speech on the Everest swim, and during the Everest swim, I changed. I changed as a person, I honestly did. That mountain changed me, and I gave a speech about it for nine minutes.

The businessmen of the world who are not taking environmental matters seriously are just wasting money, aside from damaging the environment it's wasting money and in this economic climate you just can't afford to do that.

I think every child in every country, not just South Africa, every year should go to a national park, and it should be part of their basic curriculum.

Britain has bred many great explorers, but they seem to get so little coverage compared to soccer and rugby players.

Sometimes we set boundaries for ourselves in life, or even worse, we allow others to do so. In many cases, these boundaries are just in our mind and need to be pushed away.

I got bored and then joined the British SAS. It was five very exciting years of my life, and then I'd always had this passion for swimming, so started swimming around the world, in some of the most exotic and distant and dangerous locations.