Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1999, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a mountaineer. For nearly 50 years he spent his time

getting to the top of some of the most beautiful places in the world. Anapurna,

the aiger, Changabang, the ogre and in 1985 Mount Everest.

Beauty has sometimes been accompanied by tragedy.

In an attempt on Everest in 1982, two of his companions lost their lives and many others he's known have died on the

slopes of the world's great peaks. Years ago he gave up his job selling

margarine for Unilever because he preferred disappearing up mountains and he has no regrets.

The drive to climb he said is so strong that I know I couldn't do without it.

He's Britain's best known mountaineer, Sir Chris Bonington. You're an addict then are you Chris you just

can't do without it? Yes I think I am I love it. It's I suppose the whole combination

it's it's the doing of it first of all and just clambering up a

rock and actually enjoying the physical sensation of it it's inevitably the element of risk

as well the fact that there is a danger there and you're using your skill to try to eliminate that danger.

But that gives you a real blus.

There's the beauty of everything around you.

There's the friendships.

And all of this adds up to something that I just love doing.

So it's not really about getting to the top?

Yes, it is, yes.

And I suppose actually, the one thing I have left out,

...