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.

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.

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

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

I do have spare time and I love to read, and I love just to go to a national park and just relax and just think. But most of the time, it's swimming or talking.

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'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.