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

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'm one of the lucky people that, my job is my passion, is my hobby. I hope this doesn't sound arrogant: I truly feel that this is what I'm meant to do, to swim and to talk about protecting the environment, my two passions.

If you've got a problem and you multiply it by 50-million people, it becomes unsolvable, but if you've got a problem and you divide it by 50-million people, it becomes solvable.

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.

You shouldn't be able to do a swim at the North Pole, it should be frozen over.

I had a dream , okay, go do a swim off Antarctica, and I'd train in Gauteng and just dive into the sea off Antarctica... You've really got to do a simulated test as best you can in South Africa before you go off.