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 1994, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is an explorer, he's navigated the white Nile in a hovercraft,

spent three years traveling around the world through both poles, discovered a lost city in

Arabia and recently nearly perished in Antarctica. Why? Because quite simply it's his job.

He'd always wanted to emulate his father's military career, but he failed to pass the necessary

exams. Instead he turned to the challenges of exploration and for the

past 23 years has been involved in a series of hair-raising adventures, many of which have

been the subject of best-sellers. is Sir Ranleth Twistleton Wickham

Fines or Ran Fines. Do you genuinely think of it as a job ran or isn't that a bit

of an affectation really? Well I suppose it would be an affectation if I could stop doing it and still pay the bills.

But if I wasn't to do an expedition next year, I'd find paying the gas bill the next year after that extremely

difficult so without the expeditions I would be on the dole which I couldn't afford

so I think the definition is a fairly accurate one it

certainly been in my passport for over 20 years. But there must be a greater

motivation than simply that of making money after all you're risking your life to do

it. I mean do you have any sense of anything else? I mean do you enjoy the fame or do you feel

you're achieving something for your country? Is it patriotic? The fame of it is a very

dubious thing. Fame is a very double-edged weapon as such. I think whereas being known about is of

course an enormous help because most of the income to be made after an expedition comes from giving lectures and the people

are looking at dozens of lecturers and say you have to be known about in order to beat the

other people going for it. In terms of the gingoistic side, i.e. for the country,

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