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.

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

Very few things which are really worth achieving come easily. Sometimes they do, but most of the time you really have to work hard and cleverly.

I love swimming, swimming's my passion and I hope I swim until the last day of my life, so I really, really do enjoy swimming, but swimming for me is simply a way of carrying a message.

I've got two dogs - one's a Jack Russell and she's one year old now, and I've got another dog called Kanga, and I got him from a rescue shelter, and there's nothing I enjoy more than just walking them on the beach in Cape Town. I find that very destressing and very relaxing.

I've seen some glaciers in the world which have been, which are just turquoise blue blue glaciers up in the Arctic. It's tragic to think that because of climate change, because of man's actions, they're melting away.

We have to appreciate that we are part of nature, we must work with nature; the environment is our lifeline.