Sir Ranulph Fiennes: ‘At Eton – unlike in South Africa – boys had crushes on one another’

Named the world’s greatest living explorer by Guinness World Records, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, 78, was born in Windsor in 1944, four months after the death of his father in the Second World War. Inheriting his father’s title, the 3rd Baronet of Banbury, at birth, Fiennes moved to South Africa with his mother, returning aged 12 to attend Eton, then Mons Officer Cadet School, before joining the SAS from the Royal Scots Greys. 

After eight years in the military, including a two-year secondment to Oman, he became an expedition leader, eventually becoming the first person to reach the North and South poles by surface means and the first person to completely cross Antarctica on foot. In 2009, aged 65, he climbed Mount Everest. Following the death of his first wife, childhood sweetheart Ginny Pepper, in 2004, he married Louise Millington in 2005. The couple and their 16-year-old daughter Elizabeth split their time between homes in Somerset and Cheshire.

Best Eton experience?

My night-time ascent of the Lupton’s Tower, which had never been climbed before. One night, Hugh Prior and I, wearing dark clothes and looking like the man from the Milk Tray advert, snuck out of our houses and climbed up the Victorian drainpipes to the two spires at the top of the towers. When we reached the peak there was no point just touching the apex, we had to mark our success. 

There were two doors opening out on to the towers, which we tied together with a rope, and on one of the towers, we attached Hugh’s Eton tail coat. However, when we got down, Hugh remembered his name tag was on the coat, so we had to make a second ascent to remove it before dawn. If we’d been caught, we’d have been thrown out. The masters never suspected a thing, until I wrote a book admitting to the crime 10 years after I’d left. 

Best army experience?

I’d just completed an army explosives course for the Special Air Services and an old friend from Eton got in touch to ask me to help him blow up 20th Century Fox’s filming equipment at Castle Combe in Wiltshire, the day before they started filming Dr Doolittle. 

They’d chosen Castle Combe, which had just been voted Britain’s prettiest village, as the film’s main location and they were ruining the place with a 20ft concrete dam. The police got wind of the plan and installed alsatians to protect the dam. I was caught and sent to Chippenham prison, and then put on police probation for six months. I was thrown out of the SAS and sent back to my own regiment, the Royal Scots Greys, in Germany. 

Best view you've seen?

I think it would be Antarctic’s highest mountain, Vinson. I really laboured to get to the top as there was a storm en route and we spent three days and three nights sitting and waiting. So when we did finally reach the peak, thanks to this amazing Scottish guide called Dave Hamilton, it felt pretty good. Every direction you looked at was totally and utterly white.  

Best patron?

King Charles. He’s been patron of our expeditions for 46 years and has always taken meticulous trouble to get personally involved. On one occasion in the late 1970s, we went to Highgrove to share the details of the next expedition, and he said, “Which charity are we raising money for this time?” to which I replied, “Sir, that’s not part of the expedition.” He then said, “I thought you were raising money for charity; I couldn’t be patron otherwise.” Two months later he said, “Let’s raise money for multiple sclerosis,” so we agreed and raised £4.2 million, just like that. 

Best advice you've been given?

Don’t let anyone blacken your name writing untrue stuff about you. In the 1990s, we were accused by Maclean’s, a Canadian magazine, of carrying out expeditions that had no scientific or historical benefit. In truth, we had a huge amount of scientific work being done on every expedition, so we went to libel court and they had to pay £100,000.

Worst Eton experience?

When I arrived at Eton after living in South Africa, I was about 11 or 12 and, apparently, I was a pretty boy. At Eton – unlike in South Africa – boys had crushes on one another. It was all verbal, nothing physical, but it was very nasty. It even got to the state where I was going to throw myself over Windsor Bridge, but I didn’t want to upset my mum. In the end I thought, “I’ll learn to become aggressive, not pretty”, and I took up boxing and frowned a lot.

Worst army experience?

In the mid 1960s I was put in charge of canoe training for the Royal Scots Greys in Germany. We went up the Loire, the Rhone, the Rhine and it was great. One year I had to take them within the German area, so with the lorries and the Land Rovers carrying the canoes, we drove up to the denoted training area in thick woods to do a coding exercise. 

Halfway through, we realised we’d accidentally transgressed into an unauthorised area with lots of German military, so we got the soldiers to remove their berets to disguise themselves and put mud on the number plates, then headed back 200 miles to the training area we were meant to be in. Two months later, a German woman found a beret in her garden, and I was fined and given a severe warning. 

Worst injury?

Going on an expedition to the North Pole in 2000 with frostbite. I’d never assign someone who’d had frostbite to join me on an expedition as they’d be susceptible to get it again, but it was my expedition. I went prepared with the best possible mitt, but ultimately a very expensive long expedition came to grief because of it and I ended up chopping off some of my own fingers with a hacksaw. 

I’d been told by a surgeon that because the damaged dead bit was touching the live nerves, he wouldn’t operate for five months after the trauma. My wife Ginny put up with me being irritable for two months then eventually she said, “You’re becoming impossible to live with,” so using a saw and with no anaesthetic, I amputated the tips of all four fingers and the thumb of my left hand. 

Worst personal trait?

I think my wife would be the best person to answer that question, but I think it’s self-hatred. When you’re on a team expedition you start to hate the other person, because there are only two of you and when you’re really suffering you need someone to hate. But when you’re doing a solo expedition, you’ve got no one else to hate other than yourself. 

At those moments you just try to have faith in yourself and when the voice is telling you that you can’t go any further, I think about the two people I respect most – my father and my grandfather. I didn’t meet either of them, but Mum told me about them, and I remind myself that I can’t give up because I don’t want to shame either of them. 

Worst near-death experience?

I was at Bristol Airport on a flight to Edinburgh in 2003, about to take off, when apparently I suddenly collapsed and subsequently spent three days on life support in the Bristol Royal Infirmary. The stewardess saw it happen and alerted the pilot who radioed for first responders, who arrived with a defibrillator, which I was on within minutes of having the heart attack. When I woke up my wife said, “Ran, you had a heart attack three days ago.” I couldn’t remember a thing about it, and I still can’t to this day. 

Worst question you're asked?

I get a lot of emails from parents asking how their children could become explorers, and I always say that you should make sure they get their A-levels to give themselves the best chance in the future.

Tickets for Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ Living Dangerously tour are on sale now; fane.co.uk